A Strategy for Terminating a Nuclear War
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985. Second printing [stated]. Trade paperback. xii, [2], 253, [1] pages. Tables. Diagrams. Notes. Glossary. Bibliographies. National Surveys on Defense and Economic Issues. Index. This is one of the Westview Special Studies in National Security and Defense Policy. Clark C. Abt is an American researcher born August 31, 1929 in Cologne, Germany. He became an American citizen in 1945, at age 16, and is known for first formalizing the concept and usages of Serious games. Abt left Germany for the United States in 1937. In 1947, he applied as an aeronautics student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 1951. He then served four months in the merchant navy as a seaman, then spent a year at Johns Hopkins University as an English teacher, eventually obtaining a Master's degree in the Writing, Discourse and Drama Department for his thesis, titled A Year of Poems. In 1965, he earned a Ph.D. from MIT in Political Science. He founded Abt Associates immediately afterwards. Abt is known for his book Serious Games (1970), where he formally established a basis for the concept of Serious game. In this work and subsequent ones, he described sports games, role playing games and (then marginal) computer games as mediums for educative, political or marketing ideas. This interest probably stemmed from Abt's involvement with the development of TEMPER, an early computer wargame designed for a Cold War context. Avoiding a nuclear war, or ending one if avoidance fails, is an important but relatively unexplored aspect of nuclear doctrine. Dr. Abt examines the feasibility of antagonists' agreeing to exclude their open cities from nuclear targeting and to replace strategic bombardment with retaliatory invasion to create less of a hair[1]trigger deterrent. Critical net assessments by U.S. strategists and the effects of such a strategy on the Soviet Union and on U.S. allies are considered, along with problems implementation might pose. The author contends that both deterrence and the potential for limiting damage are strengthened by pre-war plans for a nuclear ceasefire and stalemate short of holocaust. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: Wargame, Nuclear War, War Game, War Termination, Termination Strategy, Scenarios, Retaliation, NATO, Arms Control, Bombardment, Command and Control, Counter-Force, Counter-Measure, Escalation, Nuclear Weapons, Countermeasure
ISBN: 0813370507
[Book #84055]
Price: $100.00