Counsels of War (Oxford Paperbacks) ebook

by Gregg Herken

Counsels of War (Oxford Paperbacks).

Counsels of War (Oxford Paperbacks). ISBN 9780195049862 (978-0-19-504986-2) Softcover, Oxford University Press, 1987. Find signed collectible books: 'Counsels of War (Oxford Paperbacks)'. The winning weapon: The atomic bomb in the cold war, 1945-1950.

Gregg Herken, historian, museum curator. Fulbright Foundation fellow, 1978-1979; Morse fellow Yale University, 1981-1982; MacArthur Foundation grantee, 1992. Gregg Herken writes about the people whose profession it has been to think about the unthinkable-Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie-including their intense rivalries, personal animosities, and often contentious relationship with the professional military.

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Gregg Herken writes about the people whose profession it has been to think about the unthinkable-Robert McNamara . Counsels of War also shatters certain popular assumptions about .

Gregg Herken writes about the people whose profession it has been to think about the unthinkable-Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie-including their intense rivalries, personal animosities, and often contentious relationship with the professional military. As Herken points out, while American doctrine stresses retaliation, . strategists have always planned to pre-empt a Soviet attack.

Counsels of war. by. Herken, Gregg, 1947-. New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House. As Herken points out, while American doctrine stresses "retaliation," . strategists have always planned to "pre-empt" a Soviet attack. Expanded ed. by Gregg Herken. Published 1987 by Oxford University Press in New York.

Since the first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, a close community of civilian experts, including scientists, academics, and think-tank intellectuals, has advised the American government on the prospects of nuclear war. Based on interviews with these experts, as well as hundreds of pages of recently declassified documents, Counsels of War is the first book to trace in detail the deliberations and shifting recommendations of the experts on the bomb from Hiroshima to "Star Wars." Gregg Herken writes about the people whose profession it has been to think about the unthinkable--Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie--including their intense rivalries, personal animosities, and often contentious relationship with the professional military. He reveals how the influence of the scientist and strategist has extended well beyond the laboratory and the classroom--in the proposal of Kennedy's advisers for a nuclear "demonstration" and even a "clever first-strike" against the Russians, for example. Counsels of War also shatters certain popular assumptions about U.S. nuclear policy. As Herken points out, while American doctrine stresses "retaliation," U.S. strategists have always planned to "pre-empt" a Soviet attack. Herken shows that the lines in the current nuclear debate were actually drawn at the dawn of the atomic age, and that the experts' technically abstruse arguments have only served to hide from the public the fundamental, deeply held--and quite subjective--differences at the heart of the debate. Since Hiroshima, there has been a growing awareness of the peril created by nuclear weapons, yet the crucial questions that were never adequately addressed in 1945 unanswered today. Given the inability of the experts to confront the essential dilemma of the nuclear age, Counsels of War calls for a new nuclear debate, one focused on American rather than Soviet intentions and that seeks an answer to the fundamental, yet still unresolved question: What are these weapons for?

Biaemi

Nuclear war represents the penultimate concern facing humanity, with the final question being “why?”. It is against this backdrop that Gregg Herken examines the route to the policy that has guided the American nuclear enterprise since the beginning of the world’s first nuclear war at Hiroshima.

Taking the high road, Herken’s focus is upon the policy-makers that have driven post-war American efforts toward nuclear effectiveness. Indeed, by looking at those decision-makers that have most shaped the nature of the American nuclear policy, Herken shows us that, great or not, it has been a select coterie of people that will usually have the greatest impact on the lives of many. To be certain, the multiplying effects of nuclear weapons and their potential use have shaped the 20th and now 21st centuries—all the result of a relative few scientists, military leaders and policy-makers.

Herken’s efficacy is unquestionable. Having reviewed a seemingly endless ream of declassified documents and interviewed some of the key players in the impending deadly drama, Herken adds a certain level of candor to a discussion within the nuclear policy class that has too long occurred in secret. While this does not resolve the concern of secrecy that shrouds this important discourse, it at least opens the record for examination.

Ultimately, Herken shows us that there have been decisions made on the behalf of all that have occurred in an insular and hidebound environment. In so doing, he reminds us that decisions matter; as a result, Herken has given us the tools to start asking questions about those decisions and, ultimately, to build a better world.

-Trevor Albertson

Yndanol

From the New York Review of Books, Volume 32, Number 19 ? December 5, 1985

Letter

NUCLEAR CONVICTIONS

By John M. Lee

In response to Strategy or Romance? (July 18, 1985)

To the Editors:

Lord Zuckerman compressed a vast amount of nuclear wisdom into his recent NYR articles, showing once again the value of listening to those who, like Lord Zuckerman, Robert McNamara, George Ball, and McGeorge Bundy, forged their nuclear convictions in positions of great responsibility, near the center of power, at times of great stress.

The July piece, on Herken's "Counsels of War" [NYR, July 18], is, in addition, entertaining. The demolishing of Dr. Herken, for anyone with a particle of sadism in his nature, can only be described as fun. My suggestion to Dr. Herken is that he lie there quietly in the center of the ring while the referee counts to ten.

My only substantial problem with Lord Zuckerman's articles is his blanket insistence on the need to prevent all East-West hostilities, conventional and nuclear, rather than focusing specifically on nuclear war. In this, he makes the best the enemy of the good, or, more exactly, he makes the ideal the enemy of the absolutely essential.

In brief, extended deterrence has these dangerous defects:

- By threatening to introduce nuclears into conventional operations, it makes nuclear firing legitimate, a usable, normal-if ultimate - weapon. This irresistibly nuclearizes the strategy, doctrine and weapons of both sides. It demands hair-trigger alertness. It makes it overwhelmingly probable that any E-W hostilities would become nuclear.

- It produces "limited," "war-fighting" plans and training which are militarily useless, and almost inevitably escalatory. Nuclear war once started is probably uncontrollable.

- By threatening to raise the stakes to the nuclear level, and thus threatening the destruction of the opponent's nation, culture, and population, at our own initiative, it creates and perpetuates mortal hostility.

Sooner or later, in one crisis or another, through some misjudgment or misunderstanding or stupidity, or some unlimited dedication to some principle or purpose, absolute peace will fail. On that day, we must not be relying on nuclearized forces, armed and indoctrinated to use nuclear weapons when conventional elements get into trouble, at the highest pitch of nuclear readiness, pressing against their nuclear controls, and with no stopping point once nuclear war starts.

In brief, extended nuclear deterrence uses the nuclear threat to reduce the threat of conventional war only by accepting substantially increased risk of nuclear war. It counts on the nuclear weapon, the suicide threat, to deter all E-W hostilities at any significant level, and to deter them forever. And it promises only unimaginable disaster if that threat fails.

Preventing the appalling catastrophe of nuclear war must be our central objective. Nuclear retaliation, and only retaliation, against nuclear, and only nuclear, attack is the only role for nuclear forces. Conventional deterrence and conventional defense must be done with conventional forces. In Lord Zuckerman's words, "The word 'war' cannot and should not be used in association with the term 'nuclear.' " They are different phenomena.

John M. Lee, Vice Admiral

St. Petersburg, Florida

Taun

Fabulous history. Thought I already knew everything about the topic, but I was wrong. He knows everything. Best book on the topic.