Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age

摘要

Francis J. Gavin's Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age is a rigorous historical analysis of the influence that nuclear weapons exerted over US and international politics throughout the Cold War. It is also a study of how important political considerations proved in shaping US nuclear strategy-a challenge to traditional security theorists who subscribe to the view that strategy is the product of rational calculations and deterrence logic. Gavin's research leads him to the inescapable conclusion that US nuclear policy is not and has never been determined by the kind of formal constructs of state behavior, like rational deterrence, that strategists promote. Nuclear Statecraft indicts the whole edifice of Cold War security studies for an excessive preoccupation with arcane and abstract theoretical debates that, in his view, not only misconstrue history, but also impede our ability to understand or redress current security dilemmas.