Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy pp 213–230Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

New Sources of Strategy

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 1596 Accesses

Abstract

The decade following Dulles’s massive retaliation speech has been described as a ‘golden age’ of strategic studies. It saw the growing importance of civilians in framing the great policy debates of the nuclear age and then in influencing their outcome, whether as advisers from the think tanks or officials in government. Because this was such an intellectually fertile time it is possible to mythologise this period, assuming a greater homogeneity of approach and clarity of purpose than was the case.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Colin Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience (The University Press of Kentucky, 1982).

  2. 2.

    David Ekbladh, ‘Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression Era Origins of Security Studies’, International Security, 36/3 (Winter 2011/12), pp. 107–41; Michael P. M. Finch, ‘Edward Mead Earle and the Unfinished Makers of Modern Strategy’, The Journal of Military History, 80: 3 (July 2016): pp. 781–814.

  3. 3.

    See for instance: Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, ‘In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952–1954’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1989), pp. 267–347.

  4. 4.

    Richard Polenberg, ed., In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 359–6; Paul Rubinson, “‘Crucified on a Cross of Atoms’: Scientists, Politics and the Test Ban Treaty,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 283–319.

  5. 5.

    See for example the contributions by H. J. Muller ‘How Radiation Changes the Genetic Constitution’, and Ralph Lapp ‘Global Fallout’ to Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 11: 9 (November 1955). Also Alice K. Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965).

  6. 6.

    Matthew Evangelista’s Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to end the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 31–2. Joseph Rotblat, Scientists in the Quest for Peace: A History of the Pugwash Conferences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972). See also the special issue devoted to Pugwash of the Journal of Cold War Studies, 20: 1 (Winter 2018).

  7. 7.

    P. M. S. Blackett, Studies of War-Nuclear and Conventional, p. 201. For a brief history see Chapter 3 of Andrew Wilson, War Gaming (London: Pelican, 1970). Stephen Budiansky, Blackett’s War: The Men Who Defeated Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2013).

  8. 8.

    Sir Solly Zuckerman, ‘Judgement and control in modern warfare’, Foreign Affairs, XXXX:2 (January 1962), p. 208.

  9. 9.

    It has been suggested that von Neumann applied game theoretic techniques to operational problems. Michael A. Fortun & Silvan S. Schweber, ‘Scientists and the Legacy of World War II: The Case of Operations Research (OR)’, Social Studies of Science, 23/4 (November 1993), pp. 595–642.

  10. 10.

    Dr Samuel Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (US Atomic Energy Commission, 1957) is the most authoritative compilation.

  11. 11.

    Daniel Bessner, ‘Organizing Complexity: The Hopeful Dreams and Harsh Realities of Interdisciplinary Collaboration at the RAND Corporation, 1947–1960.’ In “Cross-Disciplinary Research Ventures in Postwar Social Science,” edited by Philippe Fontaine. Special Issue. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 51, no. 1 (2015): 31–53. See also Bessner, Democracy in Exile; Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).

  12. 12.

    Stevenson, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable, p. 37.

  13. 13.

    The first book on RAND was Bruce L. R. Smith, The RAND Corporation; Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). The personal rivalries come out in Fred Kaplan Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983). See also: James Digby, Strategic Thought at RAND, 1948–1964: Their Ideas, Their Origins, Their Fates, June 1990, A RAND Note; M. Augier, J.G. March, A.W. Marshall, “The flaring of intellectual outliers: an organizational interpretation of the generation of novelty in the Rand Corporation,” Organizational Science, v. 26, no. 4 (July–August 2015), pp. 1140–1161; David Hounshell, ‘The Cold War, RAND, and the generation of knowledge, 1946–1962’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 27, 1997, pp. 237–67.

  14. 14.

    ‘49 Scholars Hold Man Up to Mirror: In Sequestered Coast Base They Start Deep Delving Into Behavior Factors’, New York Times (21 September 1958). Until 1960 the term was used largely in connection with CASBS. Thomas Medvetz, Think Tanks in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 26.

  15. 15.

    Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

  16. 16.

    John Ponturo, ‘Analytical Support for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The WSEG Experience, 1948–1976’, IDA Study S-507, July 1979.

  17. 17.

    Letter to Michael Howard, 6 November 1968, p. 49. He names J. F. Digby, E. J. Barlow, E. S. Quade, P. M. Dadant, E. Reich, F. Hoffman and H. Rowen.

  18. 18.

    A discussion of Wohlstetter and his writings, along with those of his wife, can be found in Robert Zarate and Jenry Sokolski, eds, Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (Strategic Studies Institute: US Army War College, 2009). For a biography of the two, explaining their preoccupation with surprise attacks see Ron Robin, The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

  19. 19.

    Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, op. cit., p. 108.

  20. 20.

    Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Strategy and the Natural Scientists’, in Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright (ed), Scientists and National Policy Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 189, 193, 195.

  21. 21.

    Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Theory and opposed-systems design’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 12, Issue 3, 1968, pp. 302–31. As Wohlstetter also noted: ‘“Conflict-worthy systems,” modelled on “sea-worthy” is more accurate, but even more awkward. Perhaps “opposed-systems design” is closing in on it’.

  22. 22.

    P. M. S. Blackett, ‘Critique of some contemporary defense thinking’, in Studies of War.

  23. 23.

    Sir Solly Zuckerman, Scientists and War, The Impact of Science on Military and Civil Affairs (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956), p. 63.

  24. 24.

    Bernard Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, World Politics, 1: 4, July 1949, p. 476.

  25. 25.

    Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (London: Cassell, 1974), pp. 474–5.

  26. 26.

    Hamilton Cravens and Mark Solovey, eds., Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Mark Solovey, Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013); Joy Rohde, Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research during the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

  27. 27.

    Hunter Heyck, ‘Producing Reason’, in Cravens and Solovey, eds, Cold War Social Science, p. 109.

  28. 28.

    John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944).

  29. 29.

    Oskar Morgenstern, ‘The Collaboration between Oskar Morgensetern and John von Neumann’, Journal of Economic Literature, 14: 3, September 1976; cited in Ayson, p. 120. E. Roy Weintrub, Toward a History of Game Theory (London: Duke University Press, 1992); R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, Games and Decisions; Introduction and Critical Survey.

  30. 30.

    Philip Mirowski, ‘Mid-Century Cyborg Agonistes: Economics Meets Operations Research’, Social Studies of Science, 29, 1999, p. 694.

  31. 31.

    Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict is a collection of some of his seminal essays. A less technical presentation of his ideas is to be found in a later work, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). A game theory type of analysis by Morton Kaplan is found in his ‘The calculus of nuclear deterrence’, World Politics, XI:1 (October 1958). Anatol Rapaport provides useful guides to the subject in Fights, Games and Debates (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1960) and Strategy, and Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). The latter provides his most fervent attack on the abuses of Game Theory; Barry Bruce-Biggs, Supergenius: The Megaworlds of Herman Kahn (North American Policy Press, 2000), p. 120. See Freedman, Strategy, pp. 160–1. On Schelling see Robert Ayson, Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age: Strategy as a Social Science (London: Frank Cass, 2004).

  32. 32.

    Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. 3. ‘The Scientific Strategists’, Gilpin and Wright (eds.), Scientists and National Policy-Makers, p. 252. ‘Analysis and design of conflict systems’, in E. S. Quade, Analysis for Military Decisions (Chicago: RAND McNally, 1964), pp. 130–1.

  33. 33.

    Interview quoted in Stevenson, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable, p. 66.

  34. 34.

    The most thorough critique of the methods adopted by the new strategists is to be found in Philip Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1966). See also Rapaport’s Strategy and Conscience. For critiques of the critics see D. G. Brennan’s review of Rapaport’s book, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XXI:12 (December 1965), and Hedley Bull, ‘Strategic Studies and its Critics’, World Politics (July 1968).

  35. 35.

    Green, op. cit., p. 98.

  36. 36.

    Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. 4.

  37. 37.

    Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961), p. 48.

  38. 38.

    Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius, p. 51.

  39. 39.

    Gene Lyons, ‘The Growth of National Security Research’, The Journal of Politics, 25/3 (Aug. 1963), pp. 489–508.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Lawrence Freedman

  2. Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Jeffrey Michaels

Authors
  1. Lawrence Freedman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jeffrey Michaels
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lawrence Freedman .

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). New Sources of Strategy. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_14

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation