War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
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In his book War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, John Newhouse addresses issues raised during the nuclear age extending from the conclusion of World War II, when America inaugurated the nuclear age by dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, through the Cold War with its indirect conflicts between the nuclear superpowers, to the present age when fear of nuclear attack has shifted to a fear of rogue states and terrorists. Much of Newhouse's book seem to center too much on ideas of questionable importance while failing to get at the real shifts in thinking that have taken place in the world as a result of the development of nuclear capability. Newhouse concentrates almost entirely on the fear generated by the idea that nuclear war was possible, and this causes him to blame nearly every conflict on nuclear tensions and to assess every conflict in terms of whether or not it might lead to nuclear conflagration, when in fact many of the conflicts of the Cold War took place as they did precisely because everyone was certain nuclear war was not to be considered at all. Vietnam, for instance, was a war in which nuclear capability was largely irrelevant, and for all the huffing and puffing about bombing vietnam back to the stone age, no one was about to do it. Newhouse tends too easily to accept that the development of nuclear power changed everything in terms of waging war, when in fact it only affected the potentia conduct of large-scale war directly and only made smaller wars seem as if
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. Of course, the nuclear threat is his subject, but he often goes overboard in making the nuclear threat the most important element in world politics, setting it above ideology, pragmatism, and the reality of many conflicts.
One important element rightly cited by Newhouse as having great import and influence throughout the nuclear age was the group of professionals who guided nuclear policy and who developed all strategy on the basis of the perceived nuclear threat. These professionals are sometimes referred to as the priesthood, and Newhouse sees the as encouraging an ideological and polarized debate instead of seeking to reduce tensions with a more reasoned debate on nuclear issues. For these experts in particular, every action on the part of the Soviets was tied to the nuclear threat, and every measure taken by the United States was also analyzed in terms of how it would contribute to nuclear dominance. At the same time, as newhouse shows, American analysts tended to place America at the center of every equation even when this was not warranted and to do so in terms of seeing America as the target of all nuclear threats. Every Soviet success was judged in terms of how it added to the threat to America. When the Soviets
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1911
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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