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War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

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 they had more potential than they really did to become large-scale wars that again might cause a nuclear confrontation.

The book was published in 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, which gives the book a certain antiquated feel near the end as the author speculates on the course of the future and places great emphasis on the need for Gorbachev to remain and to continue his reforms:

The bilateral relationship...

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War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:20, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707219.html