Volume 32, Number 12 · July 18, 1985
Strategy or Romance?
By Lord Zuckerman
Counsels of War
by Gregg Herken
Knopf, 409 pp., $18.95
The critical importance that the nuclear weapon was to assume in the relations of the US and the USSR after Hiroshima made it inevitable that the writing of books about so-called nuclear policy would become a thriving industry. It is, however, a regrettable fact that the books that now follow one another in so rapid a succession do nothing to dissipate the underlying suspicions that divide the two superpowers. Most of the books and articles that see the light of day come from the US, and the views that some have proclaimed have clearly exacerbated the worries of the USSR, which, in comparison with the US, contributes practically nothing to public discussion (with America's NATO partners also in the main silent). The debate therefore becomes parochial, some might even say parasitic, when, as not infrequently happens, an academic in some university, or even a postgraduate student with no direct experience of the subject, picks up his pen to provide a digest, often politically and militarily naive, of what can already be read in other books. The ground has been worked over so thoroughly and so often that it is rare indeed for one to come across even the germ of a new idea.
Review, 3615 words
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