Sober Thoughts on Nuclear Paradox
K. Subrahmanyam
DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WAR by Franklyn Griffith University of Toronto Press, 1980, 197 pp., price not stated
July-August 1980, volume 5, No 7/8

The Dangers of Nuclear War is in mark­ed contrast to the bulk of the literature on nuclear war generated in the West. The central message of the book is, to quote Lord Zuckermann, ‘that wars may start as central planners predict but history shows that they rarely if ever proceed or need end as predicted.’ The book is therefore a plea for abandoning the idea of winning a nuclear war, It highlights that a war that unleashes nuclear weaponry in the world today would be a disaster beyond anything the world has known and surely beyond our imagination. It focusses on the paradox that according to the accepted theories of today the avoidance of nuclear war requires both stable general deterrence and deep restraint in reliance on nuclear weaponry of any sort. It pleads for a new readiness for imaginative political action both for drastic arms limitation and increased international understand­ing.All these are in refreshing contrast to the general run of strategic literature from the West which dwells on nuclear war winning strategies, counter force strategies possibility of limited nuclear war, desirability of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries in certain contexts, etc.

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