From Nuclear Military Strategy to a World Without War: A History and a Proposal
By (Author) Roger Hilsman
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Praeger Publishers Inc
30th May 1999
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Military and defence strategy
Nuclear weapons
Peace studies and conflict resolution
355.02
Hardback
336
Sooner or later, if the world keeps following its current course, there will be a nuclear war. Roger Hilsman, who played a significant role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is convinced that the only way to prevent an eventual nuclear conflict is to abolish war itself. This study examines and critiques various proposals for incorporating nuclear weapons into strategic doctrine and concludes that these efforts have failed. Plans for abolishing only nuclear weapons are, according to Hilsman, good intentioned but ill-advised attempts to rehabilitate war. Instead, he proposes a gradual transition to world government, which will perform the traditional social and political functions that were in the past only served by war. War will not disappear immediately. The world must still be prepared to deal with three types of war: wars that have the potential for escalating to a nuclear World War III; wars that are self-confining; and civil wars that cry out for peacekeeping intervention on humanitarian grounds. While the United States will keep the responsibility for dealing with potentially nuclear wars, an entirely new force structure will be necessary. Self-confining wars, such as Bosnia, pose a particular problem as far as world public opinion for intervention is concerned; this study proposes solutions to such dilemmas. Finally, because national forces are ill-suited to peacekeeping missions in countries ravaged by civil war, the United Nations must recruit and maintain an international force along the lines of the French Foreign Legion.
Hilsman has produced an excellent reference for anyone interested in the history and strategy of nuclear weapons and war.-Virginia Quarterly Review
It provides a wonderful overview of nuclear military strategy since 1945.-The Journal of Conflict Studies
"It provides a wonderful overview of nuclear military strategy since 1945."-The Journal of Conflict Studies
"Hilsman has produced an excellent reference for anyone interested in the history and strategy of nuclear weapons and war."-Virginia Quarterly Review
ROGER HILSMAN has been Professor of Government and International Politics at Columbia University since 1964. Before that he was President Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, then Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. He is author of more than a dozen books on world politics and military strategy, including The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Struggle over Policy (Praeger, 1996).