Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age

Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age PDF Author: Robert Ayson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000159124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
An illuminating insight into the work of Thomas Schelling, one of the most influential strategic thinkers of the nuclear age. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the United States' early forays into Vietnam, he had become one of the most distinctive voices in Western strategy. This book shows how Schelling's thinking is much more than a reaction to the tensions of the Cold War. In a demonstration that ideas can be just as significant as superpower politics, Robert Ayson traces the way this Harvard University professor built a unique intellectual framework using a mix of social-scientific reasoning, from economics to social theory and psychology. As such, this volume offers a rare glimpse into the intellectual history which underpins classical thinking on nuclear strategy and arms control - thinking which still has an enormous influence in the early twenty-first century.

Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age

Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age PDF Author: Robert Ayson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000159124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
An illuminating insight into the work of Thomas Schelling, one of the most influential strategic thinkers of the nuclear age. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the United States' early forays into Vietnam, he had become one of the most distinctive voices in Western strategy. This book shows how Schelling's thinking is much more than a reaction to the tensions of the Cold War. In a demonstration that ideas can be just as significant as superpower politics, Robert Ayson traces the way this Harvard University professor built a unique intellectual framework using a mix of social-scientific reasoning, from economics to social theory and psychology. As such, this volume offers a rare glimpse into the intellectual history which underpins classical thinking on nuclear strategy and arms control - thinking which still has an enormous influence in the early twenty-first century.

Arms and Influence

Arms and Influence PDF Author: Thomas C. Schelling
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300253486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
“This is a brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing.”—Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book Review Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s new introduction to the work shows how Schelling’s framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age

Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age PDF Author: Toshi Yoshihara
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589019296
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
A “second nuclear age” has begun in the post-Cold War world. Created by the expansion of nuclear arsenals and new proliferation in Asia, it has changed the familiar nuclear geometry of the Cold War. Increasing potency of nuclear arsenals in China, India, and Pakistan, the nuclear breakout in North Korea, and the potential for more states to cross the nuclear-weapons threshold from Iran to Japan suggest that the second nuclear age of many competing nuclear powers has the potential to be even less stable than the first. Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age assembles a group of distinguished scholars to grapple with the matter of how the United States, its allies, and its friends must size up the strategies, doctrines, and force structures currently taking shape if they are to design responses that reinforce deterrence amid vastly more complex strategic circumstances. By focusing sharply on strategy—that is, on how states use doomsday weaponry for political gain—the book distinguishes itself from familiar net assessments emphasizing quantifiable factors like hardware, technical characteristics, and manpower. While the emphasis varies from chapter to chapter, contributors pay special heed to the logistical, technological, and social dimensions of strategy alongside the specifics of force structure and operations. They never lose sight of the human factor—the pivotal factor in diplomacy, strategy, and war.

The Strategy of Conflict

The Strategy of Conflict PDF Author: Thomas C. Schelling
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674840317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analyzes the nature of international disagreements and conflict resolution in terms of game theory and non-zero-sum games.

The Second Nuclear Age

The Second Nuclear Age PDF Author: Paul Bracken
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429945044
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable." The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy PDF Author: Matthew Kroenig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190849185
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
For decades, the reigning scholarly wisdom about nuclear weapons policy has been that the United States only needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and still be able to respond with a devastating counterattack. So long as the US, or any other nation, retains such an assured retaliation capability, no sane leader would intentionally launch a nuclear attack against it, and nuclear deterrence will hold. According to this theory, possessing more weapons than necessary for a second-strike capability is illogical. This argument is reasonable, but, when compared to the empirical record, it raises an important puzzle. Empirically, we see that the United States has always maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. In The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, Matthew Kroenig challenges the conventional wisdom and explains why a robust nuclear posture, above and beyond a mere second-strike capability, contributes to a state's national security goals. In fact, when a state has a robust nuclear weapons force, such a capability reduces its expected costs in a war, provides it with bargaining leverage, and ultimately enhances nuclear deterrence. This book provides a novel theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it helps resolve one of the most-intractable puzzles in international security studies. Buoyed by an innovative thesis and a vast array of historical and quantitative evidence, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy will force scholars to reconsider their basic assumptions about the logic of nuclear deterrence.

The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution

The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution PDF Author: Robert Jervis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801495656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Robert Jervis argues here that the possibility of nuclear war has created a revolution in military strategy and international relations. He examines how the potential for nuclear Armageddon has changed the meaning of war, the psychology of statesmanship, and the formulation of military policy by the superpowers.

Arms and Influence

Arms and Influence PDF Author: Thomas C. Schelling
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300246749
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This is a brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing."--Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book Review Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities--real or imagined--are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework--conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction--still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age

The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age PDF Author: Charles J. Hitch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Armed Forces
Languages : en
Pages : 106

Get Book Here

Book Description


On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century

On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century PDF Author: Jeffrey A Larsen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804790914
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
These essays by nuclear policy experts provide “a speculative but serious and well-informed journey through a variety of scenarios and contingencies” (Foreign Affairs). Recent decades have seen a slow but steady increase in nuclear armed states, and in the seemingly less constrained policy goals of some of the newer “rogue” states in the international system. The authors of On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century argue that a time may come when one of these states makes the conscious decision that using a nuclear weapon against the United States, its allies, or forward deployed forces in the context of a crisis or a regional conventional conflict may be in its interests. They assert that we are unprepared for these types of limited nuclear wars and that it is urgent we rethink the theory, policy, and implementation of force related to our approaches to this type of engagement. Together they critique Cold War doctrine on limited nuclear war and consider a number of the key concepts that should govern our approach to limited nuclear conflict in the future. These include identifying the factors likely to lead to limited nuclear war; examining the geopolitics of future conflict scenarios that might lead to small-scale nuclear use; and assessing strategies for crisis management and escalation control. Finally, they consider a range of strategies and operational concepts for countering, controlling, or containing limited nuclear war. “A series of trenchant essays that deconstruct a critical national security challenge that most of us wish did not exist. Assembling a star-studded cast of scholars, analysts, and policy practitioners, Larsen and Kartchner have produced some of the most important new thinking on an old topic.” —H-Diplo