92
II - Convergence: Discrete variables
Affairs, 1986, pp. 55-70), Soutou, too, being rather sceptical. John
Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday. The Obsolescence of Major War
(Basic Books, 1989) and John Keegan, The Second World War (Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 594-595) invoke the experience of two world
wars. Some others think that nuclear arms have not served for anything from this point of view, which is surely the case of the French
under de Gaulle, that had principally for their military mission to
transform a possible classical conflict into a nuclear war. If they are
right, the success of "nuclear deterrence" would be due to the fact
that there was no one to deter, or, as Mueller says, because the true
deterrent was Detroit: the enormous American industrial superiority,
nuclear or not.
One can, in French, assess the extent of the subject in Pierre Grosser,
Les temps de la guerre froide (Bruxelles, Ed. Complexe, 1996) who
cites almost all that is in the public domain, but confines himself
to very brief generalities on what concerns the arms race and its
connections with scientific and technological progress. The same is
true of George-Henri Soutou, La Guerre de Cinquante Ans (Paris,
Fayard, 2001), an otherwise superb book by a top historian. The
majority of other French authors, particularly the experts in strategy, have restrained themselves for decades to sound the tocsin for a
conflagmtion [the invasion of Europe] which never happened (Samuel
Huntington) while frequently throwing oil on the flames. We can cite,
from the immense American literature, several serious books: Daniel
Yergin, Shattered Peace. The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Houghton Mifflin, 1977), George F. Kennan,
The Nuclear Delusion (Pantheon Books, 1982), Fred Kaplan, The
Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, 1983) on the history
of American nuclear strategy, McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival. Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (Vintage,
1990), Samuel R. Williamson, Jr and Steven L. Rearden, The Origins of u.s. Nuclear Stmtegy, 1945-1953 (St. Martin's Press), Melvin
Leffler, A Prepondemnce of Power. National Security, the Truman
Administmtion, and the Cold War (Stanford UP, 1992), and The
Specter of Communism. The United States and the Origins of the
Cold War, 1917-1953 (Hill and Wang, 1994), John Lewis Gaddis,
We Know Now. Rethinking Cold War History (OUP, 1997). For a
balanced and easy to read exposition see Martin Walker, The Cold
War and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage, 1994), by a
British journalist who has covered the subject but, like many other
authors, does not seem to have observed that the marvels of high
tech are one of the principal contributions of the Cold War to the
construction of the "Modern World", and that, in this domain too,
the children inherit their parents' genes.
II - Convergence: Discrete variables
Affairs, 1986, pp. 55-70), Soutou, too, being rather sceptical. John
Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday. The Obsolescence of Major War
(Basic Books, 1989) and John Keegan, The Second World War (Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 594-595) invoke the experience of two world
wars. Some others think that nuclear arms have not served for anything from this point of view, which is surely the case of the French
under de Gaulle, that had principally for their military mission to
transform a possible classical conflict into a nuclear war. If they are
right, the success of "nuclear deterrence" would be due to the fact
that there was no one to deter, or, as Mueller says, because the true
deterrent was Detroit: the enormous American industrial superiority,
nuclear or not.
One can, in French, assess the extent of the subject in Pierre Grosser,
Les temps de la guerre froide (Bruxelles, Ed. Complexe, 1996) who
cites almost all that is in the public domain, but confines himself
to very brief generalities on what concerns the arms race and its
connections with scientific and technological progress. The same is
true of George-Henri Soutou, La Guerre de Cinquante Ans (Paris,
Fayard, 2001), an otherwise superb book by a top historian. The
majority of other French authors, particularly the experts in strategy, have restrained themselves for decades to sound the tocsin for a
conflagmtion [the invasion of Europe] which never happened (Samuel
Huntington) while frequently throwing oil on the flames. We can cite,
from the immense American literature, several serious books: Daniel
Yergin, Shattered Peace. The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Houghton Mifflin, 1977), George F. Kennan,
The Nuclear Delusion (Pantheon Books, 1982), Fred Kaplan, The
Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, 1983) on the history
of American nuclear strategy, McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival. Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (Vintage,
1990), Samuel R. Williamson, Jr and Steven L. Rearden, The Origins of u.s. Nuclear Stmtegy, 1945-1953 (St. Martin's Press), Melvin
Leffler, A Prepondemnce of Power. National Security, the Truman
Administmtion, and the Cold War (Stanford UP, 1992), and The
Specter of Communism. The United States and the Origins of the
Cold War, 1917-1953 (Hill and Wang, 1994), John Lewis Gaddis,
We Know Now. Rethinking Cold War History (OUP, 1997). For a
balanced and easy to read exposition see Martin Walker, The Cold
War and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage, 1994), by a
British journalist who has covered the subject but, like many other
authors, does not seem to have observed that the marvels of high
tech are one of the principal contributions of the Cold War to the
construction of the "Modern World", and that, in this domain too,
the children inherit their parents' genes.