Across the nuclear divide – strategic studies, past and present [1977]

A combination of accident and design has produced a transnational strategic studies community which has only the most casual acquaintance with strategic thought and action prior to 1945. In this article it is argued both that the continuities in international politics and strategy, pre-and post-1945, are far more important than are the discontinuities, and that therefore the disciplined study of pre-nuclear ideas and events could and should much improve our understanding of the structure of current and anticipated security problems. The identity of the political players changes, as do the characteristics of particular weapons, but such policy problem categories as the utility of force for the support of foreign policy, alliance management, the conduct of an arms race, the prosecution of limited war, arms control negotiations, and the accommodation of new weapon technologies, all have long pre-nuclear histories. Nuclear-age strategic theory has suffered severely from shallowness of its empirical base.