ABSTRACT
In 1948 P.M.S.Blackett made his first, most extensive and most radical contribution to the debate on nuclear strategy with the publication of Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy.1 It came at a time when there was very little published work in the field and it established his reputation as a sceptic about the wisdom of Western nuclear policy. He was to alter his attitudes from time to time, to the efficacy of deterrence and to the potential for tactical nuclear weapons, but his position as a critic was set. As he put it himself in 1948, with a combination of bitterness and defiance:
I found I have singularly failed to write a recipe for action which would be likely at the present moment to commend itself to the political taste of my fellow countrymen. But for this the state of the world, not I, must take the blame.
