ABSTRACT
The United States and the Soviet Union presently possess the equivalent of 8 billion tons of TNT in their strategic arsenals. Bernard Brodie, to whom this volume is dedicated, was a pioneer of modern strategic studies in the nuclear era whose work has powerfully influenced generations of strategists and decision makers. The enormous complications likely to result from partial or full deployment of technologies in a defense-offense strategic posture are disturbing, satisfactory proposals or solutions for overcoming these complications have thus far been provided by Strategic Defense Initiative advocates. Borden’s and Nitze’s positions, which reflected the views of the political and military mainstream in the United States at that time, advocated an American strategy that was similar to that of the prenuclear era: they maintained that victory in a nuclear confrontation was both rational and obtainable. Nye considers a future in which states and decision makers could reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons and therefore lower the risks of nuclear war.
