The Arms Race At A Time Of Decision

Written by world-renowned scientists, this volume portrays the possible direct and indirect devastation of human health from a nuclear attack. The most comprehensive work yet produced on this subject, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War includes an overview of the potential environmental and physical effects of nuclear bombardment, describes the problems of choosing who among the injured would get the scarce medical care available, addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial perspective, and reviews the medical needs--in contrast to the medical resources likely to be available--after a nuclear attack. "It should serve as the definitive statement on the consequences of nuclear war."--Arms Control Today

The importance to Western policymakers of determining the significance of Soviet strategic arms decisions is matched by the difficulty of doing so. The high stakes involved and, in many cases, the inadequacy of evidence can all too easily lead to generalizations that rest more on passionate conviction than on accepted principles of scholarly inquir

A long tradition of theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to the question of the driving forces in the arms race since the 1960s. This book takes up the internal factors of arms dynamics, such as bureaucratic politics, interservice rivalry, and the military-industrial complex, as well as external factors such as interactive arms dynamics between the two superpowers. It also deals with the question of technological determinism - the ideas that what is technically possible will be done as opposed to the idea that `politics is in command'. Finally, factors in the international system affecting arms races are also examined, such as long economic waves and power transitions.

More and more people are demanding an end to violence as a means of arbitrating international demands and resolving problems between nations. This collection of essays brings social scientific evidence to bear on the question of the "inevitability" of war, and evaluates the potential for managing the international system in the interest of peace instead of war. The contributors discuss methods of lowering distrust among DEGREESnations; they consider whether war persists because it has become an economic necessity built into a "military-industrial complex."' They deal with implications of expansion of the military into civilian areas such as education, and into increasingly sophisticated technology such as the ABM Safeguard system. They discuss* the involvement of social scientists in the formulation of "peace" and "war" policy. Collectively, these essays present the most serious questions social scientists have been asking about problems of war and peace, and offer hope that the present international system, dangerous and appallingly costly as it is, may offer enough stability to give us time to transform it into something that bettet serves human needs.

The first book anywhere to go inside the Soviet arms control decision-making process, this book reveals information previously known by no more than a handful of people, in the USSR and the U.S.--written by two of the players.