Customer Reviews

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition

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Lawrence Freedman was written many important articles and books but _The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy_ is probably his best. He presents a comprehensive analysis of the development nuclear strategy from 1945 to the end of the Cold War. The book usefully explains a multitude of concepts such as second strike capabilities, massive retaliation, and selective options. Freedman gives added depth by covering nuclear strategy in China, Europe, and the Soviet Union.

One of the great strengths of this book is its objectivity. Most works on nuclear strategy focus on arguing whether nuclear war is still possible, how a nuclear war would be fought, or if mutually assured destruction is a stable and inevitable strategy. Freedman definitely questions the logic of strategies that aim to fight nuclear wars and favors mutually assured destruction. However, the text is devoid of rhetoric or argumentation that would cloud his historical analysis.

Some may criticize the book because it does not concentrate on certain issues relevant today, such as non-proliferation or nuclear terrorism. From the perspective of 2001, though, Freedman's work serves as a history of the major strategic discourse of the Cold War. In a way, his work serves as a the cap on fifty years of writings on nuclear strategy.

For students of strategy, _The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy_ is an essential read. In terms of comprehensiveness, objectivity, and good explanation, this book cannot be matched.

I picked this up thinking it would be a detailed, comprehensive treatment that would lay out the reasons behind why nuclear strategy is what it is. Instead, I got a political science text that traces the history of nuclear strategy, but fails to lay it out. There's almost zero focus on the technical side of things and much actual analysis either. In fact, there's no real delving into strategy either - everything is merely presented, and not very well at that. The prose is dry and humorless - it is at best a broad overview of points of view held by various factions. Although I'm sure Freedman tried to present everything in an impartial and unbiased manner, it seems like he is dismissive of some issues, and places too much emphasis on others.

What is with Cold Warriors, that they can write 500 pages on the Cold War but describe so little? My professor assigned only the introduction and conclusion, but it didn't make sense, so I tried reading the rest: Freedman wants us to believe that the US and USSR behaved as they did for 50 years because a few "strategic theorists" decided what their strategies were supposed to be. Where is technology, politics, economics? Freedman goes into minute detail about the supposed logic of a nuclear strategist, but doesn't show it being communicated to a state leader and affecting policy. My professor also assigned a book on bureaucratic politics in this class but Freedman doesn't seem to have read it. I also read Bruce Blair on the Logic of Accidental Nuclear War, which shows that politicians and nuclear soldiers were usually at cross-purposes and often keeping information from each other and even acting contrary to policy. So sometimes it didn't matter if some strategist had provided the clear logic of some strategy, but since Freedman considers strategic logics as isolated contests he doesn't really investigate their effects. Actually the lack of attention to technology is most ridiculous: nuclear yields and delivery systems changed dramatically and dramatically changed one side's capabilities to attack the other side, but strategic logics are inattentive to technology or the geographical positioning of that technology, except that missiles in submarines strengthen the second strike capability and deterrence theory. But then submarines were subject to attack submarines; their ports were subject to nuclear attack; their missile systems were of uncertain reliability; intelligence could establish that a country might be keeping all its submarines in port because of costs - these estimates would change your estimates of how your opponent would behave and how you should behave, perfectly logically, but Freedman ignores technology and intelligence. The debate over Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense was largely a technical dispute over whether such defense was possible or could be countered and if it could what would be the cost-effectiveness for one side to rely on ABMD or more missiles - strategic logic was dependent on these technical disputes, but Freedman ignores the technical issues. In fact, he ends his history too early to properly consider those issues - his inattention still, in the third edition, seems surprising and convenient. In the end, this book is egotistical: one Cold Warrior spends a book describing in laborious detail how a handful of other Cold Warriors thought and how they determined the course of history. I think not. I have wasted so much effort on this book I don't want to think any more about it - like I said, try Bruce Blair - it's a shorter and more political read.

Lawrence Freedman is a superbly accomplished historian of the Cold War, and his expertise is on display in "The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy", first published in 1981 and most recently updated in 2003. Freedman explores in detail the struggle of the nuclear-armed states, beginninng with the US in 1945, to define a credible military strategy in which nuclear weapons might be used to achieve a reasonable political end short of annihilation.

Freedman's narratives carries the reader from Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in 1945 up to the eve of the US-led intervention into Iraq in 2003. Much of the book is taken up with the long Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, the powers that accumulated the largest strategic arsenals, dominated the debate over strategy, and were nearly the opponents in a nuclear confrontation over Cuba in 1962. Freedman devotes space along the way to briefer discussions of the attempts at nuclear strategy by the United Kingdom, France, China, and in late chapters, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

In the end, Freedman cannot bring himself to accept that nuclear weapons have a function beyond deterring the use of other nuclear weapons. This might not be an entirely satisfying conclusion after over 450 pages; the author was clearly reluctant to explore the dynamics of limited exchanges. However, his presentation is even-handed and he does not foreclose other lines of thought. This reviewer wishes he had spent more time on the present instance of deterrence between a small nuclear state such as North Korea and a larger nuclear state such as the US.

"The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy" is highly recommended to students of international and military affairs, as a topic unlikely to go away in the near term.

This is a book for extreme experts: academics, nuclear strategy buffs, and the occasional pundit in search of its peculiar logic. Forgive my naivete, but it also exemplifies why academia is viewed by so many as a boring world of, well, extreme experts of recondite trivia - even when it deals with the potential destruction of industrial civilization. In my view, this book utterly fails to cross over to the interested non-specialist or those who are not writing a dissertation but just want a good read. I never would have cracked this if it wasn't for work.

That being said, the book summarises an absoulutely enormous amount of scholarship and the thinking of the mysterious "wizards" who argued in little offices in the Pentagon for this type of bomb, that type of missile or artillery shell, and this type of treaty. Fortunately, a lot of this is now more history with the end of the Cold War and the arms race, but it still appears like a bizarre parallel universe of microeconomics applied to massiave destructive capabilites with a cold rationality and words like "deterrence" and "mutual assured destruction." Alas, very little of the political context or the human drama is covered in its quirky detail, so don't seek that here. The prose is clear, if a bit like a massive vanilla milkshake when you read it in one sitting (as I had to). I learned from this, but simply did not enjoy it past the first chapter or even the introduction. The achievement is inarguable, but this book is like a tough home work assignment in undergraduate school.

Recommended for academic purposes, but not for the interested layman.

I am using this a text for an International Security class. It is a well constructed summary of the history of thought in this area. However, as I am reading, gently opening the book causes pages to just fall out without any sort of tension. They have clearly never been glued in in the first place.

It's just a really disappointing purchase. If I could take time out of reading to return it I would.