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288 SAIS REVIEW doomsday." Thereafter, a policy debate ensued reinforcing the basic intellectual cleavage. Primarily at issue were differing interpretations and emphases given to deterrence and the necessary forces and strategy to implement it. On the whole, CounseLĀ· ofWar is balanced and fair. It is written for a general audience and, as such, serves as a useful supplement to the more detailed strategic analyses of Lawrence Freedman, Michael Mandelbaum, Colin Gray, and David Rosenberg. Herken's account is based in part on interviews with more than sixty prominent figures, including key policymakers. In this regard, the book parallels Fred Kaplan's The Wizards ofArmageddon, published just two years ago. (Kaplan, incidentally, draws a similar conclusion on the effectiveness of the strategists.) Also of special interest here is the unpublished material Herken adduces to bolster his study, particularly Bernard Brodie's manuscripts and letters. One interesting footnote on Brodie is that while at the Rand Corporation he and Nathan Leites began writing a psychological profile of sac Commander Curtis LeMay. The profile, however, was never completed and is now apparently lost. In a concluding prescription, Herken urges the move toward a "new" nuclear debate with greater popular participation in order to address questions that the "experts themselves have never raised, and never really answered." Chiefamong his concerns is the political dimension ofstrategy, which the author draws from Clausewitz . In the end, Herken would have all citizens ponder basic and familiar, but until now inadequately resolved issues on the role and utility of nuclear forces. Strategic Stalemate: Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in American Politics. By Michael Krepon. New York: St. Martin's Press, December 1984. Reviewed by Seth Arenstein, M.A. candidate, SAIS. In this age of nuclear proliferation it is only a slight comfort that there is a plethora of books being published that deal with arms control. The sad fact is that while both superpowers are adding to and improving their nuclear arsenals, Ronald Reagan has become the first president since Truman to go a full term without signing some kind of arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. Michael Krepon insists that this record is a result both of U.S.-Soviet mistrust as well as internal dissension among U.S. policymakers. It is the latter aspect that he analyzes in this book. Krepon's approach to the nuclear debate in the United States is interesting. He divides the participants into two camps: arms controllers and nuclear strategists. From there he further subdivides each camp into operationalists (moderates) and ideologues (hardliners). Using this matrix he devotes most of his book to an analysis of U.S. nuclear policies and arms control from the mid- 1940s to the present. Krepon finds that neither the topics nor the lines of the debate have changed much in the past forty years. (He parallels the "bomber gap" of the 1950s with today's "window of vulnerability.") Further, he concludes that even after forty years of dealing with nuclear questions, the four subgroups are unable to compromise and make coherent decisions on weapons procurement , strategy, and arms control. Instead, the debate has become highly politicized and therefore stalemated. BOOK REVIEWS 289 None of this is particularly new material, but it is a new way of looking at U.S. nuclear policy. Furthermore, Krepon does make some suggestions for breaking the stalemate. Hope rests on the alliance of the two operationalist groups on such issues as survivability, parity, and reductions. Combined with strong presidential leadership and an effort on the part of both superpowers to isolate arms control from their other competitive endeavors, this would, in the author's opinion, move the two dominant nuclear powers closer to an arms control agreement. Unfortunately, Krepon does not tell the reader how these lofty goals can be attained. One would expect more concrete details from the author, a veteran observer of the Washington political and bureaucratic scene. Deadly Gambits. By Strobe Talbott. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. Reviewed by Seth Arenstein, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Strobe Talbott's new book, Deadly Gambits, has all the elements of a successful novel. It has an action-packed plot, lots of backroom dealings, complex characters including a ruthless...

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