Military power and political influence

International Affairs

Volumn 74, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 763-780

  Freedman, Lawrence ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0042279704     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00044     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. John Vincent, Military power and political influence: the Soviet Union and western Europe, Adelphi Paper no. 119 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1975).
2. Norman Angell, The great illusion (London: Heinemann, 1914).
3. Walter Millis, An end to arms (New York: Atheneum, 1964).
4. John Mueller, 'The essential irrelevance of nuclear weapons: stability in the postwar world', International Security, 13: 2, Fall 1988.
5. Martin van Creveld, in The transformation of war (New York: Free Press, 1991).
6. The 'spin' of the time is reflected in the progressively optimistic titles of the successive 'State of the World' reports to Congress by President Nixon: 'A new strategy for peace' (1970); 'Building the peace' (1971); 'The emerging structure of peace' (1972); and 'Shaping a durable peace' (1973).
7. The 'spin' of the time is reflected in the progressively optimistic titles of the successive 'State of the World' reports to Congress by President Nixon: 'A new strategy for peace' (1970); 'Building the peace' (1971); 'The emerging structure of peace' (1972); and 'Shaping a durable peace' (1973).
8. The 'spin' of the time is reflected in the progressively optimistic titles of the successive 'State of the World' reports to Congress by President Nixon: 'A new strategy for peace' (1970); 'Building the peace' (1971); 'The emerging structure of peace' (1972); and 'Shaping a durable peace' (1973).
9. The 'spin' of the time is reflected in the progressively optimistic titles of the successive 'State of the World' reports to Congress by President Nixon: 'A new strategy for peace' (1970); 'Building the peace' (1971); 'The emerging structure of peace' (1972); and 'Shaping a durable peace' (1973).
10. Fred Halliday, The making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1983).
11. John Lewis Gaddis, We now know: rethinking Cold War history (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
12. Vincent, Military power and political influence, p. 4.
13. Note that the Americans had been prepared to accept the reality of mutual assured destruction in 1964 -before the massive build-up of Soviet nuclear strength that allowed them to catch up in quantitative terms with the United States. Lawrence Freedman, The evolution of nuclear strategy, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1989), ch. 16.
14. Kissinger press conference, 3 July 1974, repr. in Survival, 16: 5, Sept.-Oct. 1974.
15. For example, Richard Pipes, 'Why the Soviet Union thinks it could fight and win a nuclear war', Commentary 64: 1, July 1977.
16. Donald Daniel, ed., International perceptions of the superpower military balance (New York: Praeger, 1978). For an influential academic study of the time, stressing the importance of misperceptions in general as a complicating factor in international politics, see Robert Jervis, Perception and misperception in international politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
17. Donald Daniel, ed., International perceptions of the superpower military balance (New York: Praeger, 1978). For an influential academic study of the time, stressing the importance of misperceptions in general as a complicating factor in international politics, see Robert Jervis, Perception and misperception in international politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
18. The Reagan administration took the most alarmist interpretation available, though in the end it was unable to demonstrate that either side had a way out of the dilemmas of the nuclear age. Before the end of the Cold War there was a further turn in this deconstructionist nuclear philosophy in the development of an existentialist postulate. According to this view, deterrence had become a function of the very existence of nuclear weapons, for this meant that they could be used, however irrational an act that would be, and this residual possibility encouraged restraint. The corollary of this simple, and generally persuasive, thesis was that numbers and types of weapons, let alone any doctrine governing their use in anger, were largely irrelevant. McGeorge Bundy, 'The bishops and the bomb', The New York Review, 16 June 1983.
19. Stanley Hoffmann, 'The acceptability of military force', in François Duchêne, ed., Force in modern societies: its place in international politics, Adelphi Paper no. 119 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1973), p. 6.
20. The argument on casualties reached its culmination in Edward Luttwak, 'A post-heroic military policy', Foreign Affairs 75: 4, Jul.-Aug. 1996, pp. 33-4.
21. The term was reintroduced into the political lexicon at President Eisenhower's valedictory address in 1960. His concern at the time, however, was largely the marketing efforts the complex had mounted on behalf of large weapons projects. Some of the more prominent examples of this genre were Ralph Lapp, The weapons culture (New York: Norton, 1968); Richard Kaufman, The war profiteers (New York: Doubleday, 1972). For more academic approaches, see Sam Sarkesian, ed., The military-industrial complex: a reassessment (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972).
22. The term was reintroduced into the political lexicon at President Eisenhower's valedictory address in 1960. His concern at the time, however, was largely the marketing efforts the complex had mounted on behalf of large weapons projects. Some of the more prominent examples of this genre were Ralph Lapp, The weapons culture (New York: Norton, 1968); Richard Kaufman, The war profiteers (New York: Doubleday, 1972). For more academic approaches, see Sam Sarkesian, ed., The military-industrial complex: a reassessment (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972).
23. The term was reintroduced into the political lexicon at President Eisenhower's valedictory address in 1960. His concern at the time, however, was largely the marketing efforts the complex had mounted on behalf of large weapons projects. Some of the more prominent examples of this genre were Ralph Lapp, The weapons culture (New York: Norton, 1968); Richard Kaufman, The war profiteers (New York: Doubleday, 1972). For more academic approaches, see Sam Sarkesian, ed., The military-industrial complex: a reassessment (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972).
24. For a representative version of this line of thinking, see David Horowitz, The free world colossus: a critique of American foreign policy in the Cold War, American Century series (New York: Hill & Wang, 1971).
25. Laurence Martin, 'The utility of military force', in Duchene, ed., Force in modern societies, pp. 14-21 at p. 15.
26. This latter requirement was given added point as the Pentagon Papers revealed the perspicacity but minimal effect of Under-Secretary of State George Ball's private dissent on Vietnam. See Senator Mike Gravel, ed., The Pentagon papers: history of the United States decision making on Vietnam, 5 vols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). On Ball, see James A. Bill, George Ball: behind the scenes in US foreign policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
27. This latter requirement was given added point as the Pentagon Papers revealed the perspicacity but minimal effect of Under-Secretary of State George Ball's private dissent on Vietnam. See Senator Mike Gravel, ed., The Pentagon papers: history of the United States decision making on Vietnam, 5 vols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). On Ball, see James A. Bill, George Ball: behind the scenes in US foreign policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
28. Bernard Brodie, War and politics (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 125.
29. Cited in Mike Bowker and Phil Williams, Superpower detente: a reappraisal (London: Sage for RIIA, 1988), p. 38.
30. Philip Hanson, Trade and technology in Soviet-Western relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
31. The flavour of specialist American and European views at the time is captured in John Holst and Uwe Nerlich, Beyond nuclear deterrence (London: Macdonald & Janes, 1978).
32. Andrew Pierre, 'America down, Russia up: the changing political role of military power', Foreign Policy 4, Fall 1971, pp. 163-87.
33. This is, incidentally, one of those events that need a reappraisal. At the time the greatest significance of the Portuguese revolution was seen to lie in the apparently communist sympathies of the officers involved. This was when 'Euro-communism' was in vogue, though it was always largely an Italian phenomenon. The French Communist Party never quite managed the trick of reinventing itself. Nonetheless, at the time Pentagon maps showed red arrows circulating all round the Mediterranean as well as moving round the Horn of Africa. As one who found the Portuguese dictatorship to have been a blot on NATO's democratic credentials, I remember being quite shocked to hear James Schlesinger, then the American Secretary of Defense, suggest that the revolution had been a blow for the 'free world'. In the event, with some help from the rest of Europe, Portugal turned itself into a healthy and stable democracy. Portugal's colonial legacy took longer to address, with Angola and Mozambique only now beginning to recover from terrible civil wars and East Timor under Indonesian occupation.
34. Cited in Bowker and Williams, Superpower detente, p. 136. The importance of Soviet activities in the Third World in causing the downfall of detente was stressed by Carter's National Security Adviser: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and principle: memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-81 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983).
35. Cited in Bowker and Williams, Superpower detente, p. 136. The importance of Soviet activities in the Third World in causing the downfall of detente was stressed by Carter's National Security Adviser: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and principle: memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-81 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983).
36. Although General Sir John Hackett, notably tried, in his book The Third World War. August 1985: a future history (London: Sphere, 1979).
37. See Robert Litwak, Detente and the Nixon doctrine: American foreign policy and the pursuit of stability, 1969-1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). The most magisterial account of the Nixon/Kissinger approach and its aftermath remains Raymond Garthoff, Detente and confrontation:American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan, revised edn (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1994).
38. See Robert Litwak, Detente and the Nixon doctrine: American foreign policy and the pursuit of stability, 1969-1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). The most magisterial account of the Nixon/Kissinger approach and its aftermath remains Raymond Garthoff, Detente and confrontation:American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan, revised edn (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1994).
39. Alexander Haig, Caveat (London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984).
40. It required events in Afghanistan for this to be taken seriously.
41. Dmitri Simes, 'The Soviet strategic challenge in the 1980s', in Kenneth A. Myers, ed., NATO: the next thirty years: the changing political, economic and military setting (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980).
42. John Vincent, Military power and political influence.