Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: The Report and Papers of the International Task Force onPrevention of Nuclear Terrorism by Paul Leventhal; Yonah AlexanderReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), pp. 432-433Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043393 .

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432 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

no "golden age" of American nuclear invulnerability, for U.S. leaders in the 1950s and 1960s did not feel their country was invulnerable. Neverthe

less, those leaders were prone to making nuclear threats even though they had not thought carefully about what they would do if the bluff were called.

MAKING WEAPONS, TALKING PEACE: A PHYSICIST'S ODYSSEY FROM HIROSHIMA TO GENEVA. By Herbert F. York. New York: Basic Books, 1987, 346 pp. $22.95. FROM DETERRENCE TO DEFENSE: THE INSIDE STORY OF STRA TEGIC POLICY. By Michael Charlton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987, 154 pp. $20.00 (paper, $8.95).

These very different books are both inside accounts of America's nuclear

history. York's is a warm, engaging memoir of his life from graduate student with the Manhattan Project to arms control negotiator for the

Carter Administration; he is charitable to foes and sprinkles his book with

portraits of the famous scientists he knew, from John von Neumann to the Soviet physicist Peter Kapitza. Charlton's book, which grew out of a BBC

series on SDI, portrays the history through the words of 23 eminent Americans and Europeans, from Robert McNamara's disillusion with stra

tegic defense in the 1960s to Richard Perle's embrace of it in the 1980s.

THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN STRATEGY. By David C. Hendrickson. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1987, 210 pp. $34.95 (paper, $16.95).

These days Walter Lippmann's famous admonition, that a nation's

commitments must be "related to its resources, and its resources adequate to its commitments," is most often deployed by conservatives in support of

more defense spending. This provocative essay, however, sees "a pernicious

tendency to deprecate our power and exaggerate our interests. The power most often deprecated resides in our air and naval forces .... "

More

intriguingly in light of recent events, the interests that are exaggerated are

in the Persian Gulf; diminished American dependence on oil from that

region should make possible a degree of disengagement, with large impli cations for force posture.

SPACE AND NATIONAL SECURITY. By Paul B. Stares. Washington:

Brookings, 1987, 220 pp. $28.95 (paper, $10.95). This is an informative survey, although its title is broader than its subject:

it is really about military satellites and weapons designed to destroy them.

Other than recognizing that the techniques for intercepting satellites and

missiles are similar, it says little about space-based strategic defense. Its brief

is a caution against a race in antisatellite weapons and in favor of arms

control in space.

PREVENTING NUCLEAR TERRORISM: THE REPORT AND PA PERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL TASK FORCE ON PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM. Edited by Paul Leventhal and Yonah Alex

ander. Lexington (Mass.): Lexington Books, 1987, 472 pp. $22.95 (paper). It is striking, if not surprising, that so much attention is paid to the least

likely use of nuclear weapons, war between the superpowers, and so little to the more likely disasters?nuclear wars in the Third World or nuclear

terrorism. The work of this task force is a welcome attempt to address the

last. Its warning is measured?there is no evidence that terrorist groups

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RECENT BOOKS 433

yet have the combination of will and ability to build nuclear devices?yet even a plausible nuclear hoax could be terrifying. And yet its recommen dations amount to doing more of what we are already doing?more permissive action links (PALs) on nuclear weapons, especially sea-based ones, more safeguards and more efforts to discourage the use of weapons grade materials in nuclear reactors. Several of the background papers are

quirky or polemical, but most are helpful. Most readers will be surprised to learn that the U.S. already has Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NESTs) for possible use in dealing with nuclear terrorism.

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND EUROPEAN SECURITY. By Arthur Cyr. New York: St. Martin's, 1987, 156 pp. NEW CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS AND WESTERN DEFENCE. Ed ited by Ian Bellany and Tim Huxley. London: Frank Cass, 1987, 198 pp. (Totowa, N.J.: Biblio, distributor, $29.50).

The columnist Meg Greenfield wrote in 1980: "I have been trying to think of a time when the Alliance was in array." That theme?the durability of NATO through disruption and differing interests?is the center of Cyr's brief historical essay. His material is not new, but his summary is readable and his reminder apt. The Bellany-Huxley volume, the result of a project at Lancaster University's Centre for the Study of Arms Control and International Security, addresses a recent "disruption"?the development of new conventional technology. Many of the chapters are specifically British in perspective, but several raise issues for the alliance as a whole. For instance, Phil Williams argues that some new technologies?conven tionally armed cruise and ballistic missiles in particular?might enhance

deterrence but could also make escalation more rapid if war occurred. Thus, they would not raise the nuclear threshold in Europe; they might

lower it.

General: Economie and Social

William Diebold, Jr.

PRODUCTION, POWER, AND WORLD ORDER: SOCIAL FORCES IN THE MAKING OF HISTORY. By Robert W. Cox. New York: Colum bia University Press, 1987, 500 pp. $45.00.

The sweeping title heralds an exceptional book that aims to understand "current historical change from the standpoint of a reciprocal relationship between power and production." Nation-states, the international economic and political system and a wide range of "social relations of production" come into the picture. Familiar ideas mix with the unfamiliar, and few readers will agree with everything that is put before them, either in the extensive historical sections or in the discussion of the 1970s. Considering his long experience at the International Labor Organization, it is not

surprising that Professor Cox of York University in Toronto should be

particularly strong on all matters relating to the organization of work and its political and economic consequences. He is also very interesting on the conditions under which one kind of world order has given way to another, and on the part states have played in shaping national economies. There are some weaknesses, but one has to withhold a final judgment on this

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