Space and National Security by Paul B. StaresReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), p. 432Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043392 .

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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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