Superpower Arms Control: Setting the Record Straight by Albert Carnesale; Richard N. Haass;Calculated Risks: A Century of Arms Control, Why It Has Failed and How It Can Be Made toWork by Bruce D. BerkowitzReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), p. 431Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043388 .

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RECENT BOOKS 431

of human rights in the United States and takes his stand as an absolutist on

the bill of rights: freedom, uncompromised and uncompromising, for the individual. On foreign policy he is critical of all recent administrations

(including Carter's) for insufficient support of human rights throughout the world.

General: Military, Technological and Scientific

Gregory F. Treverton

STRATEGY: THE LOGIC OF WAR AND PEACE. By Edward N. Lutt wak. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987, 283 pp. $20.00.

If Edward Luttwak does not always persuade, he always provokes. In this

superb book, one that will become a classic of strategy, he does both. He

may overstate the uniqueness of his theme?that strategy is "pervaded by a paradoxical logic of its own"; much of human activity is riddled with

paradox, as immunologists know and those who wait in a long line of traffic for a brief glance at what caused the traffic jam can sense. However, his definition of five levels of strategy is enriching and his historical examples fascinating. Along the way, his case study of NATO demolishes proposals for defense-in-depth, casts doubt on those for deep strike, and demonstrates that he understands the paradoxical logic of NATO strategy and its con

nection to American nuclear force posture better than anyone else.

SUPERPOWER ARMS CONTROL: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Edited by Albert Carnesale and Richard N. Haass. Cam

bridge: Ballinger, 1987, 392 pp. $34.95 (paper, $14.95). CALCULATED RISKS: A CENTURY OF ARMS CONTROL, WHY IT HAS FAILED AND HOW IT CAN BE MADE TO WORK. By Bruce D. Berkowitz. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, 192 pp. $18.95.

Arms control is praised or damned but seldom is its history analyzed: that is the premise of both these books, and the conclusions of the two are

broadly similar. The Carnesale-Haass volume, commissioned by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, is more detailed in its analysis and uses the evidence of its cases to assess propositions frequently made about the effects of arms control. For instance, do arms control agreements lull the United States into spending less on defense? Not by the book's evidence?

quite the contrary. Berkowitz's conclusions reflect what has become the conventional wisdom among moderate critics of arms control?that arms

control should not carry too much of the freight of U.S.-Soviet relations, and that negotiations should not be carried out in the glare of publicity? but also demonstrate how far political reality diverges from that conven

tional wisdom, a fact that makes his policy prescription less than helpful.

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL AND NUCLEAR BALANCE. By Richard K. Betts. Washington: Brookings, 1987, 240 pp. $28.95 (paper, $10.95).

Richard Betts' thoughtful work is also testimony to the notion that historical evidence can be brought to bear on strategic issues more often than it is. Building on the work of his former Brookings Institution col

leagues, Barry Blechman and Stephen Kaplan, he addresses the question of whether perceptions of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance have affected Amer ican behavior in crises. His conclusions are thought-provoking: there was

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