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International Socialism, Autumn 1965

 

Steven Rose

Zero-plus Book

 

From International Socialism, No.22, Autumn 1965, p.32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

The Dispersion of Nuclear Weapons
Ed. R.N. Rosencrance
Columbia, 56s

A product of Rand and the US National Security Studies Program, this book is a bastard mathematisation of the ‘Nth country problem’. Its editorial comments, and its attempts to extract a universalist logical model from the nuclear experiences of three countries and NATO, are of unbelievable prolixity, monstrous naivete, and dubious value to the student of either politics or logical games theory. On the other hand, if you skip the redundant verbiage, there are some interesting, humble and quite useful descriptions of British, French and Chinese nuclear and defence strategies since 1945. For British readers, the long section on this country, although set well within the conventional wisdom, and containing an obligatorily hostile chapter on unilateralism, is a dispassionate indictment, the better for being largely implicit, of the strategic follies of successive British governments. No doubt bur current bizarre set of new policies will rate a similar chapter in any later edition of the book.

 
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