Facing nuclear war

...In one important respect Beres's account of the dangers of "missile vulnerability" is superior to that of Nigel Calder in Nuclear Nightmares (reviewed in the December 1980 issue of The Progressive...

...It has produced the temptation for each side to strike first and "preempt the preemption," and indeed has worked to destroy a highly rational notion: that nuclear war is too terrible to consider...

...Beres lambastes the euphemistic language devised by experts to discuss nuclear war, such as "collateral damage," "functional impairment," and "missile fratricide...

...The advent of hair-trigger systems to launch missiles upon electronic warning that the enemy has attacked first (launch on warning) makes accidental war all the more likely, especially considering that nuclear weapons seem certain to spread to less developed countries in the next decade...

...Beres, unlike Calder, does not endorse a conclusion of military scientists which is propelling the current arms race: that warheads have become so accurate as to threaten enemy missiles half a world away with near-certain destruction in their silos...

...Political scientist Louis Rene Beres, through his descriptions in Apocalypse of the likely paths to nuclear war and the frightful consequences, joins Nigel Calder, Sidney Lens, and a handful of others intent on shaking people from complacency with a somber message: "Unless the people of Earth are quick to understand that a system built upon the threat to use nuclear weapons can never produce peace, they will surely have nuclear war...

...Christopher Hanson (Christopher Hanson is a reporter based in Washington, D.C., who covers the economy and Capitol Hill for several newspapers in North America and abroad...

...Beres begins with a look at the paradox of nuclear deterrence, which he says is a "myth" based on a self-contradictory assumption: that each side is rational enough not to strike first, because it fears a totally irrational, massive, suicidal retaliation from the enemy...

...Beres's discussion of the risks of war by accident is the most detailed I have seen...

...Apocalypse does not provide a very hopeful answer...

...Hence human "rationality," such as it is, has produced the current obsession of U.S...

...His lapses into bureaucratic euphemism unconsciously reinforce his major point: Perhaps our greatest danger is that we will not, or cannot, look the nuclear beast in the face...

...These incidents make chillingly plausible Beres's "scenarios" for accidental war...

...How can we acknowledge, as Beres urges, that "the principles of realpolitik are strikingly unrealistic" and act accordingly...

...If one side strikes against the nuclear missiles of the other, it would then be irrational for the victim to strike back with its remaining missiles and bring total devastation upon itself and the world...

...and Soviet strategists with the vulnerability of their missiles to "preemptive" destruction...

...Considering the number of false alarms of atomic attacks which have recently come to light, his emphasis is all too appropriate...

...These nations, writes Beres, are likely to adopt the "launch on warning" stance because their nuclear missile launch pads will be relatively primitive and quite vulnerable to destruction before the weapons get off the ground...

...Yet those nations' electronic attack warning systems will be even more faulty than those of the superpowers, so the likelihood of false alarms sparking accidental war will be much greater...

...and Soviet military establishments would have us believe...

...Some experts, in fact, are convinced that the variations of weather and gravity make even the most sophisticated missiles—fired on a north-south axis after having been tested only on an east-west axis—less accurate than the U.S...

...Beres describes how almost every dangerous aspect of the nuclear rivalry between the superpowers will be greatly magnified in a world where nuclear weapons have spread to many nations, where a nation might not even know the origin of a nuclear attack against it and so strike back blindly against a host of possible assailants...

...In fact, argues Beres, rationality has undermined nuclear deterrence...

...But, failing that, how can we expect to cast aside our superficial notions of realism in international affairs...

...Ironically, the very jargon he deplores creeps into his own prose ("postattack situation," "gigadeath...