Abstract
You cannot play with force, by Pierre Hassner In the early sixties, the "arms control" school had tried to chart a third way, starting from nuclear strategy, between pacifism and militarism. It had stressed the importance of the political control of military force and of its deterrent use. Since then, a new polarization has occured, partly as a result of events like the Vietnam war or of trends like the increase in civil violence. Strategists like T. Schelling went from the notion of nuclear deterrence to that of compellence, or to thinking about the actual and positive or offensive use of force. On the other hand they were attacked more and more violently by the "peace research" school. The strategists made, by and large, a positive and essential contribution as long as they were dealing with deterrence and with the nuclear balance, but that their role was disastruous when they tried to deal with the actual use of force. But they and their critics do have too an abstract (whether technical or romantic) view of force, and don't try enough to integrate it within an historical and a moral framework. [Revue française de science politique XXI (6), décembre 1971, pp. 1207-1233]
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