Prospects for Peace Making: A Citizen's Guide to Safer Nuclear Strategy

Abstract

Prospects for Peacemaking provides a genuinely fresh look at embedded assumptions about national security. It clears way for a security policy based less on outmoded premises and more on a purposeful strategy for peace in a nuclear world. And it demonstrates one model of a creative interaction between citizens and specialists, one that can be replicated in any community.To village square must go essential facts about atomic weapons, Albert Einstein wrote in 1946. From there must come America's voice. The seven essays in Prospects for Peacemaking take up Einstein's challenge - even more urgent today - by demystifying criti cal issues of war, peace, and national security and opening way for informed citizen involvement in these issues.The opening chapter explains why we are currently at a good point for engaging in process of rethinking American strategic policy. Those that follow outline basic premises of current relations between United States and Soviet Union; way military thinks about arms and arms control; question of whether negotiations can ever keep up with technology; European perspective on arms control; and special problem of managing crisis situations. The book concludes with an essay by Dean Rusk on diplomacy in nuclear era.Prospects for Peacemaking grew out of the Minnesota experiment, an extraordinary year long process of dialogue between experts in arms-control community and public citizens, sponsored by University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Harlan Cleveland is Professor of Public Affairs and Dean of Institute. Lincoln P. Bloomfield is Professor of Political Science at MIT, and an adjunct professor at Humphrey Institute.