Review essay: the nuclear curse

Abstract

The five books under review address nuclear weapons and the risk of war during the Cold War. Four of the five contend this risk was higher than understood by policymakers at the time or many scholars in its aftermath. They attribute this risk to strategic alerts, close encounters of opposing forces in crisis, and lack of access to critical intelligence. They consider the superpowers to have emerged unscathed from the Cuban missile crisis as much due to luck as leader commitments to avoid war. I interrogate the concept of “luck” and use my analysis to evaluate these arguments.