Second, it challenges a widespread assumption of automaticity linking a fear-induced deterrent effect and the presence of nuclear weapons. First, the publication and interpretation of primary sources is a contribution in itself given the frequent misconceptions about nuclear dynamics due to theory-driven extrapolations. In security studies, this article makes three contributions. Given that France displays in particularly acute form some of the sources of overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear crises that can been found in other nuclear armed states, this article offers the first study of the French experience and evolving interpretation of the Cuban missile crisis in comparative perspective, based on untapped primary material. In this context, this article reviews the scholarly literature about the limits of predictability and controllability of nuclear crises and investigates three failures of learning from them. The passing of the last elite witness of the most dangerous nuclear crisis, ie the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, and the incoming Trump administration only make this more salient. Overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear weapons creates danger. In that respect, the limitations of this important book suggest a research program for today which is sketched out in the final part of this essay. This essay reassesses those contributions in depth and argues that they would have been served even better by an engagement with the notion of luck and by an even broader perspective including not only the Soviet voice but also that of other players in the crisis. victory, which has persisted to this day. Third, it questioned the mainstream assessment of the outcome of the crisis as a U.S. Second, it proposed an in depth psychological critique of rational deterrence theory and of what it called the “strategy of deterrence”. First, it offered new evidence based on oral interviews and the publication of the English version of the telegram of Anatoly Dobrynin, which was sent on Octoand had only recently been declassified. Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein’s We all lost the Cold War remains a decisive contribution twenty years after its publication and its limitations a powerful invitation to develop what it suggests.
0 kommentar(er)
