Nuclear War, Nuclear Peace [first edition]

xiii, [3], 109, [3] pages. Notes. Suggested Readings. Index. Ex-library with usual library markings. DJ is in a plastic sleeve pasted to boards. Format is 4.5 inches by 7.25 inches. Leon Wieseltier (born June 14, 1952) is an American writer, critic, philosopher and magazine editor. From 1983 to 2014, he was the literary editor of The New Republic. He is currently the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor and critic at The Atlantic. In 2013, he won the $1 million Dan David Prize for being "a foremost writer and thinker who confronts and engages with the central issues of our times, setting the standard for serious cultural discussion in the United States". Derived from a Kirkus review: Wieseltier writes regularly for the New Republic, where this essay, the longest in the magazine's history, appeared in January 1983. His cause is deterrence theory, which he believes must be defended against the doves and the hawks. Wieseltier chides others for their mistaken notions of nuclear superiority or inferiority, notions that have no reality in nuclear warfare. The belief in such ideas is a symptom. The final section is entitled, "And So, Deterrence." There, Wieseltier avers that "the only thing more menacing to our security than nuclear strength is nuclear weakness," and argues for deterrence as both the only coherent nuclear view of the world and the proper framework for considering a reduction in nuclear arsenals. First Printing [Stated]. Originally had appeared in the New Republic.