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The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War. By Green Brendan Rittenhouse. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 278 p. $39.99 cloth.
What is the nuclear revolution? We can start with an uncontroversial definition: beginning in the 1950s, and continuing on to the present day, the United States and the Soviet Union (and now Russia and other nations) have deployed weapons that, if used in a major war, are capable of destroying its belligerents beyond social and political recognition and exterminating much of the human race. This has never been possible before and so, by itself, constitutes a revolutionary development by anyone's reckoning. Brendan Rittenhouse Green, the author of the fine book under review here, does not disagree with that.
The disputes begin when it comes to the implications of this development. Does it mean that major war between large nuclear powers has become unwinnable and absurd? The common-sense answer to this question is “yes.” Ronald Reagan's one-word description of those who thought a nuclear war was winnable—“crazy”—summarizes this position nicely.
There is, however, a growing number of scholars who suggest otherwise. One argument, focused on the present, points to the development of new technologies and weapons that could permit the United States to take out the entire Russian arsenal, not to mention those of smaller nuclear powers.
A second argument, focused on the past, contends that during the Cold War both superpowers did not accept the idea that war was unwinnable and so developed new strategies and weapon systems that could permit them to win World War III. This is an important historical contention, because the conventional wisdom—the Cold War plainly showed that no one is ever going to start a nuclear war—suggests that the technological innovations the United States is working on today are pointless. Why spend billions to prepare for a war nobody will ever start? But if the conventional wisdom is wrong, it might make sense to upgrade. This is how the two “counter revolutionary” arguments are tied together.
The standard narrative goes like this. The two superpowers first developed their revolutionary weapons...