The Development of Nuclear Strategy

I That concept was put forward almost at once at the beginning of the nuclear age that is still the dominant concept of nuclear strategy-deterrence. It fell to me-few other civilians at the time were interested in military strategy-to publish the first analytical paper on the military implications of nuclear weapons. Entitled Atomic Bomb and American Security, it appeared in the autumn of 1945 as No. 18 of the occasional papers of what was then the Yale Institute for International Studies. In expanded form it was included as two chapters in a book published in the following year under the title The Absoluite Weapon, which contained also essays on political implications by four of my Yale colleagues.' I should like to cite one brief paragraph from that 1946 book, partly because it has recently been quoted by a number of other writers, usually with approval but in one conspicuous instance with strong disapproval: