Albert Wohlstetter
Essay
Summer
1985
Would nuclear war endanger civilization or even the human species? Does that possibility require us to subordinate all considerations of freedom to survival and to dismiss any possibility of responding justly to a nuclear attack--or at least without committing suicide? The question has a familiar ring to anyone whose memory stretches back as far as 1958 to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the famous controversy between the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Sidney Hook over whether it was better to be "Red or Dead."
Capsule Review
Spring
1980
Essay
Jan
1968
For twenty-five years, in a good many remote odd spots in the world, the United States has been locked in battle; or has been seconding some distant and sometimes dubious friend; or trying, by promising help, to deter the start of the trouble altogether. With so many and such far-flung commitments and no sign of letup, it is only natural that there should be a lively debate about their number and extent and how they fit our capabilities. The frustrations of these 25 years of engagements in remote wars, and not only the present long-drawn-out and uncertain struggle in Viet Nam, encourage a new isolationism.
Essay
Apr
1963
That scientists today crucially affect decisions on national and international security-and therefore the fate of us all-will come as no news. After radar and jets and the A-bomb and the H-bomb and intercontinental rockets, the statement surely is obvious enough. But what does it mean? Like much else that is obvious, it is not very clear. Just how do the results of scientific research and the methods of science and the scientists themselves actually figure in decisions on arms and arms control? And how is the role of the scientist in such matters related to the more familiar functions of the politician, the military man and the ordinary citizen? Above all, what does "scientist" mean in such statements?
