Newspaper Article

TOO IMPORTANT FOR GENERALS?

Michael Mandelbaum is the author of "The Nuclear Future.", Mandelbaum, Michael

1985

Overview

Though it is a useful guide to many of the specific issues of the nuclear age, ''Counsels of War'' is less satisfactory in tackling the broader questions these issues raise. What effect, for example, did the experts have on the course of policy? The book's organization suggests their influence rose and then fell over four decades. Its first part, covering the first 15 years of the nuclear age, is entitled ''Missionaries,'' implying that the civilian experts were outsiders trying to win the adoption of their ideas. The second, called ''Crusaders,'' spans the years when Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense, during which, the reader might infer, the experts had the chance to put their ideas into practice. The section describing the period from the end of the 1960's to the present is called ''Apostates,'' suggesting a loss of faith in received doctrines. While this is provocative and not altogether inaccurate, there are important exceptions to this characterization of the experts' role - the dissident scientists of the 1950's were very much insiders, for example. Is the world more or less safe because of the experts' exertions? One of the book's epigraphs -Lord Salisbury's observation that ''no lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust in experts'' - leaves the impression that in Mr. [Gregg Herken]'s view, their contributions have not been wholly beneficial. At the book's end, he sees an ''encouraging sign'' in the growing involvement in nuclear matters of ''the vast number of American citizens who are not experts on the bomb.'' The reader might well conclude that the author believes the specialists have made a mess of things and more extensive popular control of nuclear policy can help to set things right. But the idea is not substantiated. What, finally, are the important themes underlying the controversies that ''Counsels of War'' describes? What, beyond the merits of particular weapons, have the arguments been about? At the end of the book, the author appears to suggest that the debates of the last 40 years have failed to deal with the most important question of all - what are nuclear weapons for?

• Publisher: New York Times Company