NATO and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis of Credibility, 1966-1967

ISBN-13: 9780198280033 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 464 str.

Helga Haftendorn

Opis

This book deals with the crucially imprtant NATO crises of 1966-67--a period when a number of issues which had been developing for some time within NATO came to a head. It concentrates on the intensive reorientation of NATO strategy from the departure of France from the integrated military command to the adoption of Flexible Response and the Hermel report on the Future Tasks of the Alliance.
The author sets out the diplomacy of this period in a broader historical and theoretical context and provides four detailed, and related, case studies. The first case deals with problems of doctrine stemming from American determination to reduce NATO's dependence on what it believed to be incredible nuclear threats and the European resistance to any diminution of the US nuclear guarantee. The second case considers the attempt to ease European concerns about dependence on American nuclear policy. The third examines the programmatic consequences of the strategic shift. Finally, there is an analysis of the process by which the Harmel Report was set up to establish political guidance for the Alliance in the context of the French withdrawal and the move to detente.

Recenzje

Basing her research on archives mainly in the USA and Germany, on interviews, news-clipping collections and a host of secondary literature, she achieves once again the high standard of meticulous historical detective work which has already characterised her previous word on nuclear strategy ... Helga Haftendorn's book satisfies all the many expectations that one might bring to it: the historian, the political scientist, the strategist, and even the casual reader will find a lucidly written, well-structured and clearly argued book that is a major record of NATO history ... a masterpiece of scholarly work, and yet without an ounce of superfluous waffle or fat. The detail of the footnoting, the work that has gone into verifying finest details are a joy to behold for anybody who suspects that true standards of scholarship have died out with the increasing pressure for swift publication.