All people wish to avoid nuclear war, but this fact provides little guidance for policy. One reason is a lack of understanding of how a nuclear war might come about or how one could be prevented; much of what is offered as expert knowledge cannot be defended as more than educated opinion. Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War assesses current knowledge to create a basis for new intellectual approaches to the subject of international security that are conceptually rigorous, theoretically eclectic, and methodologically self-conscious. Leading scholars review specific behavioral and social...

In the last year the world has witnessed changes in East-West relations that would have been unthinkable only a short time ago. The Berlin Wall has crumbled, Eastern Europe has thrown out its authoritarian leaders, and the Soviet Union itself has undergone dramatic changes in political structure and foreign policy. The U.S. public no longer regards the Eastern Bloc as the principal threat to national security. Yet even with the undeniable thaw in the Cold War many of the old scenarios for "World War III" remain as plausible as they were in the past, and new sources of instability could arise...