What is it about?
Why did British, French and West German nuclear strategies (or preferences, in the case of West Germany) differ so significantly, despite their close proximity on the European continent, and equal vulnerability to Soviet nuclear missile attacks? The answers laid out here concern the very distinctive historical experiences and collective lessons learnt in each country, hemming in political and indeed strategic options.
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Why is it important?
Stop thinking of nuclear strategy as something determined only by geography, missile characteristics (circular error probables, throw-weight, reach, speed, detectability...) and grasp that strategy is not a mechanistic function of technical factors! Culture - collective beliefs, national narratives, discourses - is a crucial variable and has enormous influence, direct or indirect. Indirect includes, for example, how historical lessons are drawn about allies behaviour - can they be trusted?
Perspectives
Stop pretending you can do IR with only one language, with knowledge of only the Anglo-Saxon world view!
Professor Beatrice Heuser
University of Reading
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nuclear Mentalities?, January 1998, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1057/9780230377752.
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