Surviving With the Bomb

McGEORGE Bundy--preeminent foreign policy scholar and former national security advisor--has written a long and complicated retrospective about the political choices behind the development and proliferation of the nuclear bomb.

In the wake of recent U.S.-Soviet summits and Gorbachev's promises of military cutbacks, Bundy's book arrives right on time to provide the new Bush Administration and those concerned about current foreign policy decisions with a much needed perspective on past presidential decision-making and the possibility for future nuclear stability.

Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years

By McGeorge Bundy

New York: Random House

$24.95

Bundy offers historical background, personal recollection and editorial commentary throughout his 617-page book that eventually combine to present an optimistic analysis for the future of global nuclear policy. Although Bundy has not written an autobiography here, one of Danger and Survival's most compelling characteristics is the author's first-person description of the international crisis in Cuba and Berlin during the Kennedy Administration when he was the president's special assistant for national security affairs.

It is his experience within that decision-making process and the resolution of the Cuba and Berlin conflicts that leads Bundy to write, "Leaders on both sides have been sane, and they have also been watched by sane associates." Bundy is encouraged by the ability of world leaders to confront delicate situations which have held a nuclear threat and emerge from those dilemmas relatively unscathed. While he writes that "these examples ought to never by repeated," he adds that we can remain comforted by the fact that policymakers have so far had the personal ability and administrative support to avoid disaster.

Of the two superpowers. Bundy asserts that "Each government has been extremely cautious about the use of military force against the other. Stalin's blockade of Berlin and Kennedy's blockade of Cuba were limited, and neither led to open battle."

This notion of sane leadership that can make sate and necessary decisions about the bomb is integral to Bundy's position that complete nuclear disarmament is impossible.

"The double reality is that the arsenals cannot be abolished and that neither country can now build an effective defense of its homeland. For both governments, whatever their leaders may claim to hope, it is impossible to suppose that nuclear weaponry can be altogether abandoned," Bundy writes.

But Bundy does believe in the neccesity of arms control agreements to reduce nuclear danger. Although he still asserts that both countries, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., must maintain a "deterrent balance" in order to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict, Bundy posits a need for "unilateral moderation" that can "save money and leave real parity intact."

MUCH of Bundy's language is in the mode of current foreign policy rhetoric. He uses the phrase "strategic survivability" to point to his belief that the nature of nuclear deterrent depends upon the characteristics--rather than the amount--of nuclear warheads. His thinking is slightly reminiscent of Reagan's "peace through strength" motto that asserts the need for an offensive system so powerful that it deters a first-strike attack. But the clear difference is that Bundy does not propose a widespread build-up, but rather "enough" on both sides so that neither nation can knock the other out in a single blow.

Aside from these current issues, most of Bundy's book addresses the high-level decisions that led to the present global nuclear situation. His explanations are thorough and readily accessable to the uninformed reader. From Roosevelt and Truman's earliest decisions to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bundy challenges old and recent theories answering the why and how of these events.

IT is hard to know whether George Bush or his foreign policy advisors will take the time to read Bundy's book--and Bundy takes care not to offer them any easy answers. Indeed, Danger and Survival's last chapter is entitled, "Hope," and it ends with Bundy's point that "Our survival in the first 50 years of danger offers encouragement to renewed pursuit of truth, resolute practice of courage, and persistance in lively hope."

In fact, hope and trust seem to be the themes that Bundy leaves with the next administration--as well as the determining factors for the next 50 years of choices. "In the long run," Bundy writes, "only mutual trust, not arms control as such, can end any military rivalry."

Although Bundy writes several times that arms control agreements are necessary to reduce nuclear danger, he continues to suggest a complete disarmament treaty is unachievable because each country could not be sure if the other was truly complying with the deal. However, it is this very notion of mistrust that perpetuates and adds to present distrust.

We must ask ourselves if we can accept Bundy's assertion that complete disarmament is impossible, considering the broad range of leaders who now have nuclear warheads at their disposal. We can be encouraged by Bundy's intricate descriptions of previous politicians whose sane choices rectified dangerous situations, but, as he himself writes, the world's future depends upon the continuity of this sanity.