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A SUGGESTED ALTERNATE

for those who may wish a work of non-fiction next month

"A great book—by far the best—on the hardest problem facing our country"

—GORDON DEAN, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission

Nuclear
Weapons
AND
Foreign
Policy

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

FOREWORD BY GORDON DEAN OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS • 484 PAGES

[REGULAR RETAIL PRICE $5.00] PRICE TO MEMBERS $4.25

BOOK-DIVIDEND CREDIT GIVEN

358

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"One of the genuinely creative and
works of our time"

A REPORT BY
AUGUST HECKSCHER

DIRECTOR, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY FUND

ONCE in a decade a book comes along which takes the outstanding current issue and deals with its fundamentals. It is a classic, in that it sees the things that are really there, instead of seeing what everyone has been taking for granted. Dr. Kissinger's book, already hailed on both sides of the Atlantic, is of this kind. It focuses on the big elements of the world situation—on new weapons, new technologies, on wars and threats of war, diplomatic initiatives and foreign policy programs. But it does not restate the familiar arguments nor limit itself to rearranging the pieces in a different pattern. Calmly and lucidly it goes below all these, to grapple with the basic ideas which alone can give meaning to the changing facts.

HECKSCHER

Dr. Kissinger insists, first and last, that in the realm of defense the Americans need a new philosophy. For this reason his book has an air of novelty and even strangeness. Americans are generally inclined to think more about military hardware than they do about military doctrine. But if the reader accepts the fact that he is setting forth upon an intellectual journey, requiring some close

attention along the way, he will find the passage continually rewarding. He will experience the excitement that comes with the opening of fresh perspectives and fundamentally new hypotheses.

The need for hard, clear thinking in regard to defense is evident. Possessing in its monopoly of atomic weapons a power unprecedented by earlier societies, the United States in the immediate postwar period was able neither to prevent from happening the things it disliked nor was it able in any striking degree to advance its own interests. Today, with atomic plenty on both sides providing a stalemate of terror, the West feels less able than ever to create the conditions of a true peace. At such a juncture, Dr. Kissinger argues, more power and new forms of weapons do not by themselves provide the answer. The problem is how power is to be applied, in what circumstances and combinations, and above all for what ends. It is how diplomacy and force can be so adjusted to each other as to meet the rational needs of society.

DR. KISSINGER points out how in the past radically new developments have been treated at the start as if they were mere replacements or substitutes for what

had existed but for the same reasons, namely, that they were continuous, that they were trying to develop thefr

THE

ance of a paralysis of power, our actual acting what? To be sure, we are against objective, hard-headed, and far-reaching

d far-reaching

existed before. The first automobiles
the buggies with a gas engine substituted
the horse; electricity was used in the
e way as the outmoded gas flame. Simi-
ly, nuclear weapons were treated as if
were simply bigger bombs, and war
continued to be thought of in terms of old
trines and strategies. What Dr. Kissinger
trying to do in this book is to define the
cally new situation that has arisen and
evelop its potentialities for the security
of free nations.

HE concepts Dr. Kissinger develops
have for their twofold aim the avoid-
e of all-out war and escape from strategic
lysis. He wants to see us master a kind
power which is serviceable in achieving
actual aims and not merely in threaten-
what we know we will never undertake.
be secure against sudden suicide and also
inst slow strangulation—this is the grand
ductive. Some of Dr. Kissinger's ideas will
challenged by events; all invite informed,
l-headed discussion. But a beginning has
made toward a major reconstruction of
thinking about war and peace, and the
k which accomplishes so much must
as one of the genuinely creative and
reaching works of our time.

"Everyone on this side of the Iron Curtain who will study *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy* will learn of a better way to contribute to the safety of the free world."

—Dr. Edward Teller, New York Times Book Review

"By all odds, the best book yet written to analyze the impact of nuclear explosives upon military strategy and the conduct of world affairs."

—Dr. Ralph E. Lapp, New York Herald Tribune Book Review

"Dr. Kissinger's history-making book is extraordinarily well informed, and in this respect quite without precedent in the field of nuclear armament."

—Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Director, Institute for Advanced Study

"The most important document on foreign affairs that I have seen in the last ten years and certainly the most needed. Its sweep and its penetration seem to me the work of authentic genius."

—Caryl P. Haskins, President, The Carnegie Institution

"The chief merit of the book, in my opinion, lies in its demonstration of our need for a new doctrine on the uses of force in their relation to the attainment of American foreign policy objectives. Dr. Kissinger has faced all our military dilemmas with forthright intelligence."

—Clare Boothe Luce

[CONTINUED ON OTHER SIDE]

Dr. Henry Kissinger

is at present associate director of the Center
for International Affairs, Harvard University,
and a consultant to the Operation Research
Office of the U.S. Government and to the
Weapons System Evaluation Group of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. A little more than three
years ago he was made director of a group of
experts assembled by the Council on Foreign
Relations and led by Gordon Dean, former

Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. This distinguished body was to consider the problem of nuclear war and what to do about it. After eighteen months of discussion, Dr. Kissinger was asked to write a book that would present his personal opinions about the results of the study, rather than a consensus of the members. The result is *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy*.

[CONTINUED FROM INSIDE]

"A major contribution to a subject of high, indeed the highest, importance. . . . A somber, urgent, but not pessimistic book." —*Foreign Affairs*

"A brilliant, independent analysis of the nation's postwar diplomatic and military struggle with communism." —*Time*

"The most important book of 1957. . . . A probing, intelligent and challenging discussion of every conceivable aspect of 'the dilemma of the nuclear period' in world history." —*Washington Post and Times Herald*

"One of the most significant books on American policy since the beginning of the Atomic Age." —*Boston Herald*

"One of the most challenging books written in this Atomic Age." —*Oregon Statesman*

"A profound and radical reappraisal of the whole American approach to war and defense policies. . . . Uncommonly rewarding." —*Chicago Tribune*

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