Essay --

Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy is a good example of the general mindset during the Cold War. Kissinger explains the nuclear dilemma and how much the nuclear age differs from past war problems. He also goes into depths about the problems with American foreign policy and offers several opinions on how it can be changed. At certain times, the book begins to read more as a Kissinger manual on how to fix foreign policy and becomes less of an analysis of nuclear weapons and foreign policy. This is most likely attributed to his positions as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. His central thesis was that the threat of nuclear annihilation was nearly useless as an instrument of foreign policy because it lacked credibility. Instead, he offers that the United States focuses on improving its ability to fight limited wars, and accept that total victory in said wars were not crucial. He spends a great deal of time arguing the benefits of limited warfare, the problems nuclear weap ons bring into military operations, and the politics surrounding both. All said points were analyzed by Kissinger very well; however he fails to address the problem of arms control and the arms race in general. The main argument Kissinger addresses is that limited war was the only avenue of escape from nuclear stalemate with the Soviet Union. He argues that the United States tradition of absolute victory in war had led them into a dead end of massive retaliation and the threat of all out nuclear war was used to block every move by the Soviets. According to Kissinger, nuclear weapons coincided with the concept of total war. This leads to situations where the will to fight is crippled. He advocates a return to limited warfare similar to that of the Nap... ...ome above the military’s quickness to respond. During war militaries do not have the ability to define the difference between tactical victories and political goals. In a limited nuclear war, it is the political element which decides the length and breath of the military effort. Such was the nature of the task Henry Kissinger undertook during the heyday of the Cold War. Overall Henry Kissinger offered explanation to the problems foreign policy faced because of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. He believed that deterrence and limited warfare was the best solution to these problems. Today it would not seem like as big of deal, but at the time this was a very controversial viewpoint. I argue that Kissinger could have touched more on the arms race and other threatening regions, such as China. All in all, I enjoyed his viewpoint on a very conflicted time in history.