1. The term weaponitis was used by political scientist Samuel Huntington during a speech at a Boston College Graduate Student Association symposium on the arms race and nuclear war, October 12, 1983. See William A. Schwartz, "U.S. Nuclear Policies Increase Threat of War," Boston College Heights, October 17, 1983, but note that the author suffered from weaponitis himself at the time.

2. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 147.

3. Harold Freeman, This Is the Way the World Will End, This Is the Way You Will End, Unless (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1982), p. 10.

4. As Thomas Schelling correctly argues, the ability to devastate a society's inner core without first defeating its armed forces, not the raw ability to devastate populations, is what is fundamentally new about nuclear arms. During earlier periods it was surely possible for a victor to kill every inhabitant of a conquered land, if necessary by cutting every throat in turn. The key element of the nuclear revolution is not the increase in efficiency or speed with which this killing can be done—matters of real but secondary importance—but rather the

ability to do it without defeating the defender's military forces first. See Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), chap. 1.

5. McGeorge Bundy, "To Cap the Volcano," Foreign Affairs 48, no. 1 (October 1969): 9-10; Herbert York, "Nuclear Deterrence: How to Reduce the Overkill," in Pacem in Terris III, ed. Fred Warner Neal and Mary Kersey Harvey (Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1974), 2:26, cited in Alva Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 117; Michael Howard, "Is Arms Control Really Necessary?" (lecture delivered to the Council for Arms Control, London), excerpted in Harper's 272, no. 1632 (May 1986): 14.

6. Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946), p. 31; James Schlesinger, "Rhetoric and Realities in the Star Wars Debate," International Security 10, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 5.

7. See Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); John Steinbruner, "National Security and the Concept of Strategic Stability," Journal of Conflict Resolution 22, no. 3 (September 1978): 411-428, and "Nuclear Decapitation," Foreign Policy (Winter 1981-1982), reprinted in Search for Sanity, ed. Paul Joseph and Simon Rosenblum (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 181-192; Daniel Ford, The Button (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); Desmond Ball, "Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?" Adelphi Paper No. 169 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981).

8. Steinbruner, "National Security," p. 421; Ball, "Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?" p. 36; Colin S. Gray, "Targeting Problems for Central War," Naval War College Review 33, no. 1 (January-February 1980): 7. Gray is one of the most intelligent and fascinating of the right-wing nuclear theorists. In his acute diagnosis of the contradictions and impracticality of the mainstream approach to nuclear strategy and weapons development, he argues that they have caused little if any advance over the early days of massive retaliation. He is right. His prescription, a doctrine and weapons sufficient to ensure victory in nuclear war, is absurd. But he has accurately shown that they would be a logical condition for the meaningfulness of strategy and hardware development over the past quarter century.

9. Howard, "Is Arms Control Really Necessary?" p. 14.

10. Bernard Brodie, "The Development of Nuclear Strategy," in Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence: An "International Security" Reader, ed. Stephen E. Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 7 (first published in International Security 2, no. 4 [Spring 1978]).

11. Public Agenda Foundation, Voter Options on Nuclear Arms Policy (New York: Public Agenda Foundation, 1984), table 13, p. 20; table 38, p. 49; table 53, p. 64; table 10, p. 17.

12. McGeorge Bundy, "The Bishops and the Bomb," New York Review of Books 30, no. 10 (June 16, 1984): 3-8.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.; George Kennan, "A Modest Proposal," in Search for Sanity, ed.

Paul Joseph and Simon Rosenblum (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 577-583 (first appeared as a paper, "Proposal for International Disarmament," 1981).

12. McGeorge Bundy, "The Bishops and the Bomb," New York Review of Books 30, no. 10 (June 16, 1984): 3-8.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.; George Kennan, "A Modest Proposal," in Search for Sanity, ed.

Paul Joseph and Simon Rosenblum (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 577-583 (first appeared as a paper, "Proposal for International Disarmament," 1981).

12. McGeorge Bundy, "The Bishops and the Bomb," New York Review of Books 30, no. 10 (June 16, 1984): 3-8.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.; George Kennan, "A Modest Proposal," in Search for Sanity, ed.

Paul Joseph and Simon Rosenblum (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 577-583 (first appeared as a paper, "Proposal for International Disarmament," 1981).