Going Beyond "Beyond Deterrence "

The article comments on article of Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein entitled "Beyond Deterrence," which is about the theory of deterrence and nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union. Lebow and Stein provide many illustrations of the failure of deterrence. They then go beyond deterrence to suggest that under certain circumstances deterrence might well be supplemented with reassurance and under other circumstances the emphasis might even be on reassurance rather than on deterrence. They did not focused on nuclear deterrence and not centered their discussion on the relations between the superpowers. Moreover, it lacks specific relevance to the problems and opportunities arising from the development of nuclear weapons and hence it does not directly address the issue of avoiding nuclear war. Many psychologists have long been concerned about the strategic doctrine of nuclear deterrence because of our concerns about nuclear war. The theory of nuclear deterrence is ensnared in its inherent dilemmas and in the attempt to elude these dilemmas, it has moved increasingly toward non-rational automated, preprogrammed decisions that have the potential of precipitating the catastrophe it seeks to deter.