April 20, 2008
NPEC Releases Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd? (1975)
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) is making available a PDF of the following Wohlstetter writing:
Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?, PH76-04-389-14, final report prepared for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of ACDA/PAB-263 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, December 4, 1975 [Revised April 22, 1976]).This website's bibliographies for Albert and Roberta's writings will be updated shortly to contain a link to this PDF.
For background on Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?, click here.
Posted by Robert at 5:51 PM
April 6, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com Releases "Selection of Strategic Air Bases," R-244-S (1953)
Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com, a project of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, is making available a PDF of the following Wohlstetter writing:
Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman, Robert J. Lutz and Henry S. Rowen, Selection of Strategic Air Bases, special staff report, R-244-S (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, March 1, 1953).This March 1953 staff report was followed up by the Base Study's final report in April 1954:
Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman, Robert J. Lutz and Henry S. Rowen, Selection and the Use of Strategic Air Bases, a report prepared for United States Air Force Project RAND, R-266 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 1954). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.This website's bibliography for Albert's writings will be updated shortly to contain a link to R-244-S's PDF.
Posted by Robert at 8:46 PM
March 25, 2008
NPEC Releases "Nuclear Triggers and Safety Catches, the FSU and the FSRs (1992)"
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) is making a PDF of the following unpublished note by Albert Wohlstetter publicly available for the first time:Albert Wohlstetter, "Nuclear Triggers and Safety Catches, the 'FSU' and the 'FSRs'," unpublished note, February 6, 1992, courtesy the private papers of Henry Sokolski.This website's bibliography for Albert's writings will be updated shortly to contain an external link to this document.
Posted by Robert at 11:57 PM
March 3, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter on the Myth of Spiraling Arms Races, and the Realities of Strategic Competition
In Focus. This morning, the Washington Post published Richard Perle's op-ed, "The Arms Race Myth, Again," which cites Albert Wohlstetter's 1976 essay, "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?" In turn, a number of online visitors have come to this website looking for a PDF of Wohlstetter's essay.
I aim to post a PDF of "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?" later today. [See update below.] In the meantime, I'm posting a PDF of an earlier -- but also much longer -- version of Wohlstetter's "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?":
Albert Wohlstetter, Legends of the Strategic Arms Race, USSI Report 75-1 (Washington, DC: United States Strategic Institute, September 1974).One advantage of this longer 1974 version is that it includes the data from which Wohlstetter made his key inferences.
In addition, here's a list of Wohlstetter writings relevant not only to Albert's critique of the concept of exponentially-increasing or spiraling arms races, but also to his more nuanced understanding of strategic competition:
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?", Foreign Policy, No. 15 (Summer 1974), pp. 3-20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Rivals, But No 'Race'," Foreign Policy, No. 16 (Fall 1974), pp. 48-81.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Legends of the Strategic Arms Race
, USSI Report 75-1 (Washington, DC: United States Strategic Institute, September 1974). Available online at Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Clocking the Strategic Arms Race," opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 1974, p. 24.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Robert Raab, Arthur Steiner, Roberta Wohlstetter and Zivia Wurtele, Methods That Obscure and Methods That Clarify the Strategic Competition, DAHC 15-73-C-0074 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, June 30, 1975).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Optimal Ways to Confuse Ourselves," Foreign Policy, No. 20 (Fall 1975), pp. 170-198.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?," Survey, Vol. 22. Nos. 3/4 (Summer 1976), pp. 161-217.
More to follow . . .
Update (10:20 PM ET): As promised, I'm posting a PDF of:
Albert Wohlstetter, "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?," Survey, Vol. 22. Nos. 3/4 (Summer 1976), pp. 161-217.This website's bibliography for Albert Wohlstetter has been updated to contain external links to this essay, as well as to the 1974 essay mentioned above.
Posted by Robert at 12:50 PM
February 28, 2008
Roberta Wohlstetter's The Buddha Smiles (1977) and the US-India Civil Nuclear Deal
In Focus. As the Executive Branch attempts to bend American and international law to allow a new agreement for US civil nuclear cooperation with India, proponents and opponents of this controversial nuclear deal would do well to read The Buddha Smiles: Absent-Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb (1977), Roberta Wohlstetter's penetrating case study of how diplomatic confusion over the terms of US-India nuclear cooperation during the 1950s and 1960s unwittingly furthered the Indian nuclear weapons program, and facilitated New Delhi's construction and test of an atomic bomb.
Smiling Buddha: Not-the-Best of Intentions
On May 18, 1974, India stunned the world, especially its neighbor Pakistan, when it detonated "Smiling Buddha," its first nuclear explosive device. But what was equally, if not more, shocking was the way by which it had come to build the bomb: New Delhi had obtained the plutonium for Smiling Buddha using a reactor that Canada had built for India to use "for peaceful purposes only", and heavy water to moderate the reactor that the US had supplied again "for peaceful purposes."
Officials in the Indian government subsequently explained away their their test of an atomic bomb by claiming that the purpose and intent of Smiling Buddha had been "peaceful," and that the construction and detonation of this nuclear explosive device had not violated the express terms of India's nuclear cooperation agreements with the US and Canada.
America's initial responses to India's provocations were divided. Although the Executive Branch issued circuitous statements that, in the end, tended to support New Delhi's explanation, many in the Legislative Branch expressed unambiguous disapproval of India's nuclear detonation. As Roberta Wohlstetter recounted in The Buddha Smiles:
[After] India exploded a nuclear device ... the United States [Executive Branch] took the position that India had not violated the specific contract with the United States on the Tarapur reactor, because the plutonium used in the explosion had been extracted from the spent fuel in the Canadian-supplied reactor, the CIRUS. Some members of the US Congress were not satisfied with this explanation, which overlooked the peaceful use constraint on Indian use of American-supplied heavy water in the CIRUS, and which seemed to disregard India's violation of the spirit of the agreement on nuclear cooperation.(For more on America's equivocal response, see former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Victor Gilinsky's April 2007 article on the US-India nuclear deal in The National Review Online.)
In sharp contrast, Canada not only rejected New Delhi's explanation of Smiling Buddha, but also moved to terminate Canadian nuclear cooperation with India. Wrote Wohlstetter:
The Canadians on the other hand stopped work under their agreement for the Rajasthan power reactor complex immediately after the explosion, even though it was plain that RAPP II, the second Rajasthan reactor, had nothing directly to do with the explosion. In May 1976 they refused finally to renew cooperation with India, since India refused to abandon its nuclear explosive program and would only defer it until completion of RAPP II. Since then Canada has refused cooperation with such countries as Pakistan, which have refused to disavow nuclear explosives.Turning to policy implications of her case study, Wohlstetter added: "Canada's choice of policy is the one that the United States should follow: further nuclear cooperation with non-weapon states should be premised not merely on their literal fulfillment of all agreements with the US government, but on their entire nuclear program, and on the question as to whether that program is serving exclusively peaceful aims or advancing military ones also."
Congress Toughens Terms of US Nuclear Cooperation in Late '70s
In 1978, the US acted on the advice of Roberta Wohlstetter and others when Congress passed, and the President signed into law, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA) of 1978 (P.L. 95-242), Title IV of which amended Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (P.L. 83-703) to require that so-called "123 agreements" to permit US civil nuclear cooperation with foreign governments, at a minimum, shall legally oblige:
- The importing government to maintain safeguards (as specified in the agreement) on all US-origin nuclear materials and technologies as long as it possesses them, even if the agreement terminates;
- The importing government, when it is a non-nuclear-weapon State as defined by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to have also concluded a full-scope, comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);
- The importing government not to use any US-origin nuclear materials or technologies, or any nuclear materials produced using US-origin nuclear materials or technologies, to build a nuclear explosive device or for any other military purpose;
- The importing government, except when it is a nuclear-weapon State as defined by the NPT, to return all US-origin nuclear materials and technologies transferred under the agreement if it either detonates a nuclear explosive device, or somehow abrogates or terminates the agreement;
- The importing government to obtain the US government's consent before re-transferring any US-origin nuclear materials or technologies;
- The importing government to secure adequately all US-origin nuclear materials and all nuclear materials produced using US-origin nuclear materials or technologies;
- The importing government not to reprocess/enrich or otherwise alter any US-origin nuclear materials, or any nuclear materials produced using US-origin nuclear materials or technologies, without the US government's approval;
- The importing government not to store any US-origin weapons-usable nuclear materials, or any weapons-usable materials produced using US-origin nuclear materials or technologies, in a facility that the US government has not approved in advance; and
- The importing government to subject to the requirements of this agreement any weapons-usable nuclear materials produced, or nuclear fuel-making facilities constructed, using US-origin nuclear materials or technologies.
That said, US law permits the Executive Branch to negotiate a 123 agreement that exempts the importing government from one or more of the above requirements, but Congress first must pass a joint resolution to permit such an exemption before the Executive can formally submit the text of agreement for Congressional review and approval.
In addition, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a group of nuclear exporting governments that formed in response to India's 1974 detonation of a nuclear bomb, came to prohibit the export of nuclear material, equipment and technology and nuclear-related dual-use items to nations lacking full-scope IAEA safeguards. Members of the NSG, however, can agree by consensus vote to exempt a government from this prohibition.
US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation in the 21st Century?
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (the final text of which India played an influential role in negotiating, but did not sign) recognizes only five nuclear-weapon States: the US, the USSR (now Russia), Great Britain, France and China. All other governments, even de facto nuclear-armed States like India, Pakistan and Israel, are considered by the NPT and international law to be de jure non-nuclear-weapon States. Moreover, as a de jure non-nuclear-weapon State, nuclear-armed India has not concluded a full-scope safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Thus, to make the US-India nuclear deal acceptable to American and international law, the Executive Branch must get: Congress to exempt India from certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act (e.g., Section 123's full-scope IAEA safeguards requirement); India to conclude with the IAEA some sort of safeguards agreement that covers the entire Indian civil nuclear program; and NSG Member States to agree to exempt India and thus allow it to participate in international nuclear commerce.
With the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-401), Congress waived certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act so as to allow the Executive Branch to negotiate and conclude a 123 agreement with India. But the Hyde Act also imposed some strict requirements on terms of the agreement -- for example, Sec. 104(a)(3)(b) and Sec. 109 of the Hyde Act reiterate that the legal exemption of India from certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act shall cease if India detonates another nuclear explosive device.
On August 3, 2007, the Department of State publicly released the text of the US-India 123 agreement. Once again, the agreement contained the sort of ambiguities that Roberta Wohlstetter had warned about in The Buddha Smiles -- in particular, a lack of legal clarity with respect to what the consequences of another Indian nuclear explosive test would be, and whether the President would be legally required, or simply have the option, to terminate civil nuclear cooperation with India. (For more on this and other criticisms of the 123 agreement's final text, see Daryl Kimball and Fred McGoldrick's analysis.)
In addition, there are now concerns regarding precisely what sort of safeguards agreement India will conclude with the IAEA; how the prospect of "India-specific" IAEA safeguards might impact the NPT-IAEA safeguards system more generally; and whether Indo-American nuclear cooperation will again unwittingly assist India's military nuclear program, this time by freeing up India's dwindling supply of accessible nuclear fuel for exclusive use in its nuclear weapons program.
At a time when American and Indian officials are offering conflicting statements about the precise terms and strategic implications of the Indo-American civil nuclear deal, Roberta Wohlstetter's The Buddha Smiles: Absent-Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb (1977) provides a sober reminder of the need for the Executive and Legislative Branches either to press for clear, unequivocal terms and bilateral understandings regarding what is and is not proscribed by the US-India 123 agreement to permit bilateral civil nuclear cooperation, and what consequences shall follow in the event of violations -- or, failing that, to pass on the Indo-American nuclear deal altogether.
Posted by Robert at 6:07 PM
February 26, 2008
NPEC Releases The Buddha Smiles (1977)
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) is making a PDF of the following Wohlstetter writing publicly available for the first time:
Roberta Wohlstetter, The Buddha Smiles: Absent-Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb, in Albert Wohlstetter, et al., Can We Make Nuclear Power Compatible with Limiting the Spread of Nuclear Weapons?, Vol. II-1, draft final report prepared for the US Energy Research and Development Administration in partial fulfillment of E(49-1)-3747, PH-78-04-370-23 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, November 15, 1976; Revised November 1977).Please note that all hand-written edits in this PDF were made by Roberta Wohlstetter.
This website's bibliography for Roberta's writings has been updated to contain an external link to this document.
Posted by Robert at 12:01 AM
February 4, 2008
NPEC Releases Towards a New Consensus in Nuclear Techology, Vol. 1 (1979)
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) is making a PDF of the following Wohlstetter writing publicly available for the first time:
Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Gregory S. Jones and Henry S. Rowen, Towards a New Consensus on Nuclear Technology, Vol. 1 (of 2), a report prepared for the Arms Control Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of AC7NC106, PH-78-04-832-33 (Los Angeles, CA: Pan Heuristics, July 6, 1979).This website's bibliographies for Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter have been updated to contain external links to this document.
Posted by Robert at 12:01 AM
February 3, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter Bibliography
The Bibliography Project. This entry indexes the earlier six entries on Albert James Wohlstetter's published writings:
- Albert Wohlstetter's Pre-RAND Writings (1936-1940)
- Albert Wohlstetter's RAND Writings (1951-1959)
- Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1960-1969)
- Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1970-1979)
- Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1980-1989)
- Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1990-1997)
As an alternative, I've also provided below a straight-up list of Albert's published works (sans the commentary that is available in the links above).
Continue reading "Albert Wohlstetter Bibliography"
Posted by Robert at 11:09 AM
February 2, 2008
Roberta Wohlstetter Bibliography
The Bibliography Project. This entry indexes the earlier two entries on Roberta Mary Morgan Wohlstetter's published writings:
As an alternative, I've also provided below a straight-up list of Roberta's published works (sans the commentary that is available in the links above).
Continue reading "Roberta Wohlstetter Bibliography"
Posted by Robert at 10:52 AM
January 30, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1990-1997)
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During the last decade of his life, Wohlstetter remained remarkably active despite his age. (In December 1990, he had celebrated his 77th birthday.) In the early 1990s, he served on the Defense Policy Board and not only provided outside advice to the Pentagon after Ba'athist Iraq invaded Kuwait, but also published a number of op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, as well as magazine articles in The New Republic and National Review, on the Persian Gulf War and its uneasy aftermath.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Albert (now an octogenarian) focused much of his attention on the Balkans, publishing numerous op-eds and articles that agitated for greater Western involvement on behalf of Bosnian Muslims and against what he saw as Slobodan Milosevic's pan-Serbian aggression. Of note, he and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher authored "What the West Must Do in Bosnia," an open letter to President Clinton that was published in the Wall Street Journal in September 1993, and signed by more than 100 people from across the political spectrum and the globe, such as: Morton Abramowitz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Osama El Baz, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Zuhair Humadi, Marshal Freeman Harris, Pierre Hassner, Zalmay Khalilzad, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, Teddy Kollek, Laith Kubba, Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Nitze, Richard Perle, Karl Popper, Eugene Rostow, Henry Rowen, George Shultz, George Soros, Susan Sontag, Elie Wiesel, Leon Wieseltier and Paul Wolfowitz.
Albert James Wohlstetter died in Los Angeles, CA, on January 10, 1997. He was 83. Although more than a decade has passed since his death, many today continue to see him as an influential and controversial figure.
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1990-1997)
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Captive Nations and Western Security," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1990, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Fax Shall Make You Free," unpublished speech for the Prague Conference, July 23, 1990.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman, "Confronting Saddam: A Model Danger," opinion, Wall Street Journal, August 9, 1990, p. A10.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman, "To Break the Deadlock, Reclaim Kuwaiti Airspace," opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 12, 1990, p. A18.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman, "A Clear Win, Bearable Cost," opinion, Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1991, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Iraq: Dictatorship is the Problem," opinion, Washington Post, April 24, 1991.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman, "The Bitter End: The Case for Re-Intervention in Iraq," The New Republic, Vol. 204, No. 17 (April 29, 1991), pp. 20-24.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Vote in Cuba? Why Not in Iraq?," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 24, 1991, p. A10.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Nuclear Triggers and Safety Catches, the 'FSU' and the 'FSRs'," unpublished note, February 6, 1992, courtesy the private papers of Henry Sokolski. Available online at Nonproliferation Policy Education Center's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Wide Open Secret Coup," National Review, Vol. 44, No. 5 (March 16, 1992), pp. 34-36.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Help Iraqi Dissidents Oust Saddam," opinion, Wall Street Journal, August 25, 1992, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "High Time," National Review, Vol. 45, No. 3 (February 15, 1993), pp. 30-33.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Balkan Quagmire: Why We're in It -- Still," opinion, Wall Street Journal July 1, 1993, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Balkan Quagmire II: The Way Out," opinion, Wall Street Journal, July 2, 1993.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Margaret Thatcher, "What the West Must Do in Bosnia," open letter to President William J. Clinton, opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 2, 1993. 6 pp.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Genocide by Embargo," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1994, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Arms, Not Words, for Bosnia," Wall Street Journal, May 12, 1994, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Notes to Clinton on Bosnia," opinion, Wall Street Journal June 10, 1994, p. A10.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Too Many Flip-Flops," opinion, Washington Post, June 26, 1994.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Embargo the Aggressors, Not the Victims," opinion, Wall Street Journal, June 28, 1994, p. A18.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Creating a Greater Serbia: Clinton's Final Sell-Out of Bosnia," The New Republic, Vol. 211, No. 5 (August 1, 1994), pp. 22-27.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Gregory S. Jones, "'Breakthrough' in North Korea?," opinion, Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1994, p. A12.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Bosnia: Air Power, Not Peacekeepers," opinion, Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1994, p. A16.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Foreword," in K. Scott McMahan and Dennis M. Gormley, Controlling the Spread of Land-Attack Cruise Missiles
(Marina del Rey, CA: American Institute for Strategic Cooperation, 1995).
- Albert Wohlstetter and Gregory S. Jones, "A Nuclear Treaty That Breeds Weapons," opinion, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 1995, p. A20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Inferior U.N. or Superior Coalition Force?," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1995, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Gregory S. Jones, "Beyond the Cold War: Foreign Policy in the 21st Century; Alternatives to Negotiating Genocide," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1995, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Chirac's Challenge on Bosnia," opinion, Wall Street Journal, July 20, 1995, p. A12.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Relentless Diplomacy and Mass Murder," opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1995, p. A14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "NATO: Precise Power, Incoherent Goals," opinion, Wall Street Journal, October 19, 1995, p. A22.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Magic Tricks Can't Disguise This About Bosnia," opinion, Wall Street Journal, November 15, 1995, p. A20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Since Bosnia Has Been Reduced to This...," opinion, Wall Street Journal, December 12 1995, p. A20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Perilous 'Partnership for Peace'," opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 22, 1996, p. A22.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Cold War is Over and Over and...," opinion, Wall Street Journal, October 1, 1996, p. A22.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Photo-op Foreign Policy," opinion, Wall Street Journal, October 23, 1996, p. A22.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Boris Yeltsin as Abraham Lincoln," in Stjepan G. Meštrovic, ed., The Conceit of Innocence: Losing the Conscience of the West in the War Against Bosnia
(College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), pp. 200-207.
Posted by Robert at 12:01 PM
January 28, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1980-1989)
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The 1980s marked Wohlstetter's fourth decade in the field of nuclear-age strategy. Although he had already passed the age of retirement (December 1980 marked his 67th birthday), he nonetheless chose to remain active throughout the decade both as an outside adviser to decision-makers in the US government and as a public intellectual of national security affairs.
Wohlstetter, in his capacity as a public intellectual, continued to stake out controversial positions in fierce national debates over the direction of America's nuclear and non-nuclear strategy. In particular, in the pages of Commentary he critiqued the logic and conclusions of the American Catholic bishops' 1983 pastoral letter on war and peace in the nuclear age; and in the pages of Foreign Affairs and The National Interest he sparred with opponents of qualitative improvements to America's nuclear arsenal and delivery vehicles.
Moreover, in his capacity as an outside adviser to the US government, Wohlstetter not only made contributions in policy analysis to, but also was honored by, the Reagan administration.
To begin with, early in the decade he and his colleagues at PAN Heuristics completed a series of studies on various Persian Gulf contingencies for the US Department of Defense. One contingency that these 1980/1981 studies considered was of an invasion of Kuwait by Ba'athist Iraq.
In November 1985 both Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter were awarded by President Ronald Reagan the Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. (During the same award ceremony, Reagan also awarded the Medal of Freedom to Paul H. Nitze.)
And in the mid-to-late 1980s, Albert and Fred C. Iklé (who at the time was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy) co-chaired the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (CILTS), the mandate of which was to reassess America's approach to foreign policy and propose "adjustments to US military strategy in view of a changing security environment in the decades ahead."
The membership of Commission drew from a wide range of bipartisan expertise:
- Anne L. Armstrong, former US ambassador to Britain;
- Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor;
- William P. Clark, Reagan's deputy defense secretary and later National Security Advisor;
- W. Graham Claytor, Jr., Carter's Navy secretary and later Deputy Secretary of Defense;
- GEN Andrew J. Goodpaster (ret.), Eisenhower's staff secretary and later Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) under Nixon;
- ADM James L. Holloway, III (ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations;
- Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard political scientist;
- Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon and Ford's Secretary of State;
- Joshua Lederberg, Nobel prize-winning biologist;
- GEN Bernard A. Schriever (ret.), US Air Force proponent of space and ballistic missile research; and
- GEN John W. Vessey (ret.), former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Commission's final report, Discriminate Deterrence, was released in January 1988, and was received in the US and Western Europe with a mixture of support and opposition.
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1980-1989)
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Half Wars and Half Policies in the Persian Gulf," in W. Scott Thompson, ed., National Security in the 1980s: From Weakness to Strength
(Washington, DC: Institute of Contemporary Studies, 1980).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Meeting the Threat in the Persian Gulf," Survey, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 128-188.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Les États-Unis et la sécurité du Golfe," Politique Étrangére, Vol. 46, No. 1 (March 1981), pp. 75-88.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Responding to Ambiguous Signals of Soviet Imminent or Future Power Projection, Vol. 1: Overview, draft final report in partial fulfillment of DNA001-80-C-0369, PH-82-5-0369-67-I (Marina del Rey, CA: PAN Heuristics, May 1982).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Nuclear Policies Clarified," letter to the editor, Air University Review, September-October 1982.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Prescription for Disjointed Defense," opinion, Wall Street Journal March 16, 1983, p. 30.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Bishops, Statesmen, and Other Strategists on the Bombing of Innocents," Commentary, Vol. 75, No. 6 (June 1983), pp. 15-35.
- Albert Wohlstetter, et al., "Morality and Deterrence: Albert Wohlstetter responds to...," Commentary, Vol. 76, No. 69 December 1983), pp. 4-22.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Nancy Virts, "Armenian Terror as a Special Case of International Terror," in International Terrorism and the Drug Connection (Ankara, Turkey: Ankara University Press, 1984), pp. 261-280.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "'Nuclear Temptations': An Exchange," New York Review of Books, Vol. 31, No. 9 (May 31, 1984).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Foreword," in S. Enders Wimbush, ed., Soviet Nationalities in Strategic Perspective
( New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. ix-xii.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Between an Unfree World and None: Increasing Our Choices," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 5 (Summer 1985), pp. 962-994.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Brian G. Chow, "Arms Control That Could Work," opinion, Wall Street Journal, July 17, 1985, p. 28.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, "Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom," The White House, Washington, DC, November 7, 1985. Available online at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "'Counsels of War': An Exchange," New York Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 18 (November 21, 1985).
- Albert Wohlstetter and Brian G. Chow, Self-Defense Zones in Space, A study for Integrated Long-Term Defense Strategy in partial fulfillment of MDA903-84-c-0325 (Marina del Rey, CA: PAN Heuristics, July 1986).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "La minaccia soveitica" (trans. by Francesco Pistolato), MonOperaio, Vol. 9, No. 3 (August-September 1986), pp. 69-76.
- Fred S. Hoffman, Albert Wohlstetter and David S. Yost, ed., Swords and Shields: NATO, the USSR, and New Choices for Long-Range Offense and Defense
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987).
- Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Brody, "Continuing Control as a Requirement for Deterring," in Ashton B. Carter, John D. Steinbruner and Charles A. Zraket, eds., Managing Nuclear Operations
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), pp. 142-196.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Swords Without Shields," The National Interest, No. 9 (Summer 1987), pp. 31-57.
- Discriminate Deterrence, report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, January 1988). Available online at the website of the Defense Technical Information Center's Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET). [Fred C. Iklé and Albert Wohlstetter co-chaired the Commission, the members of which were: Anne L. Armstrong, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William P. Clark, W. Graham Claytor, Jr., Andrew J. Goodpaster, James L. Holloway, III, Samuel P. Huntington, Henry A. Kissinger, Joshua Lederberg, Bernard A. Schriever and John W. Vessey.]
- Albert Wohlstetter and Stephen Prowse, "Stability in a World with More than Two Countries," in Beyond START?, University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) Policy Paper No. 7 (La Jolla, CA: IGCC, 1988), pp. 46-54.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Sharing the Risks and Costs of Defending Shared Interests," testimony before the US House of Representatives' Committee on Armed Services, hearing on Defense Burdensharing: The Costs, Benefits, and Future of US Alliances (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, March 1, 1988), pp. 107-272.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Overseas Reactions to Discriminate Deterrence," Atlantic Community Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall-Winter 1988), pp. 234-269.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Morning of Prosperity in America: Own Data Misled Stagnation Prophets," opinion, Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1988, p. A18.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "When Empires are Falling, Daring is Prudence," opinion, Wall Street Journal, December 12, 1989, p. A20. See also correction in "Editor's Note," Wall Street Journal, December 14, 1989, p. A23.
Posted by Robert at 6:00 PM
January 25, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1970-1979)
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During this decade, Albert's work in strategy covered a broad range of topics, such as (but certainly not limited to): debates over the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system; over how best to respond to limited nuclear and less-than-nuclear aggression; and over how best to stem nuclear proliferation and constrain civil nuclear energy's military potential.
Something that's not covered directly in the bibliography below, but which I will write about in greater detail in a later post, is Wohlstetter's participation in and contributions to the Long Range Research and Development Planning Program (LRRDPP), a study co-sponsored by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). Initiated by ARPA director Stephen J. Lukasik and DNA representative Fred Wikner, this study sought to identify how the United States might leverage what were at the time emerging technologies to provide someday decision-makers with responses, besides indiscriminate massive nuclear retaliation, to limited-nuclear and less-than-nuclear aggression. Today, a lot of people, especially academics, like to talk about the importance of the "nuclear revolution." Quietly but profoundly, the LRRDPP study helped to chart the way toward the arguably more influential "precision revolution."
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1970-1979)
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Importance of Continuing the SAFEGUARD Program," testimony before the US Senate's Committee on Armed Services, hearing on Authorization of Military Procurement, Research and Development, Fiscal Year 1971, and Reserve Strength, Part 3 of 3 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, May 19, 1970), pp. 2223-2292.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Sinclair Coleman, Race Differences in Income, R-578-OEO (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 1970). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, et al., "Appendix IV: Correspondence and Comments," Operations Research [journal of the Operations Research Society of America], Vol. 19, No. 5 (September 1971), pp. 1246-1258.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "An Argument for the ABM," in Howard Bliss and M. Glen Johnson, eds., Consensus at the Crossroads: Dialogues in American Foreign Policy
(New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1972), pp. 297-307.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Japan's Security: Balancing After the Shocks," Foreign Policy, No. 9 (Winter 1972), pp. 171-190.
- Albert Wohlstetter, et al., "The Debate on Military Policy: How Much is Enough? How Mad is MAD?," in Fred Warner Neal and Mary Kersey Harvey, eds., Pacem in Terris III: The Military Dimensions of Foreign Policy
, Vol. 2 of 4 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1974), pp. 37-43.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?", Foreign Policy, No. 15 (Summer 1974), pp. 3-20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Rivals, But No 'Race'," Foreign Policy, No. 16 (Fall 1974), pp. 48-81.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Legends of the Strategic Arms Race
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Clocking the Strategic Arms Race," opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 1974, p. 24.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Threats and Promises of Peace: Europe and America in the New Era," Orbis, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Winter 1974), pp. 1107-1144.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Robert Raab, Arthur Steiner, Roberta Wohlstetter and Zivia Wurtele, Methods That Obscure and Methods That Clarify the Strategic Competition, DAHC 15-73-C-0074 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, June 30, 1975).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Optimal Ways to Confuse Ourselves," Foreign Policy, No. 20 (Fall 1975), pp. 170-198.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?, final report prepared for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of ACDA/PAB-263, PH76-04-389-14 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, December 4, 1975 [Revised April 22, 1976]).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?," Survey, Vol. 22. Nos. 3/4 (Summer 1976), pp. 161-217. Available online at Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "On Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?," testimony before the US House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations, hearing on Extension of the Export Administration Act of 1969 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, June 16, 1976), pp. 456-505.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Spreading the Bomb Without Quite Breaking the Rules," Foreign Policy, No. 25 (Winter 1976), pp. 88-94 and 145-179.
- Henry S. Rowen and Albert Wohlstetter, "Varying Response with Circumstance in Europe," in Johan Jørgen Holst and Uwe Nerlich, eds., Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: New Aims, New Arms
(New York, NY: Crane, Russak and Co., 1976), pp. 225-238.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Two Calls for Joseph Kraft to 'Repent'," letter to the editor, Washington Post, January 15, 1977, p. A18. Reprinted as: Wohlstetter, response to Joseph Kraft's "America's Hawks Glower at Carter," letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1977, p. C7.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Wohlstetter Denies 'Alarmism' Charge," letter to the editor, Chicago Sun-Times, February 6, 1977.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Delicate Balance," letter to the editor, The New Republic, March 3, 1977.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, "The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy: Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?," Minerva, Vol. 15. No. 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 387-538.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "On the Turkish Embargo," testimony before the US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, Committee on International Relations, Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1979, Part 9 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, pp. 357-393), April 25, 1978.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Must We Decide Now for Worldwide Commerce in Plutonium Fuel?," in Wohlstetter, et al., eds., Nuclear Policies: Fuel Without the Bomb
(Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1978), pp. 21-56.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Strategic Importance of Turkey and the Arms Embargo," Journal of International Relations, Vol. 3, No. 2 (June 1978).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Lift the Turkish Embargo," opinion, Wall Street Journal, June 14, 1978, p. 22.
- Albert Wohlstetter, et al., Nuclear Alternatives and Proliferation Risks, final report to the US Department of Energy in fulfillment of EN 77-C-01-2643, PH-78-06-858-34 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, July 27, 1978).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Strategic Importance of Turkey and the Arms Embargo," in NATO, Turkey and United States Interests (Washington, DC: American Foreign Policy Institute, 1978), pp. 34-42.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Making Peace and Keeping It," opinion, The New York Times, January 26, 1979, p. E17.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "'Lesser' Excluded Cases," opinion, The New York Times, February 14, 1979, p. A25.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Uses of Irrelevance," opinion, The New York Times, February 25, 1979, p. E17.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Needed: A More Flexible View of US Force," opinion, Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 1979.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Breeders and the Bomb," opinion, The New York Times, March 14, 1979, p. A23.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Can We Afford SALT?," opinion, The New York Times, March 25, 1979, p. E19.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, Swords from Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Gregory S. Jones and Henry S. Rowen, Towards a New Consensus on Nuclear Technology, Vol. 1 (of 2), a report prepared for the Arms Control Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of AC7NC106, PH-78-04-832-33 (Los Angeles, CA: Pan Heuristics, July 6, 1979). Available online at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center's website.
- Henry S. Rowen and Albert Wohlstetter, US Non-Proliferation Strategy Reformulated, report prepared for the Council on Environmental Quality, the US Department of Energy and the National Security Council in fulfillment of EQ-8AC021 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, August 29, 1979).
Posted by Robert at 6:28 PM
January 23, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1960-1969)
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Although Albert Wohlstetter would leave the RAND Corporation in 1963, his publishing output during the decade would increase steadily, even as he balanced his classified work as an outside adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations with his unclassified work as a professor -- first at Berkeley, then at UCLA, and finally at the University of Chicago.
During the 1960s, Albert's work in strategy covered a broad range of topics, such as (but certainly not limited to): the aims of US foreign policy; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons not only to America's opponents, but also to America's allies; the Cuban missile crisis and its aftermath; scientific method vs. the authority of scientists in national security debates; civil nuclear energy's military potential; the impact emerging technologies may have on matters of peace and war; and debates over the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.
Albert Wohlstetter's Writings (1960-1969)
- Albert Wohlstetter, On the Value of Overseas Bases, P-1877 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 5, 1960). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, RAND's Continuing Program of Broad Policy Study: Problems and Incentives, M-953 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, February 22, 1960).
- Albert Wohlstetter, No Highway to High Purpose, P-2084-RC (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 1960. Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "National Purpose: Wohlstetter View; Appraisal of the Need to Examine Means as Well as Ends," The New York Times, June 16, 1960, p. 30.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "A Purpose Hammered Out of Reflection and Choice," Life, Vol. 48, No. 24 (June 20, 1960), pp. 115, 126-134.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "National Decisions Concerning Defense," in J. Banbury and J. Maitland, eds., Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Operations Research [in Aix-En-Provence, France, 1960] (London, UK: English Universities Press, February 1961), pp. 517-522.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Nuclear Sharing: NATO and the N+1 Country." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 3 (April 1961), pp. 355-387.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Impressions and Appraisals in Hong Kong, May 19 - May 23, 1962, D(L)-10364-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 20, 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Impressions and Appraisals in Japan, May 8 - May 19, 1962, D(L)-10391-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 27, 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Impressions and Appraisals in Singapore, May 28 - May 29, 1962, D(L)-10399-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 28, 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Notes on the Cuban Crisis: On the Importance of Overseas Bases in the 1960's, Offense-Defense Semantics, Keeping Open Possible Aid to Cuban Resistance, D(L)-10647-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 28, 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Studies for a Post-Communist Cuba, D(L)-11060-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, February 25. 1963). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Scientists, Seers and Strategy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 3(April 1963), pp. 466-478.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Scientific Methods," Letters to the Editor, The New York Times, December 1, 1963.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Technology, Prediction and Disorder," Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (December 1963), pp. 1-14.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Arms Debate: Letter in Response to 'The Megadeath Intellectuals'," New York Review of Books, Vol. 1, No. 9 (December 26, 1963). Available online at the New York Review of Books' website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Strategy and the Natural Scientists," in Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright, eds., Scientists and National Policy-Making
(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 174-239.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Sin and Games in America," in Martin Shubik, ed., Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior
(New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964), pp. 209-225.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Analysis and Design of Conflict Systems," in E.S. Quade, ed., Analysis for Military Decisions
(Chicago, IL: Rand McNally & Co., 1964), pp. 103-148. Also available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, On Dealing with Castro's Cuba, Part I, D-17906-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 16, 1965). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba, Adelphi Papers No. 17 (London, UK: Institute for Strategic Studies, April 1965).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Non-Strategic and Non-Existent," in Kathleen Archibald, ed., Strategic Interaction and Conflict: Original Papers and Discussion
(Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1966), pp. 107-126.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, The State of Strategic Studies in Japan, India, [and] Israel: April 1966, report prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 1966.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Richard B. Rainey, Jr., Distant Wars and Far Out Estimates, unpublished paper prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association (APSA) meetings in New York, NY, on September 8, 1966; and at the Strategic Studies Conference, sponsored by MIT, Endicott House, Dedham, MA, September 9 to September 11, 1966 [revised 1967].
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Illusions of Distance," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 2 (January 1968), pp. 242-255.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Theory and Opposed-System Design, D(L)-16001-1 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, Aug. 1967 [Revised Jan. 1968]). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Perspective on Nuclear Energy, speech during the University of Chicago's twenty-fifth Anniversary Observance of the first controlled self-sustaining nuclear reaction, December 2, 1967, D(L)-16568-PR/ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 10, 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Strength, Interest and New Technologies, opening address before The Implications of Military Technology in the 1970s, the Institute for Strategic Studies' ninth annual conference, Elsinore, Denmark, September 28 to October 1, 1967, D(L)-16624-PR (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 24, 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Strength, Interest and New Technologies, in The Implications of Military Technology in the 1970s, Adelphi Papers No. 46 (London, UK: Institute for Strategic Studies, March 1968).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Perspective on Nuclear Energy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 24, No. 4 (April 1968), pp. 2-5.
- Albert Wohlstetter et al., contributors, in Richard M. Pfeffer, ed., No More Vietnams? The War and the Future of American Foreign Policy
(New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1968).
- Albert Wohlstetter, On Vietnam and Bureaucracy, D-17276-1-ISA/ARPA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, July 17, 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Metaphors and Models: Inequalities and Disorder at Home and Abroad, D-17664-RC/ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 27, 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Comments on the [Charles] Wolf-[Nathan] Leites Manuscript: "Rebellion and Authority", D(L)-17701-ARPA/AGILE (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 30. 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Theory and Opposed-System Design," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 1968), pp. 302-331.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Making Up for Lost Time or Utility: Casual Notes on Equality and Equity, D(L)-17717-RC (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, September 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Critique of a Brookings Agenda for the Nation on Military Strategy, Military Forces, and Arms Control, D(L)-17910-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Letter to Michael Howard," unpublished, November 6, 1968.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Case for Strategic Force Defense," in Johan Jørgen Holst and William Schneider, Jr., eds., Why ABM? Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy
(New York, NY: Pergamon Press, 1969), pp. 119-142.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Role of the ABM in the 1970's," testimony before the US Senate's Committee on Armed Services, hearing on Authorization of Military Procurement, Research and Development, Fiscal Year 1970, and Reserve Strength, Part 2 (of 2) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, April 23, 1969), pp. 1258-1284.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Supplement on the Purported Proofs that the Minuteman Will Be Safe Without Further Protection," Statement Before the US Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations, May 23, 1969.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Planning-Programming-Budgeting: Defense Analysis: Two Examples, reprint by the US Senate's Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations, Committee on Government Operations, of testimony before the US Senate's Committee on Armed Services (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, September 10, 1969).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Bases and the Revision of Political Control in Okinawa," testimony before the US House of Representatives' Committee on Foreign Affairs, hearing on Strategy and Science: Toward a National Security Policy for the 1970s (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, October 10, 1969), pp. 263-268.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, "'Third Worlds' Abroad and at Home," The Public Interest. No. 14 (Winter 1969), pp. 88-107.
Posted by Robert at 6:32 PM
January 22, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's RAND Writings (1951-1959)
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But first, a little biographical context: Albert Wohlstetter first joined the RAND Corporation as a consultant in February 1951. Prior to that he had been working for several years at a prefabricated housing company in southern California that had tried, but in the end failed, to mass-produce the "Packaged House," a design by Bauhaus architects Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius.
Roberta [Mary Morgan] Wohlstetter, who had been working off-and-on in RAND's social science division since 1948, helped to set up a meeting for her husband with Charles "Charlie" Hitch, a Missouri-born Rhodes Scholar who, after working for the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two, had settled in Santa Monica to head RAND's economics division. Hitch and Wohlstetter immediately clicked, and Hitch hired him to work as a consultant to RAND's mathematics division. In the mathematics division, Albert worked mainly on problems related to modeling logistics, issues far removed from nuclear strategy. But this would all change a few months later.
As Albert Wohlstetter would recall in an interview several decades later, in May 1951 Hitch asked him whether he would be interested in working on a problem that the recently-formed U.S. Air Force (USAF) had posed to RAND. The problem, posed as a question, was basically this: How should the USAF base the Strategic Air Command (SAC)? At first, Albert thought that this would end up being a run-of-the-mill logistics problem. But after a weekend of thinking through the problem, he began to understand better how the choice of SAC's method of basing its small force of medium-range manned bombers -- which, when armed with atomic gravity bombs, constituted at the time America's main hedge against "central war" in Europe, that is, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe -- had important implications.
And so, Albert Wohlstetter accepted Charlie Hitch's offer, and with that, entered the world of nuclear-age strategy.
Albert Wohlstetter's RAND Writings (1951-1959)
- Albert Wohlstetter, H.I. Ansoff, W.W. Baldwin, D.J. Davis, N. Kaplan, P. Kecskemeti, Outline of a Study for the Plans Analysis Section, D-937, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, May 10, 1951). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Initial and Annual Costs and Peacetime Life Expectancies, D-1062 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 30, 1951). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Economic and Strategic Considerations in Air Base Location: A Preliminary Review, D-1114 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, December 29, 1951). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Henry S. Rowen, Campaign Time Pattern, Sortie Rate, and Base Location, D-1147 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 25, 1952). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, A Little Answer and Some Big Questions for the Target Systems Analysis, D(L)-1246 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 9, 1952). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman, Robert J. Lutz and Henry S. Rowen, Selection of Strategic Air Bases, special staff report, R-244-S (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, March 1, 1953). Available online at Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman, Robert J. Lutz and Henry S. Rowen, Vulnerability of U.S. Strategic Air Power to a Surprise Enemy Attack in 1956, SM-15 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 15, 1953).
- Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman, Defending a Strategic Force After 1960: With Notes on the Need by Both Sides for Accurate Bomb Delivery, Particularly for the Big Bombs, D-2270 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, February 1, 1954). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman, Robert J. Lutz and Henry S. Rowen, Selection and the Use of Strategic Air Bases, a report prepared for United States Air Force Project RAND, R-266 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 1954). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman and Michael E. Arnsten, Measures to Protect Airbase Bulk Fuel Stocks, RM-1398 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, December 21, 1954). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Fred S. Hoffman and Henry S. Rowen, Protecting U.S. Power to Strike Back in the 1950's and 1960's, staff report, R-290 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, September 1, 1956).
- Albert Wohlstetter, Systems Analysis versus Systems Design, P-1530 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 29, 1958). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror (unabridged version), P-1472 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, November 6, 1958 [Revised December 1958]). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Delicate Balance of Terror" (abridged version), Foreign Affairs, Vol. 37, No. 2 (January 1959), pp. 211-234.
- Albert Wohlstetter and Henry S. Rowen, Objectives of the United States Military Posture, RM-2373 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, May 1, 1959). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
Posted by Robert at 7:16 AM
January 21, 2008
Albert Wohlstetter's Pre-RAND Writings (1936-1940)
The Bibliography Project.This latest installment provides a list of Albert Wohlstetter's works written prior to February 1951, when Albert first joined the RAND Corporation. Although this list isn't comprehensive, it does give a good sense of the sorts of things that interested him as a graduate student in New York City, years before he would enter the world of strategy. At any rate, you'd be hard-pressed to find something like this -- outside of the register for his private papers, of course. Enjoy.
Albert Wohlstetter's Pre-RAND Writings (1936-1940)
- Albert Wohlstetter, "The Structure of Proposition and the Fact," Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1936), pp. 167-184. Available online via JSTOR (login or purchase required).
- Albert Wohlstetter, Language and Empiricism, MA thesis, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, June 1937.
- Roberta Morgan and Albert Wohlstetter, "Observations on 'Prufrock'," Harvard Advocate, Vol. 85, No. 3 (December 1938), pp. 27-40.
- Albert Wohlstetter and M[orton]. G[abriel]. White, "Who Are the Friends of Semantics?" Partisan Review, Vol. 6. No. 5 (Fall 1939), pp. 50-57.
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Review of J. H. Woodger, The Technique of Theory Construction," Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1940), pp. 23-24. Available online via JSTOR (login or purchase required).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Review of Maria Kokoszyńska, Bemerkungen über die Einheitswissenschaft; Otto Neurath, Zu den Vorträgen von Black, Kokoszyńska, Williams; and Arne Ness, Zum Vortrag von Kokoszyńska über Einheitswissenschaft," Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1940), p. 25. Available online via JSTOR (login or purchase required).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Review of Paul Herz, Sprache und Logik," Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 5. No. 1 (March 1940), p. 26. Available online via JSTOR (login or purchase required).
- Albert Wohlstetter, "Review of Justus Buchler, Charles Peirce's Empiricism," Isis, Vol. 32, No. 2 (April 1940), pp. 399-403. Available online via JSTOR (login or purchase required).
Posted by Robert at 7:42 AM
January 20, 2008
Roberta Wohlstetter's Writings (1958-1991)
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Although Roberta Wohlstetter is best remembered for Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
For example, insights from The Buddha Smiles: Absent-Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb, Roberta Wohlstetter's 1976 study of how American and Canadian civil nuclear assistance unwittingly furthered India's military efforts to build and detonate a nuclear explosive device, are still worth considering today, especially as the US contemplates carving out an exception in American and international law that would enable nuclear suppliers to export to India. (I aim to make The Buddha Smiles available for download within the next few weeks.)
In an earlier entry, I revisited the historical background, and meditated on the continuing relevance of Swords from Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy (1979)
Last, in December 2005 James Johnson and I wrote about the contemporary importance of Roberta Wohlstetter's concept of "slow Pearl Harbors":
.... another problem that concerned her deeply has received less attention--namely, what she termed "slow Pearl Harbors." Wohlstetter developed this concept in a 1979 essay in the Washington Quarterly, "The Pleasures of Self-Deception," and in a later, unpublished manuscript. Unlike the dramatic surprises of December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, slow Pearl Harbors unfold when "the change at any given time seems innocent enough," but, over time, "the changes add up and can ultimately spell disaster." Here, she elaborated, "the problem is that after each small change even hindsight is not very clear. In fact, one can sometimes argue interminably even about the cumulative disaster."The cumulating changes of a potential adversary present severe challenges not only to the intelligence analyst who must try to recognize them, but also to the decision-maker who may have to craft firm yet proportional responses to them. For while under-reaction to such changes risks one sort of disaster, over-reaction risks quite another.
I should close by observing that, throughout her writings, Roberta Wohlstetter displayed a deep respect for the intelligence analyst. She understood that the intelligence analyst's task is one not only of retrospective explanation, but also, and perhaps more critically, of prospective anticipation; it is a formidable task in which the analyst faces everyday the real risk of failure, even catastrophic failure. Indeed, that is why Wohlstetter concluded her Pearl Harbor study with the following sober words: "We have to accept the fact of uncertainty and live with it. No magic, in code or otherwise, will provide certainty."
Roberta Mary Morgan Wohlstetter died in New York, NY, on January 6, 2007. She was 94.
Roberta Wohlstetter's Writings (1958-1991)
- Roberta Wohlstetter, Signals and Decisions at Pearl Harbor, R-331 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1958).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Notes on the Cuban Crisis: On the Importance of Overseas Bases in the 1960's, Offense-Defense Semantics, Keeping Open Possible Aid to Cuban Resistance, D(L)-10647-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 28, 1962). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Studies for a Post-Communist Cuba, D(L)-11060-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, February 25. 1963). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, On Dealing with Castro's Cuba, Part I, D-17906-ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, January 16, 1965). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba, Adelphi Papers No. 17 (London, UK: Institute for Strategic Studies, April 1965).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "Cuba and Pearl Harbor: Hindsight and Foresight," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 43, No. 4(July 1965), pp. 691-707.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, The State of Strategic Studies in Japan, India, [and] Israel: April 1966, report prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 1966.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Metaphors and Models: Inequalities and Disorder at Home and Abroad, D-17664-RC/ISA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 27, 1968). Available online at the RAND Corporation's website.
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, "'Third Worlds' Abroad and at Home," The Public Interest. No. 14 (Winter 1969), pp. 88-107.
- Roberta Wohlstetter, Cuban Tales and Details, Part II: The 1970 Harvest and US Cuban Policy, IN-21125-SX (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, August 27, 1970).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "Kidnapping to Win Friends and Influence People," Survey, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Autumn 1974), pp. 1-40.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Robert Raab, Arthur Steiner, Roberta Wohlstetter and Zivia Wurtele, Methods That Obscure and Methods That Clarify the Strategic Competition, DAHC 15-73-C-0074 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, June 30, 1975).
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd?, final report prepared for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of ACDA/PAB-263, PH76-04-389-14 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, December 4, 1975 [Revised April 22, 1976]).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "Terror on a Grand Scale," Survival, Vol. 18, No. 3 (May/June 1976), pp. 98-104.
- Roberta Wohlstetter, The Buddha Smiles: Absent-Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb, in Albert Wohlstetter, et al., Can We Make Nuclear Power Compatible with Limiting the Spread of Nuclear Weapons?, Vol. II-1, draft final report prepared for the US Energy Research and Development Administration in partial fulfillment of E(49-1)-3747, PH-78-04-370-23 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, November 15, 1976; Revised November 1977). Available online at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center's website.
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "US Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb," in Albert Wohlstetter, et al., eds., Nuclear Policies: Fuel Without the Bomb
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Henry Rowen, Vincent Taylor and Roberta Wohlstetter, Swords from Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Gregory S. Jones and Henry S. Rowen, Towards a New Consensus on Nuclear Technology, Vol. 1 (of 2), a report prepared for the Arms Control Disarmament Agency in fulfillment of AC7NC106, PH-78-04-832-33 (Los Angeles, CA: Pan Heuristics, July 6, 1979). Available online at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center's website.
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "The Pleasures of Self-Deception," Washington Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Autumn 1979), pp. 54-63.
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "Slow Pearl Harbours and the Pleasures of Deception," in Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Uri Ra'anan and Warren Milberg, eds., Intelligence Policy and National Security (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981).
- Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Responding to Ambiguous Signals of Soviet Imminent or Future Power Projection, Vol. 1: Overview, draft final report in partial fulfillment of DNA001-80-C-0369, PH-82-5-0369-67-I (Marina del Rey, CA: PAN Heuristics, May 1982).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, Warning and No Response (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, April 1985).
- Roberta Wohlstetter, "From Pearl Harbor to the Gulf: When to Worry," Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1991, p. A14
Posted by Robert at 11:57 PM
January 19, 2008
Roberta Wohlstetter's Pre-RAND Writings (1936-1939)
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A major motivation for this bibliography project is to rectify the following problem: when people recall Albert or Roberta's writings, they tend only to think of one (or two) of their works -- in Albert's case, "The Delicate Balance of Terror" (1959), an article which I've seen people cite far too often without having first carefully read it; and in Roberta's case, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962)
The respective oeuvres of the Wohlstetters are impressive, but an issue has been that folks haven't had access even to decent bibliographies of their work. This website hope to change that.
I'm releasing, as a sort of preview of what's to come, a partial list of works that Roberta Wohlstetter wrote before her time at the RAND Corporation. These works date back to the 1930s, before she had married Albert Wohlstetter, when she went by her maiden name Roberta Mary Morgan, and was a graduate student at Columbia University (from which she earned an M.A. in psychology in 1936) and Radcliffe College (from which she earned an M.A. in English literature in 1937, and was "all but dissertation" [A.B.D.]).
Whether analyzing the behavior of incarcerated women, the anxiety of T. S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge's reading of Hamlet, Roberta Morgan was very much interested in questions of why and how people make the choices that they make. This interest in decision-making would continue in Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision and other works at RAND.
Roberta Wohlstetter's Pre-RAND Writings (1936-1939)
- Roberta Morgan, One Approach to the Problem of Institutional Behavior of Delinquent Women, MA thesis, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, January 1936.
- Roberta Morgan and Albert Wohlstetter, "Observations on 'Prufrock'," Harvard Advocate, Vol. 85, No. 3 (December 1938), pp. 27-40.
- Roberta Morgan, "The Philosophic Basis of Coleridge's Hamlet Criticism," English Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 4 (December 1939), pp. 256-270.
- Roberta Morgan, "Some Stoic Lines in Hamlet and the Problem of Interpretation," Philological Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4 (October 1941).
Posted by Robert at 9:39 PM
January 18, 2008
The Wohlstetters on the Military Potential of Civil Nuclear Energy
In Focus. During the early 1970s the US nuclear industry was keen to promote reprocessing, through which plutonium is separated from spent nuclear reactor fuel and then fabricated into new fuel -- either plutonium fuel or mixed plutonium oxide/uranium oxide (MOX) fuel. Although such reprocessing initiatives enjoyed support at the time from some in the US government, Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Henry Rowen and other strategists voiced skepticism as they called attention to the proliferation risks raised by the spread of nuclear fuel-making activities, and especially plutonium-related activities.
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in 1979. Swords from Plowshares, I hasten to add, should be required reading for anyone interested in nuclear energy and proliferation issues.) The policy impact of this report was considerable.
In the months following the Wohlstetters and Rowen -- as well as ACDA director Fred Iklé, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Victor Gilinsky and many others -- testified before Congress, and raised the Legislative Branch's awareness of the security, economic and political issues surrounding activities related to plutonium fuel-making and exports. In turn, some members of Congress began to exert pressure on the Executive Branch to reassess America's nuclear policy, especially with respect to plutonium and reprocessing.
In the summer of 1976, the Ford Administration assembled an interagency panel -- led by Robert Fri, at the time the deputy administrator of the Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA), and composed of representatives from ACDA, the Office of Budget and Management (OBM), and the Department of State -- to examine US nuclear energy and export policy. The panel's still-classified study, known as the "Fri Study," reportedly offered both a majority and minority view on what changes should be made to US energy and export policy.
Soon thereafter the White House announced some rather dramatic policy changes. On October 28, 1976, President Gerald Ford decided that the United States would defer the pursuit of activities to reprocess spent-fuel and separate plutonium, to fabricate plutonium- or MOX-based nuclear fuels, and to export such fuels.
Then, on April 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter, who had made nuclear nonproliferation a central issue during the 1976 presidential campaign, went further, deciding to make this American deferral indefinite.
It is interesting to recall how Atomic Industrial Forum president Dr. Carl Walske -- who, in his capacity as the US nuclear industry's chief spokesman, had vehemently opposed such revisions to US nuclear policy -- begrudgingly called Wohlstetter and company's 1975 ACDA report "the most significant single event" in "the current call for change" in a 1977 speech. (For anyone interested, I have electronic copies of Walske's speech.)
Epilogue. On July 16, 1981, President Ronald Reagan effectively ended the deferral. By that point, though, the US nuclear industry had apparently found spent-fuel reprocessing to be far too uneconomical to pursue without government subsidies, and so the market had the effect of forcing the US nuclear industry itself to defer. But on September 27, 1993, President Bill Clinton decided to resume America's deferral of spent-fuel reprocessing, plutonium and MOX fuel-making and plutonium-related exports. The deferral has remained policy ever since.
Things may be changing, however. Current Department of Energy (DoE) initiatives -- in particular, the speculative Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) -- aim to reverse the longstanding US deferral of spent-fuel reprocessing and commerce in plutonium fuels, and promote worldwide what the DOE hopes will be new generation of allegedly "proliferation resistant" plutonium fuels and reactors. Although the goals of GNEP will not likely be realized for decades (if ever), some in the DoE are already talking as though truly "proliferation resistant" plutonium fuels and reactors are all but reality. They do this largely through a rhetorical slight of hand, however. For whereas the DoE once measured "proliferation resistance" based on how difficult it would be for State actor to divert nuclear material for military purposes, it now wishes to measure "proliferation resistance" based on how difficult it would be for a non-State actor to divert such material.As the US contemplates what it should -- and should not -- be doing to promote civil nuclear energy domestically and internationally, the writings of the Wohlstetters on the military potential of civil nuclear energy remain relevant. In the coming days and weeks, this website aims to bring to light many of these previously unpublished, but still timely writings.
Posted by Robert at 11:51 PM
January 17, 2008
Welcome to Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com, Ver. 2.0
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First off, I'm happy to write that Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com is now a project of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), an organization based in Washington, DC.
Before continuing, I suppose that I should introduce (or, as it were, re-introduce) myself. My name is Robert Zarate; I am a research fellow at NPEC; I maintain this website. I've done several years of archival research on the Wohlstetters, and interviewed a host of their colleagues, students and critics.
In lieu of a true "About This Site" webpage, I'll just make the following remarks and update/revise them as this website develops...
First off, on this website I shall sometimes refer to Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter by their first names because such informality will enable me to economize my words.
Second, to state provisionally in several paragraphs this website's purpose:
America's challenges in the 21st century are many, serious and complex. Continuing instabilities in the Persian Gulf have highlighted American energy vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities have prompted the U.S. government to consider increased commitments not only to civilian nuclear energy, but also to extremely sensitive nuclear fuel-making activities. But at the same time the United States and its allies are trying to prevent nuclear fuel-making and fissile material from spreading, especially to Iran and other hostile regimes that would boldly exploit ambiguities in the global nuclear nonproliferation rules to come within months--or even days--of building nuclear explosives. For the spread of nuclear weapons to hostile regimes not only would threaten U.S. security and the cohesiveness of America's alliances, and perhaps even encourage U.S. allies to pursue nuclear weapons-options; but also could increase the risk of potentially undeterrable violent extremists acquiring nuclear explosives.
These are some of the very same strategic challenges that Albert James Wohlstetter (1913-1997) and Roberta Mary Morgan Wohlstetter (1912-2007) anticipated decades ago. Over the course of their nearly fifty-year careers in strategy, the Wohlstetters produced hundreds of writings that analyzed strategic policy issues including Persian Gulf instabilities, America's energy vulnerabilities, the military potential of civilian nuclear energy, nuclear proliferation, nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence, missile defense, alliance dynamics and cohesiveness, and violent extremism.
By and large, though, Albert and Roberta's writings remain widely dispersed, poorly cataloged and, in many cases, difficult for all but the most determined and resourceful to find. As a result, those interested in learning more about the Wohlstetters--a group that includes not only decision-makers and policy analysts, but also journalists, academics and students--have not been able to read first-hand their writings. Instead, they often have had to rely on books and articles that offer second-hand (in some cases, even third-hand) accounts of Albert and Roberta's works.
Unfortunately, many of these second- and third-hand accounts have been incomplete; some have seriously misunderstood or even consciously distorted the arguments, the historical context and the continuing policy relevance of the Wohlstetters' writings. In particular, when recent books and articles on 21st century "neoconservativism" have discussed the Wohlstetters (neither of whom ever identified themselves as "neoconservative," or were referred to as "neoconservatives" by the secondary literature before 2001/2002), the authors of these accounts have tended not to read closely and analyze dispassionately Albert and Roberta's works, but rather to scour them for passages that then are cited, often in a manner lacking in textual and historical context, as evidence in larger arguments either for or against today's "neoconservatives." In turn, these accounts, and those who read them, frequently are drawing precisely the wrong conclusions about the Wohlstetters and the continuing importance of their strategic analyses.
"Is it too much to ask," wrote Sir Michael Howard, the renowned military historian and self-described critic of Albert Wohlstetter, in a 1992 article for Survival, the International Institute for Strategic Studies' journal, "[for someone] to bring together [Albert and Roberta's] widely scattered articles and publish them in a solid lasting form" as part of "the indispensable nucleus of a strategic studies library when all else has been swept away?"
In an ongoing effort, Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com aims to answer this call by providing readers with access to Albert and Roberta's primary writings, as well as a clearer understanding of the full scope, historical context and continuing relevance of the Wohlstetters' respective careers and contributions.
Thanks for visiting this site.
Posted by Robert at 5:26 PM
