Word: calculus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Calculus of Risks...
...believed in very slow and measured escalation feared a confrontation with the Soviet Union. Nixon, as well as I, believed that this was the most likely way for a crisis to become unmanageable: if we wished to avoid a showdown with the Soviets, we had to create rapidly a calculus of risks they would be unwilling to confront, rather than let them slide into the temptation to match our gradual moves. Rogers wanted to make the ultimate decision depend on whether the Syrians moved south from the occupied town of Irbid; in my view the crisis
...when President-elect Nixon began assembling his team, to January 1973, when Kissinger concluded the Viet Nam negotiations that were to win him a Nobel Peace Prize. (The second volume, in preparation now, covers the four years ending in January 1977.) Kissinger's work is much concerned with the calculus of power: when and how it should be applied or withheld; how it affects a nation's conduct; how it must be interwoven with concepts not only of national interest but of national honor. The book offers an unparalleled inside account of the high-stakes bureaucratic battles to control policy...
Those are serious worries. But the real calculus of American strength is not expressed primarily in terms of a willingness to fight or in numbers of missiles and warheads. It is not expressed in how tough Americans can be with the Soviets, or anybody else abroad. It is expressed precisely in how tough Americans are willing to be with themselves. A damaging slackness, a widespread fecklessness have grown evident not only in American leadership and corporations but in U.S. society at large...
...tend to be overenthusiastic. It's not that they do not present opposing views (which they do), it's just that Woodcock and Davis always get the last word. Every objection is countered, and for a while it seems as if catastrophe theory really is the successor to the calculus--until the authors present a series of applications of their own device. The reader's reaction to these examples will most likely determine whether he becomes an advocate or opponent of the theory--a catastrophic jump to extremes, as some theorists have already noted...