Word: schell
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...also curious that Schell's proposal never departs from the commonly accepted deference theory that has ruled the Nuclear Age. Curious, because Schell uses the first half of the book to convincingly argue that deference theory is a contradictory, dangerous, inhuman, and without credibility. He asks us if we would date sacrifice the world to uphold our sovereignty, confident that the only sane and rational answer...
...Schell acknowledges the continued primacy of deference in his non nuclear world: in fact, he applauds in part II what he successfully debunked in part I. He sets a trap for the conventional thinkers of the world, and then, eyes open walks right into it. Of course, the matter is not that simple. Schell's deference would be the result of the massing of defensive weaponry (supposedly ABMs or space weapons, he does not say). But such deference, by its very nature, is doomed to imperfection, and given present and near future technology, there is no politically or militarily credible...
Probably not, but Schell, like every other person who is looking for ways out of the nuclear morass, is torn by the conflicting pulls of realism and idealism. While interpreting much of the nuclear debate to this point as a debate between the two approaches to problem solving. Schell does not show his own stripes as he did (to little effect) in Fate of the Earth. One part of Schell Model '84 is saying blast nationalism and provincialism and advocate a King Solomon of a world government that will solve everything; the other is looking for solutions within the traditional...
...result is that Schell is neither here nor there; he cannot please the million marchers in Central Park who demand simply and unequivocally. "No more nukes:" and those who want a solution they can push through Congress and then through the Kremlin. Of course, this seeming conflict has always tied anti-nuke thinkers up in knots, and that...
...Schell himself notes advances in the realm of the political and in the realm of the theoretical are mutually beneficial. Each new foray into an imagined world where we do not live our lives knowing we could extinguished like a cigarette butt makes real change more acceptable and more possible. And even Schell, with his inconsistent rhetoric, is bringing the discussion of a non-nuclear world from the political fringes to the forefront of political dialogue...