the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

88 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold wara slow start, a dramatic period of development and then a levelling off.Stimulated by nuclear weapons and the Cold War, it begins to gatherstrength during the 1940s and 1950s, reaching a kind of peak in the1950s and 1960s golden age with a string of classic books centred aroundnuclear deterrence (Brodie, 1946, 1959; Kissinger, 1957; Osgood, 1957;Kahn, 1960, 1962; Rapoport, 1960, 1964; Schelling, 1960, 1966; Snyder,1961; Singer, 1962; Green, 1966; Morgan, 1977). There were inputs frommany disciplines and a real sense of excitement driven by the intrinsicintellectual interest of the problem, the sense of fear and urgency aboutwhat choices to make in practice, and the high public profile and generousresourcing of nuclear strategy.But by the 1970s, the main breakthrough work had been done, andsome of the enthusiasm was waning as both the superpower relationshipand Strategic Studies itself became more routine and institutionalised.The theoretical debates about deterrence were beginning to sinkunder the weight of their own logical complexity (Freedman, 1991). Thenuclear balance had reached a kind of stalemate which seemed fairlystable, and about which there did not seem all that much more new tosay except for responses to technological developments, most notably indefences against ballistic missiles. Mainstream Strategic Studies literaturesuccumbed to hectic empiricism, in which the main job of analysts was tokeep up with ever-changing technologies and political developments. Ona deeper level, some academics and some policy-makers drifted towardsa kind of exhausted acceptance of existential or general deterrence, wherethe main effect came not from ever more elaborate and less crediblepreparations to meet every contingency, but from the simple existenceof nuclear weapons and fear of them being used (Waltz, 1981; Morgan,1983; Freedman, 1988).As noted above, one of the distinctive features of Strategic Studies (andISS more broadly) was and is the involvement of civilians in strategicthinking, an involvement which produced a number of distinctive outputs.Systems analysis, for example, which was a method for solving problemsof force structure and resource allocation, was based on economictheory as well as on operations research developed by natural scientists,engineers and economists during the Second World War (Smoke, 1975:290–293). Several pioneering RAND studies were implemented into policy,notably the famous ‘air bases’ study by Wohlstetter, a mathematician,and his associates (1954). Some of the leading representatives of this wayof thinking entered the Kennedy administration labelled as McNamara’s‘whiz kids’ (Kaplan 1983; Brodie 1965). From there, this method and