Chasing a grand illusion: Replacing deterrence with disarmament

Abstract

Professor Keith B. Payne is without contemporary peer in the quality and quantity of his analyses of the history and continued need for nuclear deterrence. His latest publication, Chasing a Grand Illusion: Replacing Deterrence With Disarmament, has a novel focus—both for his own work and virtually all other studies of nuclear deterrence and disarmament. Most opponents of nuclear disarmament dismiss the arguments of the other side in just a few sentences, as unworthy of serious analysis. In contrast, Dr. Payne’s new study takes advocacy of nuclear disarmament as an important, if basically flawed, position. Thus, he has devoted almost all of this new study to analyzing the stated arguments for the elimination of nuclear weapons and the dangerous impracticality of those ambitions. The title of the study—Chasing a Grand Illusion—captures well Dr. Payne’s approach; the belief in the possibility of peace through nuclear disarmament is definitely illusory, but important. Another rare—and perhaps novel—feature of Dr. Payne’s study is its foundation in his long years of thorough, careful study and analysis of nuclear deterrence. It is fitting that his acknowledgements section opens with an expression of gratitude to some professors and mentors who had a strong influence on his early professional development. This study could not have been written by someone without Dr. Payne’s deep familiarity with relevant historical as well as contemporary analyses—see his discussion of the thoughts of St. Augustine! Perhaps even more important, it could not have been written by someone without Dr. Payne’s profound understanding and analysis of the subject. Because he has no peers in that regard, only he alone could have written Chasing a Grand Illusion. An especially noteworthy feature of Dr. Payne’s analysis is that, just as he does not dismiss disarmament advocacy as unworthy of serious consideration, he does not condemn its foundational vision. He summarizes well his approach to the subject in the study’s Preface: