This book begins by reminisces of Paul H. Johnstone, a man who began his career in the Department of Defense analyzing nuclear targeting based on an outdated and inappropriate model used by the United States Air Force during WWII. It ends with a painful essay by his daughter which refers to Gorbachev's "move towards conciliation with the West." It almost makes it sound as if the collapse of the USSR was Gorbachev's idea.
What this book looks at is not so much the Pentagon's nuclear war plans as it is the White House policy during the nuclear crises of Laos (!) and the Berlin War (?). Nothing is mentioned of the Cuba Missile Crisis or the 1983 near-war incident. The first half of the book has a lot of interesting information regarding the issues of selecting nuclear targets, the problems of fallout and the difficulty of defining "acceptable losses" to the U.S. in the event of a nuclear war. This I found useful and interesting. However, when the book went into Laos and Berlin (but not Cuba) it bogged down enormously and just seemed like undue padding. I question some of the "reminisces" in any case, since Johnstone mentions on page 139 how he visited a Nike-Zeus ABM site in the Washington DC area. This would have been patently impossible as NO Nike-Zeus missiles were ever operationally deployed.... money was allocated for such a deployment but later cancelled. From his description he was referring to Site W-64 in Maryland, which was equipped with Nike-Hercules, and antiaircraft system and NOT an ABM system. A little thing, but it makes me wonder how many other things he "remembered wrong."
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