Anti-nuclear fantasies
The author critiques two recent anti-nuclear books - Indefensible Weapons by two American professors, Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk; and Beyond the Cold War, a collection of polemical essays by E.P. Thompson, British Marxist historian. He sees a common thread in these books of moral rejection of traditional Western policies more than a rejection of the weapons themselves. Western institutions are judged indefensible in their arrangements for genocide. Glynn finds the authors focusing their criticism on the US, while excusing the Soviet Union, because of their alienation from US politics. He feels these are examples of a specialized literature movement that lacks a clear vision of the new order it promotes, however, because it is wary of all political arrangements. Attacks on the free press and American foreign policy take on an Orwellian irony in their rejection of security facts and their emphasis on psychological ills. Criticism of this approach does not deny the threat of nuclear weapons when it points out that, so far, the political approach has prevented their use. (DCK)
- OSTI ID:
- 6208411
- Journal Information:
- Commentary; (United States), Vol. 75:1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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