On War

Description

In this essay one of Europe's foremost political commentators views war and peace in the urgent context of the nuclear age. Raymond Aron considers the many sides of the question: the struggle over disarmament in the face of fear and mistrust between nations; the balance which must be struck between thermonuclear and conventional weapons; the effect of the new weapons upon the diplomatic struggle; the future of the Atlantic alliance; and the possibility of total war. The author promotes his belief in a minimum program to limit aggression by means of conventional arms and by maintaining a reasonably high level of technological preparedness for retaliatory purposes, without bringing the world to the brink of an all or nothing situation. Raymond Aron was born in Paris in 1905. He attended the Ecole Normale Superieure, took his Agrigation de Philosophie in 1 928, and read at the University of Cologne. In 1935 he was named a professor at the Ecole Normale Saint-Cloud, and in 1 939 he became a member of the Faculte des Lettres at Toulouse. After the French capitulation, he worked with General de Gaulle in London and became editor-in-chief of La France Libre. His books include The Century of Total War; The Opium of the Intellectuals (available in the Norton Library ); The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy; and Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations.