http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/26145677

Pieties, arms policy, and the scientistpolitician. (a review of jerome wiesner's 'where science and politics meet')

The most important paper is the last. Its co-author is Dr. Herbert York. Wiesner has long felt that thoroughgoing disarmament is unobtainable for the present and the immediate objective should be to obtain stable mutual deterrence through arms limitation. Earlier in the section he argues that 200 hardened and dispersed missiles on each side would provide adequate deterrents. The Wiesner-York piece amplified the case for stable mutual deterrence, but with the added twist that present weapons technology prospects make it improbable that anything else can be obtained. It is suggested that due to vulnerability considerations, the best protection is provided by large numbers of missiles. The argument is cast in terms of the missile duel calculations fashionable in the late fifties in which a single missile cannot destroy more than one enemy missile -- and a missile force only a smaller number of enemy missiles. The argument against big bombs is thus surreptitiously transformed into one contending that developing or deploying largepayload missiles would be militarily unproductive. Men like Drs. Wiesner and York, who have held high public office, have a special obligation imposed upon them scrupulously to avoid misinforming the public. But in this presentation they are open to the charge of having misrepresented the technical data so as to leave the impression that weapon development is now more or less static and militarily marginal. Quite regrettably this is just not so. (Extracted).

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