Today, Professor Benjamin Wilson reveals how “arms control” became a euphemism for endless weapons development—and how the scientists who claimed to oppose the arms race often profited from it.
In Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex, Professor Wilson traces the origins of “strategic stability,” a term security experts still use today, invented in the 1950s by people with no training in nuclear strategy. Professor Wilson argues that “stability” was conceptual shrink wrap borrowed from other fields and bolted onto nuclear strategy to justify whatever weapons systems the military-industrial complex wanted to build. The ideology it produced—that the best way to prevent nuclear war is to keep developing better weapons—is still at the heart of nuclear debates today, and we still prepare for peace “by preparing for war.”
