On Post-War: The Significance of Symbolic Action in War and Deterrence

See, for additional discussion, Aron Raymond , The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy (Garden City: Anchor/Doubleday, 1965); Bernard Brodie, (ed.) The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946); Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: MacMillan, 1973); and, Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (London: St. Martins, 1983).

Brodie Bernard , “The Continuing Relevance of On War,” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Howard Michael Paret Peter (eds.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 51.

See, for example, Morgenthau Hans , “The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally About Nuclear Weapons,” Arms Control and Technological Innovation. Carlton David Shaerf Carlo (eds.) (New York: Wiley, 1976); and Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).

See Payne Keith , Nuclear Deterrence in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1982; and Colin Grey, The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartlands, Rimlands and the Technological Revolution (New York: Crane, Russak and Co., 1977).

von Clausewitz Carl , On War, ed. and trans. Howard Michael Paret Peter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) p. 77.

Ibid., p. 87.

Halperin Morton , Nuclear Fallacy: Dispelling the Myth of Nuclear Strategy (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1987) pp. 25–47.

Rhodes Richard , The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986) pp. 625–651, 744.

Ibid., p. 765.

Op. cit., note 4, p. 86.

Ibid., p. 87.

Ibid., p. 75.

Ibid., p. 87.

Ibid., p. 117.

Tzu Sun , The Art of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 77.

Talbott Strobe , Deadly Gambits (New York: Vintage Books, 1985) p. 5.

See Dolby Simon , “Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet Union as Other,” Alternatives, XIII (1988), pp. 415–442; and, Charles E. Nathanson, “The Social Construction of the Soviet Threat: A Study in the Politics of Representation,” Alternatives, XIII (1988), pp. 443–483.

See Gilpin Robert , The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 231–262.

Op. cit., note 4, p. 85.

Aron Raymond , The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy (Garden City: Anchor/Doubleday, 1965) p. 198.

Ibid., p. 199.

Ibid., p. 31.

Ibid., p. 199.

See Mead George Herbert , The Philosophy of the Act (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938); George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); and George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932); C. H. Cooley, Social Process (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918); C. H. Cooley, Social Organization (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1909); C. H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902); William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Psychology (New York: Longmans, 1897); William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1890); John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1925); John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Henry Holt, 1922); John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt, 1920); W. I. Thomas, and Fioran Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Boston: Richard Badger, 1918); and W. I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909).

Blumer Herbert , Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969) p. 2.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 6.

Ibid., p. 8.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 12.

Ibid., p. 14.

Ibid., p. 15.

Ibid., pp. 17, 19.

Denzin N. K. , “Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 34, 1969, pp. 922–934; Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1970); P. Hall, “A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics,” Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 42, 1972, pp. 35–75; M. H. Kuhn, “Major Trends in Symbolic Interaction Theory in the Past Twenty-Five Years,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 5, 1964, pp. 61–84; and Bernard N. Melzter, John W. Petras and Larry T. Reynolds, Symbolic Interactionism: Genesis, Varieties and Criticism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).

Op. cit., note 25, pp. 20–21.

Halperin , Nuclear Fallacy, pp. 25–47. This symbolic interactionist interpretation of nuclear interaction also permits one to make cleaner and clearer explanations of misinterpretation and misunderstanding in strategic face-offs between the superpowers-such as the dynamics between Kennedy and Kruschev in the US and USSR which led up to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Davis Mike , ‘“Nuclear Imperialism and Extended Deterrence,” Exterminism and Cold War, Thompson E.P. (ed.) (London: New Left Books, 1982) p. 54.

Ibid., p. 50.

Burke Kenneth , A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) p. xv.

Ibid.

Blumer's and Burke's projects are not completely identical, and this combination of their different approaches is a matter of interpretation. Still, the combination for the purposes of this analysis is suggestive. For another dramatistic approach stressing the social presentation of different displays of roles, which also has promise for this interpretative approach, see Erving Goffman, The Interaction Ritual (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); Erving Goffman, Asylums (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); and Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959).

Ibid., p. 503.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp. 503–504.

Ibid., p. 508.

Ibid., pp. 507–508.

Ibid., p. 506.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 512.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 517.

Ibid.

For further discussion, see Luke Timothy W. , “What's Wrong with Deterrence?” A Semiotic Interpretation of National Security Policy,” International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, Der Derian James (eds.) (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 207–229.