The Amateur Strategist: Intuitive Deterrence Theories and the Politics of the Nuclear Arms Race / Edition 1

by James DeNardo

Overview

This book explores how the everyday person reasons about nuclear strategy. James DeNardo's data reveal surprising patterns of thinking on basic issues from SDI, arms control, and proliferation to the end of the Cold War. His discovery that the amateur's strategic reasoning defies all conventional theories lays the groundwork for a new understanding of national security politics. His demonstration that professional strategists reason like novices—that we are all Amateur Strategists—challenges the intellectual foundations of modern deterrence theory, public opinion studies, and game theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521484466
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/25/1995
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. A primer on the Cold War nuclear debate; 3. An introduction to intuitive deterrence theories; 4. Competing hypotheses about nuclear thinking; 5. The novice strategists; 6. The intuitive calculus of nuclear deterrence; 7. Statistical tests of the intuitive nuclear calculus; 8. Expert nuclear reasoning; 9. The factional politics of strategy and the end of the Cold War arms race; 10. Nuclear thinking after the cold war.

Editorial Reviews

"The Amateur Strategist is an important and intriguing book. DeNardo breaks new ground in his reconceptualization of opinion formulation and expression; this is a major achievement." Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"This is one of the most interesting contributions to nuclear deterrence theory that I have read in a long time. It is a fascinating study of how real people—experts and nonexperts—think about nuclear deterrence and arms control. The similarities and differences between expert and nonexpert opinion are very provocative." Robert Powell. University of California, Berkeley

"Novice opinions on strategic weapon systems range so widely as to seemingly defy logical explanation. More surprisingly, as DeNardo shows, experts' opinions are subject to similar dispersion....The book has important implications for the analysis of public opinion, and more broadly deepens our understanding of ways in which 'bounded rationality' generates policy preferences." Jack Hirshleifer, University of California. Los Angeles

From the Publisher