by Theodore Caplow

Thousands of War Games are played every year by the military. Few Peace Games are played. Nuclear war has, therefore, come to seem inevitable and permanent peace an impossible dream. Caplow argues that these judgements are wtong. In this soberly powerful book he offers Peace Games as an alternative to War Games. In Peace Games as in War Games national governments are the players. Peace Games are based on the assumption that a world without war is necessary and possible; especially possible, now.

Using findings of social science to analyze what works and does not work in international peace efforts, Caplow proposes options for superpower strategy in moving beyond "the existing war system." He views nuclear deterrence, the End Game, "the unfough war" that guides military policy in the United States and the Soviet Union, as costly, unstable, dangerous, and irrational. Deterrence has led to "absurd overbuilding of nuclear weapons" and vast expansion of the military bureaucracies. Nor are mutual or unilateral reductions in nuclear arsenals suggicient to defuse the danger of accidental or deliberate conflict. Caplow advocates disengagement from the centra front to Europe and also political realignment, possibly the cration of a new nation - a West European Union strong enough to become a third superpower. A working partnership between the United States and the Soviet Union must act as a consortium to prevent nuclear proliferation in other nations; each must counter the "paranoid mind set" of its own military industrial complex, which in both cases, Caplow declares, is presently committed to War Games as the only pragmatic strategy.

Precisely because nuclear deterrance is a consequence of the work of academic game theorists, Caplow, in Peace Games, assumes the obligation to use the knowledge and techniques of social science to redress the uneven balance. Peace Games is a cogently reasoned, easy-to-read primer for peace. It is illuminated with hope that the world may be saved.

More books by Theodore Caplow

The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Gude to Trends in America, 1900-2000
Sociologie Militaire
The Academic Market Place
Perverse Incentives - The Neglect of Social Technology in the Public Sector
Elementary Sociology
Recent Social Trends in the United States 1960-1990
Leviathan Transformed - Seven National States in the New Century
The Sociology of Work
The Urban Ambience
Principles of Organization
Two Against One: Coalitions in Triad
Old Men Drunk and Sober
Toward Social Hope
Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change & Continuity
All Faithful People: Change & Continuity in Middletown's Religion
Managing an Organization
American Social Trends
Systems of War & Peace

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