IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v10y1973i3p259-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Conclusions of the Study 'The Consequences of War and the Prevention of War'

Author

Listed:
  • Horst Afheldt

    (Max Planck Institut für die Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen in der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt, Starnberg)

Abstract

Seven theses and two consequences constitute the summary of the study: Thesis 1: The Federal Republic of Germany can not be defended by means of conven tional weapons. Thesis 2: The use of nuclear weapons in defence of West Germany would lead to nuclear self-destruction. Thesis 3: For the Federal Republic of Germany there only exists a self-contradictory pol icy of deterrence (deterrence by means of incalculable risks for both sides). Thesis 4: Between the superpowers there exists a strategy of deterrence which in its mili tary logic is not self-contradictory. Thesis 5: Deterrence policy as pursued by the superpowers (however) results in an arms race. Thesis 6: The arms race increases the risk of war. Thesis 7: The attempt to maintain an equilibrium of deterrence through the arms race cripples the superpowers politically and militarily. Consequences: 1. Precisely because it is highly questionable, the deterrence system opens up a margin of man oeuvre for the Federal Republic of Germany to utilize armaments decisions as a means for foreign policy.2. In the appraisal of any policy, top priority must be given to contributions to the creation of a politically guaranteed world peace.

Suggested Citation

  • Horst Afheldt, 1973. "Political Conclusions of the Study 'The Consequences of War and the Prevention of War'," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 10(3), pages 259-263, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:10:y:1973:i:3:p:259-263
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/10/3/259.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:10:y:1973:i:3:p:259-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.