Retreat From Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War.

• Author: Maynes, Charles William

Charles William Maynes is the editor of Foreign Policy.

John Mueller says we shouldn't worry about major wars anymore, Don't be too sure.

* Retreat From Doomsday The Obsolescence Of Major War John Mueller. Basic Books, $20.95.

What if the Cold War is over? What if war itself is being abandoned by all major powers as an instrument of policy?

This is the thesis of Mueller's provocative book.* Its implications are profound not only for America's foreign policies but also for its domestic politics.

Mueller's thesis, in brief, is the following: Woodrow Wilson would have been right except for one man-Adolf Hitler. World War I would have been the war to end all wars except that a fanatic took over Germany and forced the world to relearn a lesson World War I had already taught: modern war has no rational purpose because the level of violence attained far exceeds any benefit obtained.

Most strategists would join Mueller in at least conceding that nuclear war is not rational. But Mueller goes further than most strategists by arguing that the memory of World Wars I and II is enough to convince officials of major countries that war is now irrational. In addition, governments have another reason to eschew war: nation states now seek economic prosperity more than political power. Japan is the state others wish to emulate, not the United States or the Soviet Union.

Mueller's thesis will gain greater credibility with most readers if he can demonstrate that the communist threat, either from the Soviet Union or China, is over. He is willing to concede that while Stalin lived a "lunatic war was certainly conceivable." But he contends that since 1953 there has never been a real threat of war between the Soviet Union and the United States. To some, the Cuban Missile Crisis might seem the exception. John Kennedy believed that the chances of war were then one in three or one in two. But new revelations have documented that Kennedy was prepared, if necessary, to make major concessions to avoid war. And Mueller approvingly quotes recent studies suggesting that the odds of going to war even in that supreme crisis were "close to zero."

Whatever the actual threat at the time, the Cuban Missile Crisis discredited "crisis as a methodology." Neither in the Kremlin nor in the White House have officials since been anxious to push the world to the precipice. Jimmy Carter's response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or Mikhail Gorbachev's answer to the presence of the...