Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: Force, Order, and Justice
| Author | Donald Evans |
| Published date | 01 September 1968 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206802300321 |
| Date | 01 September 1968 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BooK
REvnws
487
Ridgway
is,
of
course,
an
American
general
describing
a
campaign
dominated
by
American
troops,
and
he
rarely
mentions
other
United
Nations
contributors.
Nevertheless
he
understands
very
well
their
utility
from
the
standpoint
of
American
policy.
While
observing
that
their
actual
manpower contributions "were
not
great,"
he
notes
that
"our
ability
to
operate under the
United
Nations
flag
lent
a
moral
flavor
to
our
actions
in
Korea
that
was
of
inestimable
value
in
our
dealings
with
the
rest
of
the
free
world."
He
concedes
that
to
a
certain
extent "this
requirement
hampered
our operations,"
but "it
also
laid
a
restraining
hand
on
military
adventures
that
might
have
drawn
us
into
deeper
and deeper involvement
in
Asia."
Mr.
Pearson,
among
others,
may
well
regard
this
as
a
gratifying
admission.
None
of
General
Ridgway's
observations
is
new.
All
of
them
have
been
made
by
others,
often
at
greater
length,
and
a
few
appeared
in
his
own
autobiography
in
1956.
Perhaps
it
is
for
this
reason
that
he
attempts
in
the
concluding
chapters
to
give his
subject topical currency
by
applying
its
lessons
to
the
war
in
Vietnam. Sadly,
this
is
the
least
successful
part
of
the
book.
We
are
reminded
that air
power
is
a
weapon
of
restricted utility,
that
the
effective
exercise of
limited
war
calls
for
carefully
defined
objectives
pursued
by commensurate
military
means,
and
that
in
any
case
few of
the world's
problems
are
susceptible
to military
solutions.
But
the
General,
whose
views on
Korea
may
in
some
respects
be
regarded
as definitive,
offers
little
in
the
way
of
concrete
alternatives
to
current
American
policy
in Vietnam.
Dalhousie
University
DENIS
STAIRS
FORCE,
ORDER,
AND
JUSTICE.
By
Robert
E.
Osgood
and
Robert
W.
Tucker.
1967.
(Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins.
Toronto:
Copp
Clark.
viii,
374pp.
$10.00)
After
Hiroshima,
what
is
the
role
and
the
rationale
of force
in
inter-
national
relations?
Osgood,
writing
mainly as
an
historian,
explains
the
present
role
of
force
as an
outcome
of
political and
military
develop-
ments
during
the
last
two
hundred
years.
Tucker,
writing
mainly
as
an
ethical
theorist,
discusses
the
present
rationale
of
force
in
relation
to
various
moral
issues.
The
two
approaches converge in
a
defence
of
the
nuclear
deterrent
as
the
only
realistic
present
basis
for
world
peace.
According to
Osgood,
the
very
same
developments
that
account
for
the
expansion
of
military
power
and
for the
tendency
of
this
power
to
become
an
autonomous
and
disruptive
force
beyond
political control
can
now
enable
states
to
bring
force
back
under
control as
a
rational
instrument
of policy.
He
notes
four
such
developments:
"centralization,
because
the
modern
state
has
the
indispensable
institutions
for
organiz-
ing
and
managing
force
as
a
disciplined
instrument
of
policy;
popu-
larization,
because
the
widespread
concern
with nuclear
dangers
places
novel
inhibitions
on
the
overt
use of
force
and
creates
novel
oppor-
tunities
for
developing
its
tacit
use;
professionalism,
because
the
com-
plexity and
dangers
of
the
new
technology
have
fostered
the
establish.
ment
of
a
new
civil-military
group
of
planners
and
managers
who
are
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