First published 20 years ago, Lawrence Freedman's Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, taking the story to contemporary arguments about missile defense.

Sect. 1 First and Second Thoughts

1. The Arrival of the Bomb
2. Offence and Defence
3. Aggression and Retaliation

Sect. 2 Towards a Policy of Deterrence

4. Strategy for an Atomic Monopoly
5. Strategy for an Atomic Stalemate
6. Massive Retaliation

Sect. 3 Limited War

7. Limited Objectives
8. Limited Means

Sect. 4 The Fear of Surprise Attack

9. The Importance of Being First
10. Sputniks and the Soviet Threat
11. The Technological Arms Race

Sect. 5 The Strategy of Stable Conflict

12. The Formal Strategists
13. Arms Control
14. Bargaining and Escalation

Sect. 6 From Counter-Force to Assured Destruction

15. City-Avoidance
16. Assured Destruction
17. The Soviet Approach to Deterrence
18. The Chinese Connection

Sect. 7 The European Dimension

19. A Conventional Defence for Europe
20. The European Nuclear Option: Anglo-Saxon Views
21. The European Nuclear Option: French and German Views

Sect. 8 Retreat from Assured Destruction

22. Military-Industrial Complexities
23. The Consensus Undermined
24. Parity
25. Selective Options
26. The Reagan Administration and the Great Nuclear Debate
27. The Threat Evaporates
28. The Second Nuclear Age
29. Can there be a Nuclear Strategy?