Albert Wohlstetter

Albert Wohlstetter (born 1913, died January 10, 1997) was a major intellectual force behind efforts to avoid the horizontal spread of nuclear weapons. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an accomplished historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985. He was one of the inspirations for the film "Dr. Strangelove". [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43339-2003Apr6?language=printer For Wolfowitz, a Vision May Be Realized ] , Michael Dobbs, "The Washington Post", April 7, 2003.]

Career

A native of New York, New York, Wohlstetter earned degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University in the 1930s. During the 1940s, he worked with the War Production Board, at Atlas Aircraft Products Company and, after World War II, at the General Panel Corporation of California.

From 1951 to 1963, he served first as a consultant and later as a senior policy analyst for the RAND Corporation, and maintained his affiliation with RAND for years afterward. He and his wife also advised both Democratic and Republican administrations, including President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. On February 25, 1963, the Wohlstetters published "Studies for a Post-Communist Cuba."

During his long career, Wohlstetter also taught at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s. From 1964 to 1980, he taught in the political science department of the University of Chicago, and chaired the dissertation committees of Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. He is often credited with influencing a number of prominent members of the neoconservative movement, including Richard Perle (who, as a teenager, dated Wohlstetter's daughter).

Views regarding mutually assured destruction

In 2003, [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2978.htm two French journalists] writing for "Le Monde" (Paris) tried to summarize Wohlstetter's ideas on nuclear strategy. They wrote that Wohlstetter:

was at the origin of the rethinking of the traditional doctrine known as 'mutual assured destruction' (MAD, in its English acronym), which was the basis for nuclear deterrence. According to this theory, two blocs capable of inflicting upon each other irreparable damages would cause leaders to hesitate to unleash the nuclear fire. For Wohlstetter and his pupils, MAD was both immoral -- because of the destruction inflicted on civilian populations -- and ineffective: it led to the mutual neutralization of nuclear arsenals. No statesman endowed with reason, and in any case no American president, would decide on 'reciprocal suicide.' Wohlstetter proposed on the contrary a 'graduated deterrence,' i.e. the acceptance of limited wars, possibly using tactical nuclear arms, together with 'smart' precision-guided weapons capable of hitting the enemy's military apparatus. He criticized the politics of nuclear arms limitations conducted together with Moscow. It amounted, according to him, to constraining the technological creativity of the United States in order to maintain an artificial equilibrium with the USSR.

Death

Wohlstetter died in Los Angeles in 1997 at the age of 83.

References

External links

* [http://www.rand.org/about/history/wohlstetter/ Online library of Wohlstetter's works at the RAND Corporation]
* [http://www.albertwohlstetter.com Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com] , a website that examines the careers and writings of the late Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter.