BOOKS & ARTS
doing in the Pentagon: how he discovered it
was possible for a conscientious officer to, in
effect, launch a nuclear attack by mistake;
how it could escalate; and how there were
no recall messages for bombers once ordered
to bomb.
He found the armed forces were not
keen to make controls stricter, because that
meant delay, and they distrusted civilian
willingness to go through with Armageddon.
They in fact had delegated authority which
could reach down to theatres to start a nucle-
ar war if the president were out of contact
(which was surprisingly often), despite this
not being either in the plans or in the pub-
lic realm. It was a great internal as well as
external secret. Furthermore, in 1960, the
plan for war with the USSR was for an all-
out first strike against the USSR and China,
leading to (it was calculated) 600 million
deaths. In short, the plot of Dr Strangelove,
down to the details, was utterly plausible. In
effect there really was a Doomsday Machine,
and there soon would be a Soviet Doomsday
Machine too, and a military-industrial com-
plex which was amazingly keen to bomb, to
assume worst-case scenarios and to produce
extraordinarily erroneous intelligence,
believed by the brightest and best.
Those of a different view had to keep
their view secret. Ellsberg reveals that Rob-
ert McNamara hinted strongly to him that
he was against the launch of nuclear war in
any circumstances, and that he was told it
was the president’s view also. McNamara
only spread the word in his memoirs dec-
ades later. Ellsberg’s book extends, intelli-
gently and lucidly, to an account of nuclear
policy written as a historian. He shows the
extent to which nuclear weapons were in
fact used, though not since 1945 actually
exploded, to force others to give ground.
The nuclear threat, the first strike threat,
was used: in Korea, against China in the
1950s, against Vietnam and against the
USSR. This is a highly intelligent, witty, pre-
cise and hard-nosed book.
Braithwaite’s book is broader in geo-
graphical and chronological scope and
directed to a more general readership. It is a
history of the atomic age, compellingly well
told, and especially revealing in the Soviet
case. The conclusion is that there was never a
coherent argument for nuclear deterrence on
either side of the Iron Curtain. It was intel-
lectually discreditable but good politics to
rely on crazy worst-case scenarios. Detach-
ment and realism were not career-enhancing.
The result was acceptance of, say, grotesque
overestimates of Soviet bomber strength and
then missile strength in the 1950s and 1960s,
and of the precision of Soviet ICBMs in the
1980s — the window of vulnerability.
The British case is dealt with appropri-
ately briefly, given its marginality, yet one
wishes for more. Braithwaite is a gentle crit-
ic, but he is clearly not sold on British policy,
except to say it was more realistic in its sim-
plicity. He makes clear that the British bomb
since the 1960s has been not an independent
deterrent, but as Macmillan called it, an
interdependent deterrent. (Harold Wilson
declared it was not British, not independ-
ent, and not a deterrent.) He points out that
British plans to blast Moscow straight off
were contradicted by US plans for a gradu-
ated response.
Another delicious point is that the British
scoffed at the French because, in their genu-
ine independence from the USA, their bomb
did not have the capacity to hit targets. Little
is what it has seemed.Three concepts of freedom
Sam Leith
Feel Free: Essays
by Zadie Smith
Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 451There’s a tiny mistake in Zadie Smith’s
new collection of essays. She describes
Geoff Dyer’s unimprovably funny
‘trick while introducing an unsmiling
J.M. Coetzee at a literary festival’. And it’s a
suggestive mistake.
The moment she refers to is Dyer, bash-
ful, blurting that he wondered how his
younger self would have reacted if he’d one
day known he’d be sharing the stage with
‘a Booker prize-winning, South African,
Nobel prize-winning novelist’... and then
deciding that his younger self would have
said: ‘That’s incredible, because Nadine
Gordimer is my favourite writer.’ The joke
is all the funnier because the camera pans
to Coetzee, utterly stony of face as Geoff
giggles. (It’s still on YouTube; I commend it
to you.)
Why it’s a mistake is that it wasn’t Dyer
introducing Coetzee — but vice versa; so it’s
that much more insolent. And why it’s sug-
gestive is that it’s an easy mistake to make.
With Dyer, as with the Zadie Smith of these
essays, you can’t ever quite be sure who’s
introducing whom: when Dyer writes about
Lawrence or Tarkovsky, the real object of
study is usually Geoff Dyer; and Smith’s
essays here, whatever their subjects, are at
least as much a way of taking a walk through
Smith’s own sensibility.
That sensibility is liberal, biracial, lower-
middle-turned-international-media-class,
thoughtful, globetrotting, north-London-
hefted, New York dwelling, successful
novelist, teacher and critic, hip-hop
enthusiast, occasional magazine journal-
ist (though one who can interview Jay
Z without asking him about Beyoncé),
the sort of person who has Schopenhau-
er in her pocket and a bit of the teacher’s
pet about her, earnest, funny, enthusiastic
and original.
A short-lived literary column she wrote
for Harper’s, for instance, specialised in
unexpected conjunctions — the pessi-
mist philosopher John Gray with the late
Duchess of Devonshire; or a 1931 small-
press novella by Mela Hartwig with a book
about insects (‘At dinner, [Smith’s insect
anecdotes] don’t just end the conversation,
they end dinner.’). Another essay has as its
premise: ‘Imagine a meeting between Justin
Bieber, global pop star, and Martin Buber,
long-dead Jewish philosopher. I know, I
know. But in my mind these two are des-
tined to meet.’ And you know what? She
brings it off.
The essays on politics (there are only a
couple) are weaker — not weak, but notIn the Butterfly House
The crowd presses round her, closely.
She longs to break off one of the huge leaves
and fan herself. Are you all right darling?
Gerald asks, winding his arm round her waist.They have already pored over crickets
and heaving piles of cocoons.
A Red Admiral unwinds its proboscis
and hunts over her skin. Gerald
moves closer, in his personal aura of moistness.Through the glass she can see cool rain.
She plots an exit to the railway station.
But how could she face her mother?
A honeymoon is an awkward time to bolt.— Connie Bensley