What is the most promising and proper role of U.S. strategic power in preserving world peace and American security? The issue is of universal significance—and universally debated. PEACE AND THE STRATEGY CONFLICT, a major contribution to this debate—and to the efforts to resolve it—is bound to capture the attention of the nation's policy and military planners, as well as thoughtful citizens.

Author, analyst, and teacher, William Kintner is fully qualified to treat the subject. He acknowledges the vital roles that diplomacy, economics, and social and psychological attitudes play in the struggle for world peace. However, his central theme is that U.S. strategic superiority is an essential ingredient—and indispensable—in keeping that peace. It is a peace which, he believes, is today being threatened as U.S. policy planners seek to cope with two conflicting goals—the maintenance of strategic superiority and the slowdown of the arms race.

PEACE AND THE STRATEGY CONFLICT considers the trends in American strategic policy since the end of World War II. Its author explains how the support given U.S. diplomacy by limited military action is reinforced by national power at the highest strategic levels—an organic relationship which, he says, has been obscured by the advent of nuclear technology. Following his discussion of "competitive paths" toward peace, he presents a balance sheet of strategic assets and liabilities, an analysis of the technological confrontation, and the alternatives in the issue of "nuclear competition or cooperation." In the course of his discussion of the choices we face, he also presents evidence that the United States may soon face a strategic crisis in which the balance of world power could be upset. And, in showing how U.S. strategic superiority supports a many-sided search for peace, he suggests what can be done to avoid a technological cul de sac.