This morning, the Washington Post published Richard Perle’s op-ed, “The Arms Race Myth, Again,” which cites Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 essay, “Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?”
In the mid-1970s, Wohlstetter and a team of researchers at PAN Heuristics conducted a series of studies to clarify the empirical record of the strategic competition between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The point was to test whether the competition looked like a “spiraling” or “exponentially increasing” arms race, or rather like something else. So far as I can tell, “Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?” was the last of these studies, and was published in the now-defunct periodical, Survey, as well as in the edited volume, Defending America (1977). Below, I’ve listed all of the relevant writings of which I’m aware:
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Is There a Strategic Arms Race?”, Foreign Policy, No. 15 (Summer 1974), pp. 3-20.
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Rivals, But No ‘Race’,” Foreign Policy, No. 16 (Fall 1974), pp. 48-81.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Legends of the Strategic Arms Race
, USSI Report 75-1 (Washington, DC: United States Strategic Institute, September 1974).
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Clocking the Strategic Arms Race,” opinion, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 1974, p. 24.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Robert Raab, Arthur Steiner, Roberta Wohlstetter and Zivia Wurtele, The Strategic Competition: Perceptions and Response, final report for the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (Net Technical Assessment), DAHC 15-73-C-0137 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, January 14, 1975). PDF version available online at Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.
- Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, Robert Raab, Arthur Steiner, Roberta Wohlstetter and Zivia Wurtele, Methods That Obscure and Methods That Clarify the Strategic Competition, final report for the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (Net Technical Assessment), DAHC 15-73-C-0074 (Los Angeles, CA: PAN Heuristics, June 30, 1975). PDF version available online at Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Optimal Ways to Confuse Ourselves,” Foreign Policy, No. 20 (Fall 1975), pp. 170-198.
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?,” Survey, Vol. 22. Nos. 3/4 (Summer 1976), pp. 161-217. Updated 1977 version reprinted in Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski, eds., Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (Strategic Studies Institute, 2009).
- Albert Wohlstetter, “Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?,” in Robert Conquest, Defending America (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1977). Reprinted in Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski, eds., Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (Strategic Studies Institute, 2009).
Updated June 3, 2015.
