BOOK REVIEW 67 With the harnessing of the cosmic forces of the atom, science has ushered in an era that has rendered obsolete and absurd many of the underlying principles and assumptions of social interaction. In the pre-nuclear world,sovereign states were sustained by their armies which embodied their power in the international system. War was a "continuation of politics by other means" in the international realm, where "everything is subject to a supreme law which is the decision by arms", according to Clausewitz. Notwithstanding the dangerous delusions of many close to the centres of power in the West, force can no longer be the ultimate arbiter, for a nuclear war is not just winnable. There will neither be a victor nor the vanquished, merely universal annhilation. But the more "relative" concept of mutually assured destruction on which the survival of the human species has so far depended and which found its classic articulation by Churchil— "safety will be the sturdy child of terror and survival the twin brother of annhilation"—is equally dangerous and is bringing the world increasingly closer to the nuclear precipice. For, in practice, the nuclear powers, especially the West, have increasingly resorted to the Madman theory according to which "the nation's foes would bow to the President's will if they believed that he had taken leave of his senses, and was ready to risk a holocaust in order to secure some limited national gain." In this situation Schell perceives the choice before mankind as one of either choosing to transcend the system of sovereign nation-states based on power or risking the future of humanity. If we fail to appreciate and evolve institutions appropriate for a nuclear age, we maybe reduced to nothingness. The sight of "a stark naked man standing in the rain with his eyeball in his palm" after the Hiroshima explosion, recalled by a survivor Kinzo Nishida, will continue to haunt us and may well come to symbolise human civilisation unless all of us individually and collectively assume our moral responsibility to act. M SHANKAR Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.