Deterrence and its discontents
By Ulrich Kühn | June 28, 2018
Sigmund Freud
What might Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, have found, had he lived long enough to study the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review and its drafters? Anxiety about failure and death, fear of impotence, and an obsession with deterrence that obscures the ultimate question: “What is it that the United States wants in this world?” In this essay, the author uses psychoanalytic metaphors to explain why the United States does not currently have a long-term strategy for dealing with its most fundamental foreign policy challenges – and why it needs one, particularly as regards the global nuclear dilemma.
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Ulrich Kühn
Ulrich Kühn is the director of the Arms Control and Emerging Technologies Program at the University of Hamburg, and a nonresident scholar with the... Read More
