Word: aaron
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...considered imminent, authority to use nuclear weapons is automatically "predelegated" to various military commanders. For a nation that mistakenly assumes only the President's finger is ever on the button, this little-known fact will come as a disconcerting discovery. In his first novel, State Scarlet (Putnam; $18.95), David Aaron, a top staffer at the National Security Council during the Carter Administration, uses fiction to show how the nation's command, control and communications system, known as C 3, could spin out of control during a crisis...
With its tense plot wrapped in insider's jargon, State Scarlet follows in the tradition of Tom Clancy's best sellers, The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising. In Aaron's book a disgruntled G.I. in Europe provokes the crisis by stealing a backpack-size nuclear bomb and threatening to detonate it unless the President withdraws nuclear forces from Europe. When the Kremlin hears about this, it activates its own crisis machinery, and the two sides inexorably proceed toward a macho nuclear confrontation. The chief of the Strategic Air Command warns that the C 3 system can absorb...
...nuclear strategy: Does it make sense to target the Kremlin and other Soviet command centers? That might serve to destroy Moscow's war-fighting capability, but it could also eliminate its ability to de- escalate a crisis once the shooting begins. This strategy is known as "nuclear decapitation," and Aaron likens it to "two headless chickens" in a fight...
...former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara puts it, a credible deterrence presupposes a believable command and control structure. Aaron's concern is that C 3 is the Achilles' heel of America's capacity to respond. "Deterrence is like fine crystal," he says. "It's tough, but brittle and can shatter...
Only Henry Aaron, the vice president and director of player development for the Atlanta Braves, holds a front-office position of any authority. The entire history of black managers spanned just nine years and involved only three men, Frank Robinson, Maury Wills and Larry Doby. No team with a reasonable chance has ever been entrusted to a black. Typically, retired black stars become first-base coaches and clubhouse liaisons. In an infamous 1978 speech, former Senators Owner and lifelong Baseball Man Calvin Griffith told Minnesotans that he moved the team from Washington "when I found out you only...