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The International Consequences of Expecting Surprise*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Arthur Lee Burns
Arthur Lee Burns
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

The leading Powers are actively seeking novel weapon-systems to give themselves the advantages of surprise. Difficulties in the way of that search, and its effects upon the relationships between Powers, furnish the subjects of this article.* We shall confine ourselves to those surprises that consist in or are closely related to the invention of instruments of war. “Surprise” has many other connotations for military and international studies—e.g., surprise attack, surprising changes of alliance—but these shall not directly concern us.

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Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , July 1958, pp. 512 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1958

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References

1 E.g., Shackle, G. L. S., “The Logic of Surprise,” Economica, XX (May 1953), pp. 112–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in his Uncertainty in Economics, Cambridge, Eng., 1955, pp. 56–62.

2 I attempted an analysis of the deterrent situation in From Balance to Deterrence, Social Science Monograph No. 9, Australian National University, December 1956, pp. 16ff.; published in a revised form in World Politics, IX, No. 4 (July 1957), especially pp. 509–29.

3 Reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald, August 16, 1957, p. 2 (New York Herald Tribune copyright).

4 In “Man and the Atom,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XIII, NO. 6 (June 1957), pp. 186–87.

5 “From Balance to Deterrence,” World Politics, op.cit., p. 521, n. 19.

6 New Times (Moscow), No. 39 (September 20, 1956), p. 10. This article and its implications were called to my attention by Dr. J. A. Modelski.

7 See Shimony, Abner, “Coherence and the Axiom of Confirmation,” Journal of Symbolic Logic, XX, No. 1 (March 1955), pp. 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Sherman Lehman, “On Confirmation and Rational Betting,” ibid., XX, No. 3 (September 1955), pp. 251–62; and John G. Kemeny, “Fair Bets and Inductive Probabilities,” ibid., pp. 263–73.

8 We follow here a common theoretical practice when we assume fair gambling to represent an activity indifferent as between rationality and irrationality, even though we realize the strength of the argument that fair gambling is itself irrational, given that all fortunes are limited and that money has diminishing utility for all.

9 For a similar use of this phrase, see Sherwin, C. W., “Securing Peace Through Military Technology,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XII, No. 5 (May 1956), pp. 161–62.Google Scholar

10 op.cit., p. 62.

11 “From Balance to Deterrence,” op.cit. p. 521, n. 19.

12 The above account dates from early February 1958. At that time there seemed to be no technical reason why it should not be possible for the nations to prescribe, in game-theory terms, a “dummy player” of the requisite type and dimensions to transform the bipolar and deterrent situation without evoking a potentially tyrannous world government.

13 For a name, how about the decent, if Hellenistic, Kainurgics—the study of innovatory action?