The Final Frontier

Book excerpt: Drawing parallels between the current "War on Terror" and the massive arms expansion of the first half of the 20th century, Jenkins (history and philosophy of science, Cambridge U., UK) argues that the fear among the American people of devastating weapons in the hands of "enemies" was created by the American military and allied weapons laboratories in order to justify the development of devastating weapons that were used by the U.S. with devastating effect on civilian populations abroad. The development of this world devastating power helped delay the expansion of democracy domestically and was aided by an alliance between a centralized Presidency and the weapons industry. Jenkins concludes the work by suggesting that the path out of this dilemma is to further expand democracy so that citizens intervene in defining the path of future research and technology development. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR