Owls: Out on a Limb

The aviary of nuclear-arms-control experts has long been populated by just two types of birds: hawks and doves. Lately, however, a new species is flapping about on op-ed pages: the owl. Hawks are concerned that war will break out because the U.S. is too weak; doves fear that the arms race will provoke an attack. Owls argue that the greatest danger lies not in too many missiles or too few but in the risk that humans will by mistake or miscalculation launch them.

The term was coined by a covey of professors at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government--Joseph S. Nye Jr., Graham T. Allison and Albert Carnesale. In their book Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War, they urge a series of steps to minimize the risk of a catastrophic accident. Among them: upgrading the hotline by creating crisis-control centers, establishing sanctions against nuclear proliferation, replacing short-range nuclear weapons in Europe with conventional warheads, holding regular meetings between U.S. and Soviet military leaders, and adding safety devices to prevent the inadvertent launching of submarine-based missiles. The owls do not slight the importance of arms control. They want to preserve existing arms-control treaties and negotiate new ones. They disdain such simplistic solutions as a freeze on nuclear weapons or a rigid policy of no first use. "You can be a hawk and an owl," notes Carnesale, "or you can be a dove and an owl." But in either case, presumably, wiser.