http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/4537330

U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control : where we are and how we got there

When the Reagan Administration came into office, the history of nuclear amrs control was at a turning point. That was partly because of the situation that the new Administration inherited. But it was also because of who the Administration was. A group of people who had been unrelentingly critical of arms control from outside the Executive Branch found themselves suddenly on the inside, with the power to translate their long-standing disapproval into the basis for a new set of American objectives and policies. Those people faced a complicated mixture of opportunities and risks. As it turned out, they sometimes mistook one for the other. While one can be optimistic to the point of seeing a possibility of negotiations resuming between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., one must also recognize the danger that those other negotiations, the intramural ones within the U.S. government will continue to no avail, focused on such old issues as the real negotiability of cruise missiles, but also on the new and potentially crucial issue of the negotiability of strategic defenses. That is the single most interesting and important question that looms at the outset of the next chapter in the history of arms control--if there is to be one.

Open All Close All