The purpose of this book is to examine the birth of bilateral strategic arms control between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Johnson Administration, from 1964 to 1969. It is about the time and the place of the birth of bilateral strategic arms control as it came about in the United States through the efforts of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s. This is the time of the birth of what quickly came to be known as SALT, or the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. This inquiry firstly considers whether the move towards bilateral strategic arms control was institutional or personal. It then looks for the motivating factors: both theoretical and substantive. As few things have only a single cause, it is likely that we shall find that the birth of strategic arms control was influenced by both nuclear weapons employment theory, and by a substantive incident or reality such as the ever increasing number and sophistication of nuclear weaponry. Lastly, we must look for an immediate precipitating factor, such as the move towards deployment of a potentially destabilizing ABM system by both the USA and USSR. Therefore, it must be borne in mind when examining the people and their theories, the institutions, the prevailing realities, and major precipitating factors, that they all come together to form the basis for the birth of bilateral strategic arms control. This book shall therefore strive to reveal the extent of personal input; the objective basis for that personal commitment; and examine the major precipitating factors, namely Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM), and to a lesser extent, Multiple Independently Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRV). Although barely discussed at the time, the MIRV would turn out to be a major arms control problem: far greater than the hotly contested ABM system which spurred so many debates. The unique aspect of this research is that other writers have concentrated almost totally on the people and events surrounding the Nixon Administration when studying SALT. While it is true that the talks did not get underway during the Johnson years, this study will show that all of the theoretical and preparatory work was done in the Johnson years, and conclude by showing that many of the same people appear in the Nixon years. Without the input of McNamara and his team, there would have been no movement on strategic arms control until possibly the 1970s. To add to the historical value of the work, I have included in the annexes complete texts of the initial arms control proposal which the US team was to present to the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1968. In addition, presented here for the very first time are the full instructions to the negotiating team and the initial presentation paper to be read by the team leader on the opening day of the talks. When this final material is tied in with the history of the push for the talks, the story is indeed exciting and meaningful. For the first time we are presented with the almost complete picture of the formulation of an arms control proposal. There is of course a fluke of history which brought this all to light. As the Johnson material was never directly used in the formal SALT talks, it was not subject to the same stringent security classifications as those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton materials. Therefore the documents started to be declassified in the late 1980s, with the bulk coming to light in 1991 through 1994. Here then is the story of the origins of strategic arms control.

This book explains the conditions under which great powers are likely to cooperate to improve their security by engaging in qualitative arms control. In agreeing to limit or proscribe certain classes of weapons, states will constrain their military capabilities and therefore decrease the threat they pose to potential adversaries. Focusing on the expected military impact of technological change and the capacity of states to confidently monitor the activities of its negotiating partners, it may be possible to forge lasting agreements that improves the security of the participating states. However, at other times, the nature technological change may force states to engage in competitive behavior, precluding cooperation and increasing the probability of conflict. Examining a diverse set of cases, including the Washington Naval Conference, The World Disarmament Conference at Geneva, the Baruch Plan for the International Control of Atomic Energy, and the SALT I Accords (including the ABM Treaty), this volume presents a persuasive, comprehensive and interesting contribution to the literature on arms racing and arms control, and should be of interest to students of international relations theory and security studies. By presenting a theoretical-informed model that explicitly links the security strategies of states to their choices about development and deployment of new weapons and, consequently, their willingness to engage in arms control cooperation, this book provides an important refinement upon existing theoretical and historical approaches.

In Dangerous Ground, Scott Ritter, one of the world's leading experts on arms control, tells a bold and revisionist account of the inseparable histories of the post-World War II American presidency and nuclear weapons. Unpacking sixty years of nuclear history, Ritter shows that nuclear weapons have become such a fixture that they define present-day America on economic, military, political, and moral grounds. And despite fears of global nuclear proliferation, the greatest threat to international stability, Ritter argues, is the US's addiction to nuclear weapons. Even in light of Barack Obama's historic speech in April 2009—which called for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons— America continues to guard a significant and dangerous nuclear stockpile. The notion that we are more secure with nuclear weapons is deeply entrenched in the American psyche—and virulently protected by forces in the US establishment. As long as this paradigm persists, Ritter suggests, there will be no fundamental US policy change, and as such, no change in global nuclear proliferation.

In 1948, philosopher Richard Weaver argued that ideas have consequences. This book explores three diverse consequences flowing from one ideacommunism. In Soviet Russia, the idea became dogma, a type of secular religion. The Soviet Secular Religion skewed all the efforts of central planners in a pre-determined direction, with debilitating effects, from the reign of Lenin to Stalin and Brezhnev. SSR empowered Mikhail Gorbachev in his attempts at reform, even while it constrained those efforts, and blinded him to the unfolding collapse of the system. Formed soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Party of India had its own theoreticians and leaders, and a diversity of opinions. But their reliance on Moscow's authority to maintain consensus meant for them dependence; in short, the CPI became a pawn of the Kremlin. Russian interests often conflicted with those of South Asia, confounding the CPI's chances for success. Moreover, the People's Republic of China promoted competing ideas, and the Moscow/Peking split prompted a mirroring, and fatal, schism within the CPI. In the United States, anti-communism fueled Containment, the Cold War paradigm. The most dangerous aspect of this conflict of ideas, a threat that was truly existential, was always 'The Bomb' (or rather, tens of thousands of them). American nuclear policy may be divided into three eras. In the 1940s and 50s, anti-communist ideology dominated political discourse, and the U.S. sought a preponderance in arms. Around 1960, rationality became the vogue, ushering in the era of Detente. Finally, ideology returned with the election of 1980, shaping policies that helped end the long confrontation of ideas. Where Soviet dogma obsessed over production, the American Ideology is engrossed with consumption. The book's afterword argues that American economic planners are unconsciously biased, in a manner similar if antipodal to that of Soviet economists. Something like a Gorbachev moment, where skewed indicators show progress even as the system collapses, is not impossible for the United States.

An Owl in a Hawk’s World: Top diplomat Llewellyn E Thompson was everywhere the Cold War was. Winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Best Biography Winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Best Biography Against the sprawling backdrop of the Cold War, The Kremlinologist revisits some of the twentieth century's greatest conflicts as seen through the eyes of its hardest working diplomat, Llewellyn E Thompson. From the wilds of the American West to the inner sanctums of the White House and the Kremlin, Thompson became an important advisor to presidents and a key participant in major global events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Yet unlike his contemporaries Robert S. McNamara and Dean Rusk, who considered Thompson one of the most crucial Cold War actors and the "unsung hero" of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he has not been the subject of a major biography—until now. Thompson's daughters Jenny and Sherry Thompson skillfully and thoroughly document his life as an accomplished career diplomat. In vigorous prose, they describe how Thompson joined the Foreign Service both to feed his desire for adventure and from a deep sense of duty. They also detail the crucial role he played as a negotiator unafraid of compromise. Known in the State Department as "Mr. Tightlips," Thompson was the epitome of discretion. People from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum lauded his approach to diplomacy and claimed him as their own. Refuting historical misinterpretations of the Berlin Crisis, the Austrian State Treaty, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Thompsons tell their father's fascinating story. With unprecedented access to Thompson's FBI dossier, State Department personnel files, letters, diaries, speeches, and documents, and relying on probing interviews and generous assistance from American and Russian archivists, historians, and government officials, the authors bring new material to light, including important information on the U-2, Kennan's containment policy, and Thompson's role in US covert operations machinery. This unique and monumental biography not only restores a central figure to history, it makes the crucial events he shaped accessible to a broader readership and gives contemporary readers a backdrop for understanding the fraught United StatesRussia relationship that still exists today.

“We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” -- ROBERT OPPENHEIMER Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump is a history of America’s corrosive affair with nuclear weapons, and the failed efforts to curb this radioactive ardor through arms control. The book’s title refers to the allusion by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb, to dueling scorpions when discussing the deadly nuclear rivalry between the US and Soviet Union, and signals the dangers inherent in the resumption of the perilous US drive for nuclear supremacy. Providing a vivid and gripping A-Z history of America’s deceptive use of arms control as a means of actually furthering its quest for nuclear dominance, Ritter sheds light on a contradictory US agenda little understood by the lay reader, while providing sufficient detail and context to engage the specialist. Originally published by Nation Books in 2010 under the title Dangerous Ground, this new version has been streamlined and significantly expanded to account for the failed arms control policies of the Obama administration, and the rejection of arms control as a policy during the first term of the Trump administration. The Trump administration has pulled out of one landmark arms control treaty, the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, and is threatening to let another, the 2010 New START treaty, expire. The terrifying Cuban missile crisis of 1962 demonstrated the apocalyptic folly of nuclear arsenals operating without limitation, and led to reciprocal constraints that moderated the nuclear ambitions of both the US and Soviet Union Those constraints, for the most part, no longer exist. The next missile crisis could prove terminal for humanity. Scorpion King is a book that can, and should, occupy the shelves of academic libraries, diplomats and military professionals, as well as make the reading lists of concerned citizens, given the dangerous state of US and Russian relations, now hovering on the cusp of a new and increasingly hazardous nuclear arms race. It provides a road map showing how we collectively returned to the nuclear cliff edge, and shines light on the possibility of an exit from a seemingly endless dark tunnel. Providing context for the forthcoming 2020 Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Scorpion King is must reading for an imperilled world.

Since the advent of the contemporary US national security apparatus in 1947, entrepreneurial public officials have tried to reorient the course of the nation's foreign policy. Acting inside the National Security Council system, some principals and high-ranking officials have worked tirelessly to generate policy change and innovation on the issues they care about. These entrepreneurs attempt to set the foreign policy agenda, frame policy problems and solutions, and orient the decision-making process to convince the president and other decision makers to choose the course they advocate. In National Security Entrepreneurs and the Making of American Foreign Policy Vincent Boucher, Charles-Philippe David, and Karine Prémont develop a new concept to study entrepreneurial behaviour among foreign policy advisers and offer the first comprehensive framework of analysis to answer this crucial question: why do some entrepreneurs succeed in guaranteeing the adoption of novel policies while others fail? They explore case studies of attempts to reorient US foreign policy waged by National Security Council entrepreneurs, examining the key factors enabling success and the main forces preventing the adoption of a preferred option: the entrepreneur's profile, presidential leadership, major players involved in the policy formulation and decision-making processes, the national political context, and the presence or absence of significant opportunities. By carefully analyzing significant diplomatic and military decisions of the Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, and offering a preliminary account of contemporary national security entrepreneurship under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, this book makes the case for an agent-based explanation of foreign policy change and continuity.

“The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy quickly established itself as a classic when it first appeared in 1981. This edition makes it even better, incorporating as it does new material about the Cold War and up-dating to include subsequent developments. Filled with insights and penetrating analysis, this volume is truly indispensable.” —Robert Jervis, Author of How Statesmen Think "Freedman and Michaels have written a thorough and thought-provoking guide to nuclear strategy. The authors analyze the causes of both wise and unwise strategic decisions in the past and thereby shine a bright light on dilemmas we face in our common nuclear future." —Scott Sagan, Stanford University, USA “With its comprehensive coverage, clear and direct language, and judicious summaries of a vast literature, this new and wholly revised edition of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy will be essential reading for any student of nuclear history, strategic studies, or contemporary international relations.” —Matthew Jones, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK “Sir Lawrence Freedman’s The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy has been the first port of call for three generations of academics and policy-makers wanting to familiarize themselves with the subject matter. The success of this book could have led Professor Freedman to satisfy himself with regular updates or afterwords. But the tireless author is now gracing us with an entirely revised edition of his masterpiece nearly forty years after its initial publication, taking into account findings from archives and declassified documents. At the same time, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy remains true to its original purpose and spirit: an easy to read manual, light with footnotes, focusing on policy rather than on theory, and thus the best possible introduction to an arcane subject. In an era when nuclear strategy issues seem to be becoming relevant again, its historical scope and breadth will make its reading or re-reading even more useful – if only because knowing about the absurdity of the Cold war arms race is a prerequisite if one does not want to repeat its mistakes.” —Bruno Tertrais, Deputy Director, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, France “This updated and improved edition of the classic text on the evolution of nuclear strategy is a must read for anyone attempting to understand the nuclear predicament and where it is heading. Impressive in every respect!” —T.V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations, McGill University, Canada, and the author of The Traditon of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons “After the end of the Cold War, we hoped for a world in which nuclear weapons would have ‘low salience’, or might even disappear into virtual, non-assembled arsenals. Alas, they are coming to the fore again. With changes in political context and technology, it is thus pressing that ‘the Bible’ on the Evolution of Nuclear Strategy should be updated. Lawrence Freedman’s great classic has been admirably updated with the help of Jeff Michaels. The work, just as its previous editions, thus remains the definitive and authoritative point of reference on nuclear strategy in the twenty-first century.” —Beatrice Heuser, Chair of International Relations, University of Glasgow, Scotland First published in 1981, Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been completely rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, and covering all nuclear powers.

This book engages in a constructive, practical debate on the nature and effects of uncertainty in global politics. International contributors explore the processes associated with different forms of uncertainty in the context of environmental issues, diplomacy and international negotiations, and conflict and security. From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the 1997 and 2008 financial crises to the Arab Uprisings and the European migrant crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, assessments of many events with lasting consequences on the global order have begun with: “why didn’t we see this coming?” There is much to learn from how phenomena that affect the global order generate uncertainty and what effects such uncertainty has on actors and issues. Presenting perspectives from all corners of the discipline and emerging and established scholars the book provides an up-to-date overview of the state of the literature; a concise yet conceptually rich theoretical framework; a mix of regional and global contemporary issues; process-oriented empirical evidence and methodological tools to assess different forms of uncertainty and propose practical solutions to addressing uncertainty in diverse contexts. The book will be of interest to scholars of global politics, international security, global environmental politics, international organizations and institutions, social movements, and conflict studies.

This edited collection examines the role of the Fulda Gap—located at the border between East and West Germany—in Cold War politics and military strategy. The contributors analyze the strategic deliberations of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, the balance of forces, the role of the local peace movement, and various other topics, while weaving together the history of the Cold War at local, European, and global levels.