At a moment when arms control is deeply troubled and may be dying, two eminent scholars, Marc Trachtenberg and the late Robert Jervis, have taken a fresh look at the beginnings of strategic arms control fifty years after the signing in Moscow of the SALT I agreements in May of 1972. They do so from…
Tag: arms control
H-Diplo | RJISSF Article Review 162: Akhtar on Bateman, “Keeping the Technological Edge”
On 22 December 1984, shortly after a meeting at Camp David, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly confirmed her government’s support for the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a proposed US plan to establish a ground- and space-based missile defense system. Stating that she had told the American President of her “firm conviction” that…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable on Maurer, Competitive Arms Control
Arms control is complicated. It is a process marked by countless studies and even more meetings, ranging from early internal deliberations weighing the benefits and drawbacks of talks to the give-and-take of years spent at the bargaining table.
Roundtable 13-9 on Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age: Between Disarmament and Armageddon
Since the dawn of the nuclear age, three distinct approaches to nuclear strategy – disarmament, denial, and deterrence – have waxed and waned in importance as guides to US doctrine and policy.[1] Although champions of each of these approaches sometimes defend their position as if it represented the one true religion, each of these strategies…
H-Diplo Roundtable XXIII-11 on The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War
Do nuclear weapons revolutionize world politics? For decades, the standard answer from international relations scholars has been a resounding yes. This mainstream view, known as ‘The Theory of the Nuclear Revolution,’ is associated with scholars such as Kenneth Waltz, Robert Jervis, and Charles Glaser. [1]It argues that nuclear weapons generate a condition of mutual vulnerability that…
Roundtable 6-9, “Flawed Logics: Strategic Nuclear Arms Control from Truman to Obama”
Heated debates about the merits of specific arms control agreements were a constant feature of the Cold War. Did the hawks or the doves offer a more compelling and intellectually consistent viewpoint in these debates? In his new book, which should be of great interest to both historians and international relations theorists, James Lebovic argues…