Competitive Arms Control

The essential history of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) during the Nixon Administration How did Richard Nixon, a president so determined to compete for strategic nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union, become one of the most successful arms controllers of the Cold War? Drawing on newly opened Cold War archives, John D. Maurer argues that a central purpose of arms control talks for American leaders was to channel nuclear competition toward areas of American advantage and not just international cooperation. While previous accounts of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) have emphasized American cooperative motives, Maurer highlights how Nixon, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird shaped negotiations, balancing their own competitive interests with proponents of cooperation while still providing a coherent rationale to Congress. Within the arms control agreements, American leaders intended to continue deploying new weapons, and the arms control restrictions, as negotiated, allowed the United States to sustain its global power, contain communism, and ultimately prevail in the Cold War.

Can contemporary arms control keep pace with the rapid rate of change in both geopolitics and technology? While the challenges to future arms control point to a rocky road ahead, measures that build confidence, reduce miscalculation, enhance transparency, restrain costly and dangerous military competition, and offer useful mechanisms and venues for addressing sources of conflict will be of increasing value. For arms control tools to succeed, however, they must be adapted to the current security environment, account for rapidly evolving technological and informational factors, and consider alternative structures, modalities, and participation models. Indeed, now is the time for a recoupling of arms control with deterrence in a way that recognizes these new realities. Now is the time for integrated arms control that enhances stability, embraces plurality, and reinforces resiliency. This CSIS study examines the implication and prospects for the future of arms control in a highly competitive security environment in which challenges from advanced technologies and diminished state control over processes of verification become increasingly prominent features, even as the scope and modalities of arms control grow more complex and multifaceted. The report offers a reexamination of the broad contours of arms control and its role in managing competitive security risks and challenges and the implications for U.S. policymakers, academics, and strategic thinkers engaged in U.S. nuclear policy.

The definitive guide to the history of nuclear arms control by a wise eavesdropper and masterful storyteller, Michael Krepon. The greatest unacknowledged diplomatic achievement of the Cold War was the absence of mushroom clouds. Deterrence alone was too dangerous to succeed; it needed arms control to prevent nuclear warfare. So, U.S. and Soviet leaders ventured into the unknown to devise guardrails for nuclear arms control and to treat the Bomb differently than other weapons. Against the odds, they succeeded. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare for three quarters of a century. This book is the first in-depth history of how the nuclear peace was won by complementing deterrence with reassurance, and then jeopardized by discarding arms control after the Cold War ended. Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace tells a remarkable story of high-wire acts of diplomacy, close calls, dogged persistence, and extraordinary success. Michael Krepon brings to life the pitched battles between arms controllers and advocates of nuclear deterrence, the ironic twists and unexpected outcomes from Truman to Trump. What began with a ban on atmospheric testing and a nonproliferation treaty reached its apogee with treaties that mandated deep cuts and corralled "loose nukes" after the Soviet Union imploded. After the Cold War ended, much of this diplomatic accomplishment was cast aside in favor of freedom of action. The nuclear peace is now imperiled by no less than four nuclear-armed rivalries. Arms control needs to be revived and reimagined for Russia and China to prevent nuclear warfare. New guardrails have to be erected. Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace is an engaging account of how the practice of arms control was built from scratch, how it was torn down, and how it can be rebuilt.

A theoretical analysis and historical investigation of the Cold War nuclear arms race that challenges the nuclear revolution.

This benchmark study in the field of national security and weapons control was first published in 1961. Republished with a new preface providing the perspectives of 1985, it focuses on the world's military environment and analyzes how that environment may or may not be improved through political arms control efforts. The authors begin with a framework for understanding security, defense and arms control relationships. They also provide a framework for evaluating arms control proposals and for determining whether these proposals are in the security interests of the United States. ISBN 0-08-032391-X : $14.95 ; ISBN 0-08-032390-1 (pbk.) : $9.95.

Robert Jervis argues here that the possibility of nuclear war has created a revolution in military strategy and international relations. He examines how the potential for nuclear Armageddon has changed the meaning of war, the psychology of statesmanship, and the formulation of military policy by the superpowers.

"If peace breaks out, can arms control be far behind?" According to Colin S. Gray, this sardonic motto describes events of the 1990s just as well as it did those of the 1920s. Gray offers a provocative history of twentieth-century attempts at arms limitation, as he challenges the fundamental assumptions of arms control theory. Arms control has never worked, he concludes, because it never can. Existing approaches to arms control appeal to common sense, but they are logically unsound and inherently impractical, Gray argues, because they fail to take political realities into account. He outlines their inadequacies in what he calls the Arms Control Paradox: the more motivated nations are to fight one another, the less interested they will be in supporting significant arms limitations. Under these conditions, arms control agreements must be, to echo a phrase of George Will's, either impossible or unimportant. Documenting the naval treaties of the 1920s and 1930s and the initiatives to limit strategic nuclear arms from 1969 to the present, Gray seeks to demonstrate that the fortunes of negotiated arms limitation have merely reflected the temperature of international relations, rather than influencing those relations. National security analysts, students and scholars of international relations, and others interested in arms control issues will want to read House of Cards and debate its conclusions.