(Note to readers: This is the second half of a review of Ken Adelman’s Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War. This review will also appear in The Nonproliferation Review. The first half appears here.) Ronald Reagan, the unreconstructed Cold Warrior…
Reagan and Gorbachev at Hofdi House during the Reykjavik Summit in 1986. Ken Adelman has written an appealing, breezy account of the most extraordinary chapter of US-Soviet nuclear negotiations – the impromptu summit at Reykjavik on October 11-12, 1986 between…
The Nonproliferation Review will be publishing my book review of Ken Adelman’s Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War. (Where would we be without publishing license and hyperbolic subtitles?) In the meantime, here are some quotes from…
The Stimson Center will release an edited volume in September comparing and contrasting deterrence against nuclear and space warfare. Here’s a preview. Nuclear deterrence and space deterrence have common elements as well as distinct differences. No difference is more striking…
The cheapest debating trick in the nuclear weapons/arms control business is the well-crafted rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions are asked not to seek answers, but to advance preferred outcomes. Hardy perennials include, “Can’t we do better than…?” The best rhetorical questions…
Anatoly Dobrynin was the Soviet Union’s Ambassador to the United States for a mere twenty-four years. He arrived in Washington the year of the Cuban missile crisis and left after Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan managed to steer US-Soviet relations…
The thirtieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s surprise roll-out of the Strategic Defense Initiative has been duly noted within narrow circles. The section of my shoe box files devoted to SDI is thick and inviting. The 4 X 6 card…
David Hoffman tapped a thoughtful piece, “Is Nuclear Arms Control Dead?” that appears on Foreign Policy’s website. Nuclear arms control has been declared dead on many occasions, including when the Soviet Union broke a nearly three-year-long moratorium on atmospheric tests…
Twenty-five years ago, the world’s highest-stakes poker game was played in Reykjavik. This characterization comes from a man with a pretty good poker face, George Shultz, who was the US Secretary of State at the time. Secretary Shultz appeared to…
