Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has puzzled scholars and commentators. Some have claimed that it was a purely political maneuver, while others have explained it as a ruse conjured up by presidential advisers to weaken Soviet resolve.
These assumptions, however, fail to acknowledge the depth of Reagan's involvement in nuclear abolition, and how passionately committed Reagan was to the pursuit of this goal. In" Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow renders untenable the persistent belief that Reagan was an ideologically shallow figurehead.
Reagan's wish to ban nuclear armament first came to light in 1945, just months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. While sidestepping political partisanship, Lettow demonstrates that scholars and historians have largely neglected to assess properly the influence of Reagan's ideal and how it led to one of the most important, if the least understood, of Reagan's accomplishments.
In a narrative that covers the start of Reagan's presidency and the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, during which SDI was a defining issue, we see SDI for what it was: a full-on assault against nuclear weapons waged as much through policy as through ideology. While cabinet members and advisers-Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger among them-played significant roles, it was Ronald Reagan, himself who presided over every element, large and small, of this paradigm shift in U.S. diplomacy.
Lettow conducted interviews with former Reagan officials-four of his six national security advisers, both of his ambassadors to the USSR, and both ofhis defense secretaries. He also draws upon the vast body of declassified security documents from the Reagan presidency; much of what he quotes from these documents appears publicly here for the first time.
The result is the first major work to apply such evidence to the study of SDI and superpower diplomacy. In "Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul" Lettow does not simply add nuance to the existing record; he revises our very understanding of the Reagan presidency.

"From the Hardcover edition.

The state of the planet, hazardous waste, threats to survival. Are we teachable? Deforestation, desertefication, atmospheric pollution, conditions of success. Weapons of mass destruction. World trade center and global terrorism. International flash points. Sovereignty and power politics. Security and vital interests. Balance of power. International law. United Nation's reform

This assessment was made in response to a request from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to examine the effects of nuclear war on the populations and economies of the United States and the Soviet Union. It is intended, in the terms of the Committee's request, to "put what have been abstract measures of strategic power into more comprehensible terms." The study examines the full range of effects that nuclear war would have on civilians: direct effects from blast and radiation; and indirect effects from economic, social, and political disruption. Particular attention is devoted to the ways in which the impact of a nuclear war would extend over time. Two of the study's principal findings are that conditions would continue to get worse for some time after a nuclear war ended, and that the effects of nuclear war that cannot be calculated in advance are at least as important as those which analysts attempt to quantify. This report provides essential background for a range of issues relating to strategic weapons and foreign policy. It translates what is generally known about the effects of nuclear weapons into the best available estimates about the impact on society if such weapons were used. It calls attention to the very wide range of impacts that nuclear weapons would have on a complex industrial society, and to the extent of uncertainty regarding these impacts. Several years ago, OTA convened a panel of distinguished scientists to examine the effects of a limited nuclear war. The report and testimony of that panel, which were published by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, remain valid. That panel recommended that a more thorough and comprehensive study of the effects of nuclear war be undertaken. This study is such an effort.

CONTENTS Preface Nicholas Eberstadt Acknowledgements Introduction Henry D. Sokolski Chapter 1. Planning for a Peaceful Korea: A Report of the Korea Competitive Strategies Working Group Henry D. Sokolski Chapter 2. North Korea's Strategy Stephen Bradner Chapter 3. The North Korean View of the Development and Production of Strategic Weapons Systems Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., and Sharon A. Richardson Chapter 4. The Last Worst Place on Earth: Human Rights in North Korea Jack Rendler Chapter 5. China's Goals and Strategies for the Korean Peninsula Eric A. McVadon Chapter 6. China's Goals and Strategies for the Korean Peninsula: A Critical Assessment Larry M. Wortzel Chapter 7. Japan's Grand Strategy on the Korean Peninsula: Optimistic Realism Victor D. Cha Chapter 8. Economic Alternatives for Unification Marcus Noland Chapter 9. Conventional Arms Control in Korea: A Lever for Peace? Bruce William Bennett Working Group Participant List About the Contributors

What do the men and women of America's diplomatic corps do? William D. Morgan and Charles Stuart Kennedy, themselves career diplomats, culled over 1400 oral interviews with their Foreign Service peers to present forty excerpts covering events from the 1920s to the 1990s. Insiders recount what happens when a consul spies on Nazi Germany, Mao Tse-Tung drops by for a chat, the Cold War begins with the Berlin blockade, the Marshall Plan rescues Europe, Sukarno moves Indonesia into the communist camp, Khrushchev calls President Kennedy an SOB, and our ambassador is murdered in Kabul. consular officers talk about the beginnings of Kremlinology, predicting a coup in Ecuador, Hemingway and the embassy in Havana, the secret formulation of the NATO treaty, Jerusalem after the British and the US recognition of Israel, fighting in the Congo over Katangan secession, dealing with an alcoholic foreign president, human rights work in Paraguay, the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, helping families of the Pan Am 103 victims, Greece and Turkey at odds over a tiny island, embassy roles in Riyadh and Tel Aviv during Desert Storm, and many more.

Young, brash, sporting a shiny new MBA, and obscenely overpaid, Brian Cruver epitomized the Enron employee when he first entered the company's Houston office; and from day one he found himself a cog in the wheel of a venal greed machine. For the next nine months, he would witness firsthand the now-infamous corporate tragedy that he relates in these ruthlessly honest, often hilarious, and frequently disturbing pages. Here are the accounting tricks, insider stock trades, grossly lucrative fraudulent partnerships, and death dance to bankruptcy. Equally revealing, though, are Cruver's descriptions of everyday life at Enron: the cocky wheeling and dealing, intraoffice relationships, casual conversations at the shredder, and the insidious group-think that committed Enronians to the propaganda of flawed executives like Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andy Fastow. Out of their wreckage, Cruver has fashioned an arresting and cautionary morality tale for our time. Anatomy of Greed was the basis for the CBS-TV movie The Crooked E: a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the last days in the strange life of one of the world's richest, riskiest, and most corrupt corporations. Eight pages of telling photographs are included.

How to evaluate compliance is among the most difficult questions that arise during treaty negotiations and ratification debates. Arguments over verification principles and procedures are increasingly common for accords about the environment, human rights, and economics, but they have been especially important in the arena of national security. Nancy Gallagher explains, "In a world in which states face conflicting pressures to maximize military capabilities and negotiate mutual restraints, the prospects for arms control often hinge on verification... In the standard American formulation, verification is the 'critical element of arms control.'"

In "The Politics of Verification," Gallagher explores the causes of verification controversies and the processes through which they are perpetuated or provisionally resolved. By examining nuclear test ban negotiations from the Eisenhower through the Clinton administrations, Gallagher finds that the assumptions about verification that have dominated U.S. policy shape domestic debates in ways that hinder stable agreement on significant test restrictions. She focuses on the dynamic interconnections between domestic and international politics, and analyzes the slow process of coalition building when conflicting interests and ideas create divisions both among and inside states.

Gallagher concludes that the end of the Cold War has altered the arms control context without resolving basic questions about the appropriate amount and type of verification. Thus, the negotiation and ratification of major cooperative accords will continue to be shaped by verification compromises and coalitions.

Prospects for Peacemaking provides a genuinely fresh look at embedded assumptions about national security. It clears the way for a security policy based less on outmoded premises and more on a purposeful strategy for peace in a nuclear world. And it demonstrates one model of a creative interaction between citizens and specialists, one that can be replicated in any community."To the village square must go the essential facts about atomic weapons," Albert Einstein wrote in 1946. "From there must come America's voice." The seven essays in Prospects for Peacemaking take up Einstein's challenge - even more urgent today - by demystifying the criti cal issues of war, peace, and national security and opening the way for informed citizen involvement in these issues.The opening chapter explains why we are currently at a good point for engaging in the process of rethinking American strategic policy. Those that follow outline the basic premises of the current relations between the United States and the Soviet Union; the way the military thinks about arms and arms control; the question of whether negotiations can ever keep up with technology; the European perspective on arms control; and the special problem of managing crisis situations. The book concludes with an essay by Dean Rusk on diplomacy in the nuclear era.Prospects for Peacemaking grew out of "the Minnesota experiment," an extraordinary year long process of dialogue between experts in the arms-control community and public citizens, sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Harlan Cleveland is Professor of Public Affairs and Dean of the Institute. Lincoln P. Bloomfield is Professor of Political Science at MIT, and an adjunct professor at the Humphrey Institute.

The North Korean nuclear program is headed in a dangerous direction. Yet the United States and its allies have not set forth a coherent or unified strategy to stop it. This Task Force, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, evaluates the challenges facing the United States in and around the Korean peninsula and assess American options for meeting them. The situation on the peninsula has deteriorated rapidly since October 2002, when North Korea admitted having a secret highly enriched uranium program that put it on course to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. North Korea has since withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, asserted it possess nuclear weapons, and declared that it is reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel. Having initially emphasized the need for a negotiated solution, North Korea's recent rhetoric has stressed the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. Co-chaired by Morton I. Abramowitz and James T. Laney, and directed by Council Senior Fellow Eric Heginbotham, the Task Force makes specific recommendations to help guide U.S. foreign policy: 1) articulate a strategy around which U.S. regional partners can rally; 2) as part of that strategy, engage in a serious negotiating effort with North Korea and test its intentions by proposing an interim agreement; 3) secure the commitment of U.S. allies to take tougher action should talks fail, 4) restore the health of the U.S.-ROK alliance; 5) persuade China to take greater responsibility for resolving the crisis; and 6) appoint a full-time high-level coordinator for Korea.

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative has kindled a national debate over the roles of strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defenses, and arms control in U.S. national security policy. It has also underscored the important ramifications of U.S. military space policy.At the requests of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress undertook an assessment of the opportunities and risks involved in an accelerated program of research on new ballistic missile defense technologies, including those that might lead to deployment of weapons in space. Debate over the relevant political, military, and technical issues has been hotly contested by participants with widely varying assumptions and points of view. OTA has not attempted to resolve the debate, but rather to try to clarify the issues and enhance the level of discourse.This report examines both the "why" and the "what" of ballistic missile defenses. Why would we want ballistic missile defense weapons if we could have them? Would the advantages of deploying them outweigh the disadvantages? What technologies are under investigation for BMD applications? How might those applications serve our strategic goals? These policy and technology questions interact with one another in complex ways: what seems technologically possible conditions perceptions of policy options, while policy choices shape technological pursuits.

Technical and economic considerations no longer prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that do not have them. The technology is now widely known and generally accessible, and the cost is not prohibitive. For an increasing number of nations a decision to develop nuclear weapons rests on political and strategic factors. This book contains essays from a 1978 colloquium, jointly sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense, that brought together 50 people from the academic, research organization, intelligence, and national security policymaking communities to discuss the essays and the questions generated by them.

As the world has been alerted to the scale of the threat to civilians from anti-personnel mines, calls for international humanitarian law to outlaw their use has intensified. These culminated in the adoption, signature, and entry into force of the (Ottawa) Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines. Yet, some of the biggest producers and users of the weapons remain outside the Convention, arguing that anti-personnel mines are needed until suitable, more humane alternatives can be developed. Others assert that a weapon in widespread circulation will always be used in the heat of battle, international law notwithstanding.

Although the United States efforts to prevent the spread of strategic weapons have varied significantly since 1945, they all presumed to be avoiding one or another type of strategic war. To the extent their military scenarios were sound, so too were the nonproliferation remedies these initiatives promoted. But, as Sokolski demonstrates, the obverse was also true--when these intiatives' military hopes and fears were mistaken, their nonproliferation recommendations also missed their mark.

What is the best hope for breaking out of this box and securing a higher rate of nonproliferation success? The United States must base nonproliferation policies less on insights concerning strategic military trends and more on the progressive economic and political trends that have increased the number of relatively peaceful, prosperous, liberal democracies. For the proliferating nations that are exceptions to this trend, the U.S. and its allies need to devise ways of competing that will encourage these governments to expend more energies shoring up their weaknesses and eventually giving way to less militant regimes. A major resource for students and military professionals interested in arms control and international relations.

In the early and mid 1990s, several African countries demobilized part of their armed forces. In the light of Africa's large development challenges, continuing wars and insecurity, this study analyzes the following questions: to what extent and how have demobilizations contributed to peace and human development? Where did the soldiers go? What can we learn from the different approaches that have been taken? These questions provide insights in the linkages between development and conflict, and provide lessons for demilitarization and peace building efforts in postwar societies.

"She showed me what one set-on-fire human being can do to shift the consciousness of the world." —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"Dr. Helen Caldicott," the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle declares, "is back on the scene." A Desperate Passion is Caldicott's engaging, inspiring memoir, chronicling her life both on and off the scene. Raised in Australia and trained as a physician, she first found her voice protesting French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Years later she rose to international prominence, founding Physicians for Social Responsibility, "which did perhaps more than any other group to thrust the nuclear issue under the public eye" (New York Times).

"Driven by intense passions, she seems to have adopted the world's population as her children. And all of us are probably better off as a result" (East Bay Express Books)—but Caldicott, wife and mother of three, found that her success did not come without cost. This is a personal story too, a candid, revealing self-portrait of a woman who has not relinquished her remarkable efforts to save the world.

"Our contaminated air and our fractured earth demand a doctor's attention in the nuclear age, and the doctor on this case is a master." —Bloomsbury Review

"Helen Caldicott was the First Lady of the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s. This story, by an extraordinary woman, is a compelling memoir of those extraordinary times." —Edward M. Kennedy

Bruce Blair examines operational safety hazards for nuclear forces deployed on combat alert in Russia, the United States, and elsewhere. He provides new information on command and control procedures and deficiencies that affect the risks of accidental, unauthorized, or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, particularly those in the former Soviet Union. Blair proposes changes in nuclear operations that would reduce these risks. Remedies range from eliminating targets from missiles to taking all nuclear forces off alert (" zero alert" ) so that no weapons are poised for immediate launch. In the " zero alert" scenario, missiles and bombers lack nuclear warheads or other vital components and require extensive preparations for redeployment. Blair assesses the effects of such measures on strategic deterrence and crisis stability in the event of a revival of nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia. He also describes the burdens of verification that his remedies impose. This book is the first in a series devoted to aspects of operational safety and nuclear weapons. Other topics in the series include joint U.S.- Russian missile attack early warning, ensuring the security of dismantled warheads and bomb materials, and command-control problems in the emerging nuclear states. Bruce G. Blair is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at Brookings and the author of numerous books, including The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Brookings, 1993).

This book examines the nature of the international arms trade and the adjustment of the defense industries in the United States and Russia to the post-cold war world. O'Prey highlights the substantial reduction in demand for armaments both on the world market and by the two countries. Although this decrease in demand results partly from the decline of the superpower rivalry, it also represents the culmination of technological and industrial trends that have been under way for over a decade. O'Prey argues that many observers have not recognized the long-term nature of these changes. As a consequence, industry representatives and some government officials in both countries often unwisely emphasize arms exports as a means to preserve their cold war defense industries. Given the high expectations of export success and low levels of demand, competition among arms suppliers has become intense. In the process, proliferation of armaments, technologies, and production processes to outlaw states has become more likely. In addition, false expectations of arms export success may lead officials to forgo necessary restructuring and conversion of their defense industries. This problem is especially pronounced in Russia. O'Prey offers a number of suggestions for resolving the problems posed by arms export competition and defense industry adjustment. He argues that in virtually all cases, cooperation or partnership between the U.S. and Russia will be essential. Potential measures range from mutual restraint in arms exports to private industry partnerships for defense conversion and ultimately to multilateral initiatives for defense industry and export cooperation.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Middle Eastern states spent more than $600 billion expanding their military forces. They acquired thousands of tanks, advanced fighter aircraft, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, and - in some cases - nuclear devices. These potent arsenals make the Middle East the tinderbox of world affairs. In this book, foreign policy analyst Yahya Sadowski shows that the arms race cannot be sustained in the 1990s. Declining oil prices, overpopulation, economic mismanagement, and foreign policy adventures - such as the 1991 Gulf War, which cost local states another $600 billion - have sapped the economies of the Middle East. Facing dwindling incomes and rising expenses, growing numbers of Middle Easterners now favor diverting funds away from military expenditures and concentrating them on economic development programs. Sadowski argues that arms control programs for the Middle East should be designed to reinforce and exploit these economic pressures for demilitarization. He examines the strengths and weaknesses of various arms control proposals, such as the U.S. call for a cartel of weapons exporters and a Jordanian plan to liquidate the foreign debt of states that curb military expenditures.

The U.S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program was established with the goal of destroying the nation's stockpile of lethal unitary chemical weapons. Since 1990 the U.S. Army has been testing a baseline incineration technology on Johnston Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Under the planned disposal program, this baseline technology will be imported in the mid to late 1990s to continental United States disposal facilities; construction will include eight stockpile storage sites. In early 1992 the Committee on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies was formed by the National Research Council to investigate potential alternatives to the baseline technology. This book, the result of its investigation, addresses the use of alternative destruction technologies to replace, partly or wholly, or to be used in addition to the baseline technology. The book considers principal technologies that might be applied to the disposal program, strategies that might be used to manage the stockpile, and combinations of technologies that might be employed.