A behind-the-scenes look at the environment for defense policy and budgeting--in Congress, the news media, and the defense industry--reveals that the appearance of stability is deceiving. Pressures are building for change. Defense spending has leveled off at about $265 billion a year in outlays. Current commitments to preserve the existing force while purchasing new weaponry are creating significant budget issues which must be addressed.

This book probes beneath the surface to show how the political base for defense spending is eroding. The economic benefits of defense spending and of foreign military sales are increasingly concentrated. A few well-placed members are now the main beneficiaries of add-ons to the budget. At the same time, mergers and acquisitions have left the defense industrial base largely intact, with new weapons filling every production line. Yet it will take sharp increases in the defense budget to fund these new weapons, increases that may not be politically viable. A provocative analysis by some of the leading scholars and researchers involved with defense and foreign policy issues, this will be of great interest to experts as well as general readers.

Against all odds, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines helped to enact a global treaty banning antipersonnel mines in 1997. For that achievement it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In this volume, Leon Sigal shows how a handful of NGOs with almost no mass base got more than 100 countries to outlaw a weapon that their armies had long used. It is a story of intrigue and misperception, of clashing norms and interests, of contentious bureaucratic and domestic politics. It is also a story of effective leadership, of sustained commitment to a cause, of alliances between campaigners and government officials, of a US senator who championed the ban, and of the skilful use of the news media. Despite this monumental effort, the campaign failed to get the United States to sign the treaty. Drawing on extensive internal documents and interviews with US officials and ban campaigners, Sigal tells the story of the in-fighting inside the Clinton administration, in the Pentagon, and within the ban campaign itself that led to this major setback for an otherwise unprecedented, successful global effort. Negotiating Minefields will be of interest to students and scholars of military and strategic studies and politics and international relations.

Against all odds, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines helped to enact a global treaty banning antipersonnel mines in 1997. For that achievement it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In this volume, Leon Sigal shows how a handful of NGOs with almost no mass base got more than 100 countries to outlaw a weapon that their armies had long used. It is a story of intrigue and misperception, of clashing norms and interests, of contentious bureaucratic and domestic politics. It is also a story of effective leadership, of sustained commitment to a cause, of alliances between campaigners and government officials, of a US senator who championed the ban, and of the skilful use of the news media. Despite this monumental effort, the campaign failed to get the United States to sign the treaty. Drawing on extensive internal documents and interviews with US officials and ban campaigners, Sigal tells the story of the in-fighting inside the Clinton administration, in the Pentagon, and within the ban campaign itself that led to this major setback for an otherwise unprecedented, successful global effort. Negotiating Minefields will be of interest to students and scholars of military and strategic studies and politics and international relations.

In June 1994 the United States went to the brink of war with North Korea. With economic sanctions impending, President Bill Clinton approved the dispatch of substantial reinforcements to Korea, and plans were prepared for attacking the North's nuclear weapons complex. The turning point came in an extraordinary private diplomatic initiative by former President Jimmy Carter and others to reverse the dangerous American course and open the way to a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear crisis.

Few Americans know the full details behind this story or perhaps realize the devastating impact it could have had on the nation's post-Cold War foreign policy. In this lively and authoritative book, Leon Sigal offers an inside look at how the Korean nuclear crisis originated, escalated, and was ultimately defused. He begins by exploring a web of intelligence failures by the United States and intransigence within South Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Sigal pays particular attention to an American mindset that prefers coercion to cooperation in dealing with aggressive nations. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with policymakers from the countries involved, he discloses the details of the buildup to confrontation, American refusal to engage in diplomatic give-and-take, the Carter mission, and the diplomatic deal of October 1994.

In the post-Cold War era, the United States is less willing and able than before to expend unlimited resources abroad; as a result it will need to act less unilaterally and more in concert with other nations. What will become of an American foreign policy that prefers coercion when conciliation is more likely to serve its national interests? Using the events that nearly led the United States into a second Korean War, Sigal explores the need for policy change when it comes to addressing the challenge of nuclear proliferation and avoiding conflict with nations like Russia, Iran, and Iraq. What the Cuban missile crisis was to fifty years of superpower conflict, the North Korean nuclear crisis is to the coming era.