Description
Book SynopsisThe Nuclear and Space Talks revolutionized arms control. The Cold War endgame commenced with the umbrella negotiations' that linked START and INF negotiations to a regulation on the weaponization of space. This volume reveals a US grand strategy to replace deterrence with a collective security order. An entente of the superpowers was needed to transform bipolarity. The US planned the replacement of mutually assured destruction by mutually assured security. A global astrodome was to protect a nuclear disarmed world. The Franco-German special relationship in European affairs had to be amended by a US-SU special relationship to replace classic bloc politics. The Reagan Administration planned a global zero agenda, a joint development of a global protective system and a creation of a Common House of Europe. In brief, the superpowers prepared the velvet revolution' that eliminated the Cold War structures. Neither containment nor convergence offers a valid explanation of the Cold War endgame.
Trade ReviewBuilding on a wealth of newly available sources, Ralph L. Dietl has produced an analysis of the Cold War endgame that places the Strategic Defense Initiative within the context of both superpower relations and relations within the Atlantic Alliance. With a combination of analytic clarity and intellectual creativity, Dietl helps us understand the significance of SDI as both a factor in the arms control debates of the 1980s and as a catalyst for broader Soviet-American efforts at creating a stable bipolar balance. This study will be of great value to anyone interested in the Reagan-Gorbachev Era and to all students of arms control. -- Ronald J. Granieri, Foreign Policy Research Institute
Ralph L. Dietl has written a most comprehensive account of how President Reagan’s vision of a nuclear-free world impacted NATO. By using archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Dietl has crafted a new and provocative narrative on the end of the Cold War in Europe. -- Erin Mahan, historian
Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Genesis of the SDI Project, 1981–83 Chapter 2: The Return from the Abyss: The Evolution of the Nuclear and Space Talks Chapter 3: SDI: The Conceptual Battle Chapter 4: SDI: Implementation versus Abrogation Chapter 5: Cold Storage: The Delinking of the Nuclear and Space Talks Conclusion: The SDI and the Cold War Endgame
