Arsenals of folly

the making of the nuclear arms race

By Rhodes, Richard

Publishers Summary:
The story of the postwar superpower arms race, climaxing during the Reagan-Gorbachev decade. Drawing on a wealth of new documentation, Rhodes reveals how the Reagan administration's unprecedented arms buildup in the early 1980s led Soviet leader Andropov to conclude that Reagan must be preparing for a nuclear war. In 1983, when NATO staged a larger than usual series of field exercises, the Soviet military came very close to launching a defensive first strike. Then Reagan launched the arms-reduction campaign of his second presidential term and set the stage for his 1986 summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik. Rhodes reveals the early influence of neoconservatives, demonstrating how the manipulation of government and public opinion with fake intelligence and threat inflation, which the administration of George W. Bush has used to justify current 'war on terror' and the disastrous invasion of Iraq, were developed and applied in the Reagan era and even before.--From publisher description.

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ISBN
978-0-37541-413-8
Publisher
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on November 15, 2007

Pulitzer Prize winner Rhodes (Ctr. for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford Univ.) completes his third volume of works related to the Cold War nuclear buildup (following The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb). Combining a riveting narrative with historical data, his work reads like a novel but chronicles the truth of t...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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