Return to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1981-1999

319 Pages·2000·17.08 MB·English

by  Ronald E. Powaski

:: Return to Armageddon::
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Return to Armageddon
The United States
and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1981-1999
RONALD E. POWASKI
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2003
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Powaski, Ronald E.
Return to Armageddon: the United States and the nuclear arms race, 1981-
I999/
Ronald E. Powaski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-5130382-3; 0-19-516098-3 (pbk.)
1. United States—Military policy. 2. Arms race—History—2oth century.
3. Nuclear Weapons. I. Title.
UA23-P624 1999
327.i'747—dc2i 99-19999
Book design by Adam B. Bohannon
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To
Daniel Weidenthal, M.D.
and William Reinhart, M.D.
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: The Nuclear Arms Race, 1939-1981 3
1 The Reagan Nuclear Buildup 14
2 The Reagan About-Face 39
3 Bush and START I 83
4 Bush and START II 128
5 Clinton, START II, and the ABM Treaty 165
6 Clinton and Counterproliferation 205
Conclusion: The Enduring Nuclear Threat 251
Afterword 259
Acronyms and Techn ical Terms 273
Notes 277
Suggested Readings 297
Index 301
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Preface
When I began writing this book in 1995, I was opti-
mistic that the nuclear arms race was winding down.
The Cold War was over. Eight years had passed since
the administration of President Ronald Reagan had
concluded the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty, which eliminated, for the first time, a
whole class of nuclear weapons. By 1993, Reagan's suc-
cessor, George Bush, had completed the negotiation of
two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I and
START II), which together would bring about massive
reductions in the strategic nuclear arsenals of the two
former adversaries. In START II, the two sides would
lower their total nuclear warheads to between 3,800
and 4,250 warheads by the year 2000, and to between
3,000 and 3,500 warheads by the year 2003. The accord
would reduce the number of strategic weapons held by
both sides to a quarter of the amount they had
deployed in 1990, and to the lowest levels since 1969.
In 1995, a new administration had been in office for two years, that of
William Jefferson Clinton, which was openly committed not only to revers-
ing the "vertical" proliferation of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons through
the START process, but also to halting the "horizontal" spread of nuclear
ix