The Superpowers and Arms Control
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. xxvi, 180, [2] pages. Footnotes. Figures. Tables. Appendixes: A, B, and C. Notes. Bibliographical Note. Index. About the Author. Cover has noticeable wear and soiling. Includes chapters on: Can the USSR Live with Stability?; the United States with "Sufficiency"?; Nicholas II to SALT II: Logic Vs. the Organization(s); The Conditions for Arms Control: Cuba to SALT II; The Arms Control Road to Peace: Pros and Cons; and A Modernist Approach to Arms Control: Toward Interdependence. Walter Carl Clemens, Jr. (born April 6, 1933) is an American political scientist best known for advancing complexity science as an approach to the study of international relations and comparative politics. He has been active in the analysis of complexity science, arms control and disarmament, and U.S. relations with communist and post-communist countries. Since 2008, he has been a regular contributor to Global Asia, the quarterly journal of the East Asia Foundation. He has authored numerous books, articles, and editorials, and is currently a Professor Emeritus at Boston University and an Associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Clemens has also made contributions to the study of arms control in U.S. relations with the USSR, China, and North Korea. In the 1980s, Clemens conducted surveys showing that most Americans erroneously believed that their country was protected by an effective missile defense shield. Clemens treated this as a dangerous illusion. Arms control, any international control or limitation of the development, testing, production, deployment, or use of weapons based on the premise that the continued existence of certain national military establishments is inevitable. The concept implies some form of collaboration between generally competitive or antagonistic states in areas of military policy to diminish the likelihood of war or, should war occur, to limit its destructiveness. In a broad sense, arms control grows out of historical state practice in disarmament, which has had, since the 20th century, a long record of successes and failures. A narrower definition of each term, however, reveals key differences between disarmament and arms control. Complete or general disarmament may involve the elimination of a country’s entire military capacity. Partial disarmament may consist of the elimination of certain types or classes of weapons or a general reduction (but not elimination) of all classes of weapons. Whereas disarmament agreements usually directly prohibit the possession or production of weapons, arms-control agreements often proceed by setting limitations on the testing, deployment, or use of certain types of weapons. Arms-control advocates generally take a more or less realistic approach to international relations, eschewing pacifism in a world they view as anarchic and as lacking any central authority for settling conflicts. Furthermore, whereas the objective of disarmament agreements is the reduction or elimination of weapons, arms-control agreements aim to encourage countries to manage their weapons in limited cooperation with each other. Disarmament conferences with a large number of participants have often degenerated into public spectacles with shouting matches between the delegations of countries that have resulted in increased tensions. Nevertheless, arms-control efforts, particularly those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, proved useful in limiting the nuclear arms race, and, by the end of the 20th century, the term arms control was often used to denote any disarmament or arms-limitation agreement. During the 1970s the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) helped to restrain the continuing buildup by the Soviet Union and the United States of nuclear-armed intercontinental (long-range or strategic) ballistic missiles (ICBMs). One major part of the SALT I complex of agreements reached in 1972 severely limited each country’s future deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABMs), which could be used to destroy incoming ICBMs. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) provided that each country could have no more than two ABM deployment areas and could not establish a nationwide system of ABM defense; a protocol to the agreement, signed in 1974, limited each party to a single ABM deployment area. The ABM Treaty, which was predicated on the strategy of mutually assured destruction, ensured that each side would remain vulnerable to the other’s strategic offensive forces. Another part of the SALT I agreement froze the number of each side’s ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) at current levels. The SALT II agreement (1979) set limits on each side’s store of multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), which were strategic missiles equipped with multiple nuclear warheads capable of hitting different targets on the ground. This agreement placed limits on the number of MIRVs, strategic bombers, and other strategic launchers each side possessed. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Arms Control; Arms Race, Strategic Arms Limitation, SALT, Interdependence, ABM Treaty, Balance of Power, Cuban Missile Crisis, Expert Survey Panel, Strategic Weapons, Missiles, Nuclear Test, Nonproliferation, On-Site Inspection, Verification
ISBN: 0669854808
[Book #83069]
Price: $65.00