By Jerry Ridling
Special to THE DAILY

A few years after World War II ended, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, which had been allies in the war, began a costly and dangerous competition for world domination in weapons and military power. President Harry Truman, who had made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, approved the research and development for taking atomic weapons to the next level.

The leaders of the Soviet Union, desiring to be the dominant power in Europe and perhaps the world, were determined to match the U.S. every step of the way. Thus was set in motion a nuclear arms race, which not only had a profound impact on both nations politically and economically, but also came to threaten the very future of life on earth.

By 1985, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had more than 50,000 warheads, enough to destroy the world many times over. Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of 22 books, takes us through this period known as the Cold War in “Arsenals of Folly.”

Rhodes interweaves statistics about arms development with information about some of the key military and political figures who influenced the escalating race and, eventually, oversaw its end.

He documents some of the numerous provocations by both sides as each nation tried to gain nuclear superiority, while pretending to the world it was hopelessly lagging behind the other in such development.

The reader learns something about the hawks in each government who greatly distrusted those on the other side, believed no agreements of any kind could be relied upon, and engaged in intrigues and manipulations to see that a steady escalation of the arms race continued unabated. Some of the names of these American “cold warriors” will sound familiar: Paul Nitze, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney.

The irony, of course, was that each nation not only continued to waste its resources developing nuclear weapons in numbers and explosive power far beyond that needed to destroy the other, but that such development, far from bringing the desired security, actually increased the danger of the annihilation of life on earth. As the famous Doomsday Clock ticked toward midnight, it became obvious to the sane that agreements were needed to bring this life-threatening game to an end.

The accounts of the various negotiations, which ensued between the two governments, are among the most interesting reading in the book. If there is a hero in it all, it is Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, and who worked tirelessly to change the Soviet system from within and to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

Arms race economics

The author argues persuasively that one of Gorbachev’s motivations was the simple fact that the protracted arms race was slowly destroying his country economically and socially.

Leaders in the U.S. had long been aware of the terrible toll the Soviets were paying in their desperate attempts to keep up with a far richer nation. Some who write positively about the legacy of Ronald Reagan suggest his administration escalated the arms race precisely in order to force the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and cause its collapse.

Rhodes, however, strongly challenges this view, suggesting that there were already signs of a Soviet dissolution long before Reagan took office, and that he was simply lucky enough to have it all come to a head on his watch.

Historians, however, may ultimately settle this debate. There is no doubt that both Reagan and Gorbachev played central roles in the eventual agreements on nuclear arms reductions between the two nations.

It would strain the imagination to find two leaders less likely to be able to agree on anything. The author describes Gorbachev as bright, politically savvy, toughened by many intense battles within his own government and quite knowledgeable about foreign affairs.

Reagan, on the other hand, is described as dense, na1/3ve, given to folksy flights of fancy and almost totally lacking in foreign policy expertise.

“Arsenals of Folly” guides us through the agonizing process by which two hostile nations first attempted to outdo one another in arms development, even to the point of threatening earth’s destruction, then realizing their folly, tried to find a means of backing away while still saving face. It is a must read for any who are interested in this particular aspect of our recent history, and in what are probably the most important negotiations ever entered into by any two nations.

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