Arsenals of Folly presents the story of the U.S. – Soviet nuclear arms race, and how and why it took so long to reach disarmament agreements. The book starts with a description of the horrors of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the mid-80’s ( a soviet style plant with a graphite moderated core and no robust containment building like the U.S. plants have), and how that accident convinced soviet leadership of the dangers of nuclear weapons. It is Rhodes' contention that some familiar names from the current Bush administration, like Richare Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, with their anti-soviet beliefs and fearful advice during their stints of the Reagan administration, may have contributed to lengthening the arms race - contrary to the desires of the soviet leadership, especially Mikhail Gorbachev. Somewhat slow in parts, but still probably of interest to modern world history buffs.
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I really enjoyed this history of the Arms Race (albeit focusing on the end of it, particularly on Gorbachev) and would definitely recommend it. The author makes the reader consider what it all was worth - to put the world on the brink of destruction for so long at such a great cost. ( )

This is one of the best histories I have read in a very long time. Rhodes uses nuclear weapons policy as the lens through which he views the Cold War. His discussion of Gorbachev is quite interesting and well done, but his detailed account of how Gorbachev and Reagan negotiated the INF and START reductions is simply amazing in its detail and clarity. This is a must read book, especially for those too young to remember what it was like to live with the threat of nuclear annihilation. ( )

Indeholder kapitlerne "A Rigid System", "To the Chernobyl Sarcophagus", "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", "A Hierarchy of Vassals and Chiefs", "Apes on a Treadmill", ""The Bomber Will Always Get Through" (I)", ""The Bomber Will Always Get Through" (II)", "The Sorcerer's Apprentices (I)", "The Sorcerer's Apprentices (II)", "Decapitation", "Rehearsing Armageddon", "The Warheads Will Always Get Through", "Common Security", "Going Around in Circles", "Naysayers Hard at Work", "Looking Over the Horizon", "The Sovereign Right to Choose", "The Little Suitcase", "Notes", "Bibliography", "Acknowledgments", "Permissions Acknowledgments", "Index".

Bogen starter med en rædselsvækkende gennemgang af Tjernobyl-ulykken og beretter om helikopterbesætninger, der flyver ind over den nøgne reaktorkerne og dumper sandsække. Låget - kaldet pyatachok, eller en russisk femøre - på 1000 tons er blæst halvt af - og der er fri adgang til den brændende kerne. Brrr. Tjernobyl er en følge af at al sovjetisk infrastruktur var underlagt militæret, så for at kunne tappe plutonium ud af brændselsstavene lettest muligt var der huller i indkapslingen.
Derefter får vi en beskrivelse af Gorbatjev og historien om rustningskapløb og senere nedrustning.
Åbning af arkiverne viste at der var 62 russiske kernevåben på og i nærheden af Cuba. Kennedy gjorde klogt i ikke at optrappe konflikten til krig.
Poitikerne lavede en kategorifejl: "what philosophy calls a category mistake, an assumption that nuclear explosives are military weapons in any meaningful sense of the term, and that [therefore] a sufficient quantity of such weapons can make us secure."
Så jo flere og jo større våben, jo større sikkerhed?
Temaet er at der altid slipper en bombemaskine eller et missil igennem. Fx har USA i 1954 en plan for bombning af Soviet, så der kun er en rygende radioaktiv samling af ruiner tilbage efter 2 timer. I 1960 var USA's arsenal på 18638 bomber og sprænghoveder og 20500 megatons. Problemet var simpelthen at koordinere et angreb. Planen var at bombe både Kina og Soviet, nu man var i gang. Også selv hvis Kina slet ikke var involveret i krigen. Desuden talte man kun sprængkraften med i beregninger af ødelæggelser, hvilket var absurd, for brande forstærker effekten. Man lavede lister over mål, men det var som at slå et søm i med et meteor. Udenom målet ville alt andet også blive ødelagt. Fx var der nok 400 bomber reserveret til Moskva.
Under Cuba-krisen kunne Soviet skyde ca 270 bomber afsted mod USA, mens USA havde tusindvis.
Sovjet forsøger at følge med, men højrefløjen i USA maler et skræmmebillede op om at det er Sovjet, der er foran. Cheney, Rumsfeld og Perle. SS-20, Carter og Reagan. Pershing-2 og krydsermissiler. Helt tilbage i 1966 er der overvejelser over Sovjets økonomiske svagheder. Andrei Sakharov advarer i 1970 Brezhnev om fx forskellen i brug af computere. Han understreger også at det er et problem med styreformen. Problemet kan ikke løses fra toppen.
USA videreudvikler sine atomvåben, fx W85 dial-a-yield med fra 0.3 til 45 kiloton sprængkraft. Oven i kom en misforståelse fra Carter til Reagan administrationen, som ad vanvare gav et vanvittigt højt militærbudget. Reagans ide var også at bruge pengene på militæret for at tvinge størrelsen på resten af budgettet ned.
Russisk militær har det fint med at blive kaldt "Evil Empire" for de får lov at bruge mange penge på øvelser.
Reagan giver militæret lov til at provokere russerne og indirekte bliver det skyld i at russerne skyder KE007 ned. Russerne er heller ikke begejstrede for KE007 var i russisk luftrum meget længe uden at luftforsvaret lagde mærke til det. USA invaderer Grenada. 2-11 november 1983 kører NATO øvelsen Able Archer.
Russerne er med god grund nervøse over den.
Den 20. november 1983 ser Reagan filmen "The Day After", hvor Lawrence, Kansas bliver ramt af et russisk missil og udslettet. Faktisk er filmen underspillet, for i virkeligheden ville byen være helt væk. Reagan havde med nød og næppe overlevet et attentat i foråret 1981 og mente at Gud havde sparet ham, så han kunne gøre noget ved a-våbenproblemet. Reagan har en ide om at Armageddon er en krig på a-våben og vil bygge et skjold.
I november 1990 slutter den kolde krig reelt med underskriften af Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Reagan og Gorbatjov mødes. Gorbatjovs første indtryk er at han har mødt en hulemand. Reagan tror på SDI og på at det bare er et fredeligt skjold.
28 januar 1986 eksploderer rumfærgen Challenger og 26 april eksploderer Tjernobyl-værket. Gorbatjov kan fint se at Tjernobyl er en lille nem kæmpekatastrofe sammenlignet med bare nogle få a-våbensprængning. Reagan og Gorbatjov mødes i Island for at sætte skub i nedrustningen for de kan se at der ellers intet sker. Reykjavik strander på SDI, som Reagan ikke vil aflive, men alligevel er det starten på noget stort.
Både Rusland og USA skærer ned på kernevåben og konventionelle våben uden at vente på den anden part. Et august-1991 kup venter på Gorbatjov.
I den sidste ende er det Boris Yeltsin, der sidder med den lille kuffert med koderne. Både Sovjet og USA har brugt milliarder på våben, de aldrig kan bruge.

Glimrende bog, men med langt større vægt på politik end på teknik. ( )

From reading Rhodes’ first two books, The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, I was expecting an in-depth and objective history of the arms race, but while this book contains some interesting information, it feels light and suffused with stale political opinion. The text has the tone of liberal newspaper editorial pages of the 80’s mocking Reagan, Stars Wars, or U.S. militarism. There is little sense of striving for a deeper perspective.

While no one can discount Gorbachev’s courageous role in toning down the arms race, an obvious bias mars this book: the Soviets are constantly portrayed as honestly “just trying to catch up” after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and scheming Americans seem determined to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Many of Reagan’s advisors are painted as out and out villains, evil neocons with “penchants” (the author’s term) for various irrational policies. One, Paul Nitze, is pathetically portrayed as reacting to some insidious childhood neurosis. (And I wouldn’t know if that was true or not, but it does seem like cheap psychological speculation simply designed to belittle the person yet another time.). A tone of sarcastic mockery seems applied to Americans, but not Soviets, throughout the book. The overly-long biography of Gorbachev is an unneeded sidetrack but one apparently intended to build him up as the hero of the story. The concept that the United States essentially managed to waste more money on armaments than the Soviets, and thus helped drive the Soviet Union into the ground, is dismissed as a “triumphalist” fantasy; yet obviously it must had had some effect on the Soviet economy and the resulting breakup of the Soviet Union, and should have been given some consideration as one more factor in the mix.

It seems pretty obvious that both sides were out of their skulls with paranoia and that bad information and fearing the worst led both sides to keep scrambling for as many weapons and advantages as they could get, no matter how irrational the whole thing was. It truly is a miracle we did not escalate into nuclear war anytime from the 50’s on. The story is one of human beings under extreme stress trying to consider how to survive, and I don’t think we need “heroes and villains” as a storyline to explain what happened. In some twisted way everyone was “doing their best.”

Creating a story of heroes and villains also seems to require that the book end with a tidy resolution, as if Gorbachev somehow singlehandedly took care of the entire nuclear weapons problem. But the lack of trust and paranoia, though muted, do go on, along with the possibility of nuclear arms being acquired by other and even more irrational countries or terrorist organizations, and I think a more objective look at the entire process could help us understand the next challenges ahead in our still-nuclear world. I don’t see the point of anyone trying to either build the Reagan administration up or tear it down now, seemingly just to rehash and defend opinions formed in the 80’s. What happened, happened, and I would have preferred to read a true history without a political axe to grind. And I would have expected much deeper research and more appreciation of the insane complexity of the problem than I believe is manifested in this book. ( )