Arsenals of Folly

Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly is his third book about nuclear weapons. The Making of the Atomic Bomb detailed the successful development of fission weapons. Dark Sun described the successful creation of hydrogen or fusion weapons. Arsenals of Folly focuses on a failure; the attempt by Gorbachev and Reagan to abolish nuclear weapons.

Rhodes's book is selective and this makes sense in supporting his main thesis, which is to explain how the US and USSR came nearly to abolish the weapons and what held them back. The book runs into trouble with some of his asides and side arguments, in which his selectivity shows more bias.

The principal stumbling block to a final agreement was SDI, or Star Wars. Rhodes aligns this program with a series of defense programs built not so much for defensive purposes as for tools in bureaucratic wars, means to starve domestic programs and potential tools for rollback.

Rhodes nicely summarizes the numerous factors that drove the wild increase and innovation in nuclear weapons development. The desire for the Air Force, through SAC, to dominate the budget and the Navy and Army's attempts to defend their share by introducing more platforms certainly boosted spending and created the notion of a triad (missile, bomber, submarine missile) which guaranteed massive spending.

He cheats a bit, and even admits it, by not discussing Khrushchev's foreign policy, which depending on your analysis, created the basis or the cover for much of the eventual defense spending. I think he should have been more critical of Kennedy, who upon learning that the "missile gap"he talked about in the campaign wasn't real, continued to support weapons development despite a massive American lead.

Gorbachev is the hero of the book, as the person who saw that the only way to rescue his country was to turn off the Cold War. Rhodes explores two key historical events that underlie his decision making. The first is the Stalinist terror, which created the seeds of doubt in the application if not the philosophy of Soviet communism. The second is the Chernobyl accident which highlighted the danger of nuclear war. Reagan is given credit for recognizing what Gorbachev was doing and reacting appropriately, but Gorbachev is the hero.

The great villain is Richard Perle, who is presented as nearly Satanic, with a silvery convincing voice and a heart of darkness. His nickname is the Prince of Darkness, so there is probably something to what Rhodes says. Throughout the Reagan years, Perle works to prevent arms control agreements as well as to develop new weapons systems.

The main problem with the book is how Rhodes occasionally ignores complexity where it might slow down his argument. The best example is the concept of deterrence, which Rhodes never explains and for which he makes contradictory statements. Early on, he seems to promote the idea of minimal or even existential deterrence, while later calling into question whether nuclear deterrence works at all. He then cites one article that questions the value of nuclear deterrence, without citing the many more that support it. A deeper discussion of the debates over how and if deterrence works would in the end have made the US arms build up more understandable, which would have tempered, but not contradicted, some of his arguments.

This book does not reach the same standards as the Making of the Atomic Bomb, but it remains an excellent and informative read, as well as a good starting point for thinking of abolition again.