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. ( )

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. ( )

Mostly background on the unwinding of the cold war. The first 2 books were more technical. This was significantly devoted to politics. ( )