The Big Five Arms Control Decision-Making in the Soviet Union

Subjects:

• Military Studies » Arms Control/Defense
• Multicultural Studies » Slavic Studies
• History » European History -- Modern/20th Century

Reviews:

• While (the authors) are frank in admitting the twisted logic in some of their demands and, at times, even prevarication of their side, in the end they do not lend much support to those who viewed the Soviet stake in strategic arms control as a cynical subterfuge to secure unilateral advantage at every turn. The truth seems to have been the opposite. Yes, Soviet leaders sought the best deal they could get and resisted yielding any of their military advantages, but, when their demands looked like an attempt to disadvantage the United States seriously, they were usually reacting to their own black, worst-case assumptions about U.S. programs and intentions.
  —Foreign Affairs
• This book is an insider's account of the Soviet arms control and disarmament decision-making process from the end of the 1960's until 1991--the year the Soviet Union ceased to exist....(It) does a good job of concisely describing the multitude of complicated issues that both sides had to address in the negotiations involving nuclear weapons (SALT I & II, START, the ABM Treaty, INF Treaty, and DST--Defense and Space Talks).
  —
  The Russian Review
• The authors have demonstrably met their own objectives: to investigate how arms-control decisions were made, by whom, and how they were implemented.
  —The International History Review

• Endorsement From From the foreword by Ambassador Paul H. Nitze: That this book was written is astonishing. That we here in the West have the opportunity to read it is just short of a miracle. The Big Five is an insider's book written by two men within one of the most secret establishments of the 20th century, the Soviet arms control leadership. Its existence is testament to the extraordinary changes we have witnessed in the past few years--above all, of course, the end of the Soviet Union, for which this information would have been as closely guarded as the capabilities of the weapons themselves.

Table of Contents:

• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• The Historical Background
• The Politburo Commission for the Negotiations
• The Big Five and the Small Five
• The SALT-II Talks: The Decision-Making Mechanism in Action
• "Euromissiles" and the Principle of Equal Security
• The START Negotiations and the Final Period of Superpower Confrontation
• The Return to the Negotiations: The Prelude to Perestroyka
• The Krasnoyarsk Affair
• Perestroyka and the Further Refinement of the Decision-Making Mechanism
• Medium-Range Nuclear Weapons Negotiations: Was the "Zero Option" Really So Bad?
• The START Treaty: Who Made Concessions to Whom?
• The Difficult Path to the START Treaty
• Defense and Space Issues: A Field for Future Negotiations
• The Big Five: From Its Birth to Its Death
• Reflections
• Index