Review of: Rhodes, Richard. Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

            Author Richard Rhodes clarifies the philosophical paradox of nuclear science: Discovering nuclear fission, splitting the atom to produce energy, was a fact of science bound to happen when rational, intelligent creatures pursued their curiosity about how things work. The process of discovery of nature’s secret was inevitable. It was pursued and a contribution to knowledge was made. On the other hand, turning nuclear science into a weapon of mass indiscriminate slaughter was a choice. More than just a selection of various options on a scale, creating atomic weapons in 1945 and thermonuclear weapons in 1954 stemmed from a political decision.

            The ultimate political decision on nuclear weapons policy occurred early in the Cold War came in 1950 when President Truman ordered the development of the “Super bombs,” i.e. the hydrogen or “fusion” bomb, the “thermonuclear” species of the devious genie let out of the bottle. Since the Soviets successfully tested a fission bomb in August 1949, the United States, according to Truman’s logic, had to develop the Super because, logically, the Soviets would try to build one, too. Survival of the fittest in international politics became synonymous with the later-day term of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD): If one nation was killed with nuclear weapons, the other side must die in a tit-for-tat absurd reduction to mutual fear. From 1950 onward, the US and Soviet political and military leaders held themselves hostage to the ultimate weapon for mutual peace, defense and security or mutual murder-suicide and the extinction of the entire world. The cost in money was in the tens of trillions over 45 years. The cost in what was never built in terms of schools, roads, and more efficient energy is not calculable at all.

            Thermonuclear bombs were themselves the next logical step for scientific inquiry, in that rather than splitting atoms to attain a finite amount of energy, fission was used to “fuse” atoms–combine them; the leftover quantity of “free” unused atoms releases energy on magnitudes of 1000 to 10,000 times greater than the energy used to destroy Hiroshima with the first of only two nuclear weapons ever used in combat. The Hiroshima bomb had the power of 20,000 tons of TNT (hence, 20 Kilotons [kt]).The discovery of fisison might have been a natural step in human civilization, which could have assisted human development through the production of massive amounts of electricity. Producing the hydrogen “Super,” which the Soviets at one point tested an explosion in excess of 100 million tons of TNT (100 megatons), had little civilian-economic relevance: It has for 54 years been only good for destruction of life, liberty and property (wealth).

            What could have happened in a nuclear war scenario is best seen by the tragic results of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, in the dead, the wounded, and those later dead or wounded from blast, fire, and radiation effects, some years or decades afterward, and on some born a generation later. The explosion, radiation pollution, long-term effects, and the political embarrassment of the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl accident in April 1986 further taught a newer generation the inherent dangers of nuclear science, even in peace. If such careless accidents in the peaceful use of nuclear science could cause such mayhem and damage to people and earth, what about political irrationality and carelessness involving the actual use of nuclear weapons in a hot war?

            Thus is the setting theme of Rhodes’ examination of the US-Soviet diplomacy in the 1980s for nuclear arms control and reduction, to make the world safer beyond the excessive reliance for national security on nuclear weapons. For in the end, for a weapon that could not ever be used, if used it could do nothing but destroy civilization if political and military leaders could not keep an exchange limited or negotiate a cease-fire before too late. What would be the odds of survival?

            Interplayed between Ronald Reagan’s Messianic belief in being a peacemaker, and avoiding biblical Armageddon by eliminating nuclear weapons, and on the other side, Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reform of Soviet society by increasing material consumption at the expense of the Soviet Union’s unhelpful defense budget, Rhodes in pop-history style more than adequately describes the tortuous diplomacy to end the Cold War via dismantling nuclear arsenals. The most intensive exchange of proposals, negotiating formulas, near-misses, and the end-stage of the Cold War, including the October 1986 Reykjavik summit, Rhodes describes in non-technical, conversational detail. Whereas the Soviet Union in 1982 firmly believed the US was about to initiative a surprise nuclear first-strike to disable Soviet defenses, and later believed Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based anti-missile defenses posed a further escalation in nuclear inventories, and political instability, Rhodes’ book leaves one wondering how the world survived humanity’s prime causes of war–fear and greed–without nuclear holocaust.

            In startling theater, including Reagan’s Hollywood-style walk out from the Reykjavik meeting with Gorbachev while they negotiated a ten-year plan to eliminate ALL nuclear weapons, Rhodes adds an important perspective for average readers to understand the events, the protagonists, and the antagonists who kept nuclear weapons in our life. Not surprisingly, those individuals in the US Government in the 1980s who fought to keep the weapons around and use them in war if necessary, returned to prominence in the early 21^st Century to dominate Bush Administration policy in the new wave of national security through fear via the war on the terrorists. Such go the cycles of national security politics.