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Dry, tedious, and disappointing

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Rhode's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" was a riveting page-turner, the kind of read I missed sleep over because I couldn't put it down. Likewise, "Dark Sun..." was as intense as any Clancy techno-thriller. By contrast, "Arsenals of Folly" was about like reading the dictionary. In all fairness, there were a few bright spots that read more like the encyclopedia. Unfortunately, there were also vast stretches of mind-numbing minutia that were more like reading the phone book. I gutted it out by reading a few pages at bedtime--my nightly dose of Castor oil. Surrender to the sandman came as quickly as an attack of narcolepsy, so progress was excruciatingly slow. I've never been so pleased to reach the end of a book. I'm glad I read it. After all, Cold War nuclear arms control is serious, important stuff. The research and analysis were impeccable, as usual, and I am now far, far better informed. But after devouring Rhode's two earlier works of nuclear history, a dry, tedious catalog of Soviet/US arms control talks is not what I expected or wanted. I give it two stars and five yawns.

Highly Recommended!!!

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With the success of his book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, Richard Rhodes established his reputation as an authority on the nuclear-weapons history of the United States. Arsenals of Folly will strengthen that reputation. It is a superb book: well researched, told with riveting narrative flair, and consistently unsettling in its challenges to common assumptions about U.S. history.

Rhodes skillfully weaves two narrative strands--an account of the Reagan-Gorbachev years and a history of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race--into a story that should be required reading for members of Congress and voting citizens. Readers watch history unfolding as two proud nations push to the brink of bankruptcy and beyond pursuing policies and an arms race that, as Rhodes carefully documents, far too many politicians, military leaders, and diplomats knew were nonsensical.

The only winners in this book are the underappreciated people who injected some sanity into the deliberations, a diverse group that included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Shultz, Eduard Shevardnadze, and others. Shultz deserves praise for blocking attempts by radicals to derail diplomatic negotiations between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev, asking his people in front of the Soviets "Are you out of your mind? This is what it's about. The longer they talk, the better it is."

Arsenals of Folly is a devastating critique of what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" and the deeply flawed policies it sustained in the Soviet Union and the United States.

Near the book's end, Rhodes uses business leaders, scholars, and civil engineers to show the negative price the U.S. has paid for the nuclear-arms race and bluntly states his final conclusion: "Far from victory in the Cold War, the superpower nuclear-arms race and the corresponding militarization of the American economy gave us ramshackle cities, broken bridges, failing schools, entrenched poverty, impeded life expectancy, and a menacing and secretive national-security state that held the entire human world hostage."

One year later, with the U.S. economy in the worst shape since World War II, Rhodes' prescient analysis cuts even deeper.

Armchair Interviews says: Arsenals of Folly is highly recommended.

Excellent overview of the end of the arms race

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Richard Rhodes has written yet another book on the development and politics behind nuclear weapons. In "The Arsenals of Folly," he worries less about the actual creation of nuclear weapons (see the superb "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" for that), and more about the political atmosphere surrounding the end of the Cold War. Much emphasis is placed on the life and career of Mikhail Gorbachev, and his relationship with Ronald Reagan. A lot of detail goes into the inner workings of the Reagan administration, especially in regard to talks with Gorbachev over nuclear weapons. Mr. Rhodes put a great deal of research into the talks between Reagan and Gorbachev, and the motivations and thoughts that both men had. The Arsenals of Folly is a comprehensive look at the dealings of cold war politics during the 80's, although it does not cover much beside that. The writing is clear and concise, and Rhodes does an excellent job of keeping the reader entertained as well as informed. Definitely a book that I recommend to anyone who wants to know more about the arms race and the Cold War.

Arsenals of Folly: The UN-Making of the Nuclear Arms Race.

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I was very excited to have the opportunity to read Richard Rhodes Third Book in his Nuclear Weapons series. His first book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb and his second "Dark Sun" were truly outstanding. Mr. Rhodes first two books gave a pretty fair and unbiased view of history. This third book was a major disappointment. Although the writing is superb as all of Mr. Rhodes books have been, I felt that he allowed his own "political" views to skew his portrayal of the closing years of the Cold War.

I particularly took exception to his agreement with the assertion that Nuclear Weapons FAILED to deter major war during the Cold War period. While it is certainly true that the United States and the Soviet Union did become actively involved in surrogate hostilities (i.e. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.) during the period of the Cold war, there was NO major war. Unlike World War II when Russia and the United States were openly attacked by other nations (Germany and Japan respectively), the deterrent of the nuclear threat did, in fact, keep not ONLY the United States and the Soviet Union from attacking each other, but kept ANY and ALL other nations from doing so. It is my firm belief (politics aside), that if either the United States or Russia had unconditionally (nuclear) disarmed at any time during the Cold War, or even now, some nation would have, and still might seize the opportunity to attack either country. Unfortunately limited conventional war has never become obsolete. But total world war has (not in spite of, but) because of the NUCLEAR deterrent.

Finally, I must also take exception to Mr. Rhodes last paragraph of his book. It can clearly be taken that Mr. Rhodes feels that the United States has become the biggest bully on the block (his reference to the biggest scorpion), that the United States is obstinate towards other nations, and that we should be ashamed of ourselves for continuing to claim (in his words) our OLD and DERELICT sovereignty that the weapons themselves deny. I for one, take America's sovereignty very seriously. Many true patriots have paid for the United States sovereignty with their blood. These patriots gave the last full measure of their devotion to this Country. It is sad when historical revisionists (like Mr. Rhodes) use their prestige as a renoun writer, as a forum for their (Liberal) assertions that attempt to pass for history.

Arsenals of Folly byv Richard Rhodes

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Richard Rhodes - Arsenals of Folly: The making of the nuclear arms race

In a book characterized by exceptional research, Richard Rhodes shows beyond all doubt that the nuclear arms race was more opportunistic than ideological. On both sides there were hidden agenda by the military-industrial complex to amplify the risk from the other. In the case of the US, who largely drove the race, the conservative wing of politics is clearly identified. Rhodes chronicles the "climate of fear" that was propagated by those who clearly profited financially from this madness. On the Soviet side it is more difficult to identify the drivers, but no doubt as documentation of the Soviet era becomes more available, further evidence will materialize. Rhodes gives great credit to Gorbachev, who was the first politician to have the courage and intelligence to challenge the status quo (even President Carter was unable to reduce the arms budget) and who also realized how to play to President Reagan. He shows conclusively that the hero in the west was actually Secretary of State George Schultz, who understood Reagan, perhaps even better that the President did himself.

In a terrifying section, it becomes apparent that Reagan lived in a make-believe world dominated by the movies. Two in particular formed his thinking, the first, "The day after" was a film about a nuclear bomb dropping in Kansas and the aftermath; the second was the famous film of George Lucas "Star Wars". In Reagan's mind, they gave him a "message" to deliver the world from the nuclear threat; Schultz was able to work on these themes and in the end out-manoeuvre the right wing, personified by Richard Perle and Edward Teller, and push through the huge disarmament that led to the end of the cold war. None of them, not even Gorbachev, and certainly nobody at the CIA, expected the Soviet Empire to implode.

Rhodes writes convincingly of the lessons from the cold war for the future, but one senses that he is not optimistic. As we have all seen, 9/11 has given another "excuse" for cultivating the climate of fear, and the present administration has played that for all its worth. The answer no doubt lies in a better-educated electorate, but to get there is the challenge. This is a book that should be discussed in high schools throughout the land, but there seems little chance of that.

G H Lander
Aug 2008