Superpowered Arms

Eric and Eliot welcome John Maurer, Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Air University in Alabama and author of Competitive Arms Control, Nixon, Kissinger and SALT, 1969-1972 (Yale University Press, 2022). They discuss the competitive and cooperative approaches to arms control, interagency deliberations and conflicts in the Nixon Administration, the motivations and policies of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and especially Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. They also talk about the action-reaction model of the arms races and the role of arms control in providing arms race stability and crisis stability to the superpower nuclear arms competition. They conclude with a discussion about how the Nixon Administration's experience with arms control illuminates the subsequent history of Cold War arms control, as well as how that history augurs for the future of arms control in the very different circumstances of today's great power c...