Winning & Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise & Revival of Arms Control
The greatest unacknowledged diplomatic achievement of the Cold War was the absence of mushroom clouds. Deterrence alone was too dangerous to succeed; it needed arms control to prevent nuclear warfare. So, U.S. and Soviet leaders ventured into the unknown to devise guardrails for nuclear arms control and to treat the Bomb differently than other weapons. Against the odds, they succeeded. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare for three quarters of a century. This book is the first in-depth history of how the nuclear peace was won by complementing deterrence with reassurance, and then jeopardized by discarding arms control after the Cold War ended.
Arms control achievements are in the past. After the Cold War ended, much of this diplomatic accomplishment was cast aside in favor of freedom of action. Nuclear peace requires arms control because deterrence alone is too dangerous to prevent mushroom clouds. New guardrails have to be erected. Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace is an engaging account of how the practice of arms control was built from scratch, how it was torn down, and how it can be rebuilt.
Michael Krepon co-founded the Stimson Center in 1989. He served as Stimson's President and CEO until 2000. He was appointed the University of Virginia's Diplomat Scholar, where he taught from 2001-2010. He is the author and editor of twenty-two books, most recently Off Ramps from Confrontation in Southern Asia and The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age. His forthcoming book, Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise and Revival of Arms Control, from Stanford University Press, is expected Fall 2021. He worked previously at the Carnegie Endowment, the State Department's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Carter Administration, and on Capitol Hill. He received the Carnegie Endowment's award for lifetime achievement in non-governmental work to reduce nuclear dangers in 2015.
