Arms Control for the ‘Successor Generation’

Abstract

Among the many problems which have bedevilled East-West relations, perhaps the most perplexing has been the failure of the two sides to engage in constructive openings with one another at the same time. The history of the past four decades is rife with examples. In the 1950s the U-2 incident dashed hopes for a new understanding between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, as did the invasion of Czechoslovakia for Brezhnev and Johnson in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the invasion of Afghanistan derailed ratification of SALT II, and East and West failed to negotiate any important agreement in the first half of the 1980s.