In Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul
Lettow explores the depth and sophistication of President Ronald
Reagan’s commitment to ridding humankind permanently of the threat
of nuclear war.
Lettow’s narrative spans the start of Reagan’s presidency and the
1986 Reykjavík summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev, during which America’s Strategic Defense Initiative
SDI was a defining issue. Lettow reveals SDI for what it was: a
full-on assault against nuclear weapons waged as much through
policy as through ideology. While cabinet members and advisers
played significant roles in guiding American defense policy, it was
Reagan himself who presided over every element, large and small, of
this paradigm shift in U.S. diplomacy.
Lettow conducted interviews with several former Reagan
administration officials, and he draws upon the vast body of
declassified security documents from the Reagan presidency; much of
what he quotes from these documents appears publicly here for the
first time. The result is the first major work to apply such
evidence to the study of SDI and superpower diplomacy. This is a
survey that doesn’t merely add nuance to the existing record, but
revises our
very understanding of the Reagan presidency.
關於作者:
Paul Lettow received an A.B. in history, summa cum
laude, from Princeton University and a D.Phil. in international
relations from Oxford University. He has taught American history at
Oxford University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the
Washington, D.C., area.
From the Hardcover edition.