Arms Control and Disarmament (Military History)

Introduction

Humans have wielded weapons since the beginning of recorded history, both against other humans and the beasts that threatened them or provided them sustenance. With the rise of the modern nation-state, every nation accumulated weapons for waging wars with other nations, or for deterring them. But not until the 20th century, with the proliferation of new ideas and extraordinarily destructive weapons, did nations seek to regulate the accumulation of armaments. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious powers imposed stringent limitations on German armaments and agreed with one another to limit their naval weaponry in the hope of forestalling arms races and avoiding another major war. These efforts failed to prevent the rearmament of Germany and the revival of arms races among the great powers in the 1930s, which, in turn, led to World War II. In the aftermath of World War II, fear of nuclear holocaust led the great powers to concentrate on limitation of nuclear weapons, with results that remain hotly disputed among historians. Other forms of arms control have also proliferated since that time. Biological and chemical weapons have been the subject of numerous treaties. During and after some low-intensity insurgencies, foreign powers and indigenous governments have sought to remove small arms from the population as a means of reducing violence.

General Overviews

No historian has as yet produced a broad history of arms control and disarmament that can be described as comprehensive. Berkowitz 1987 and Burns 2009 purport to provide this range, but they are not derived from deep historical research and give short shrift to large swathes of history. Freedman 1986, Gray 1992, and Mueller 1989 deliver powerful arguments about the general nature of arms control and disarmament by invoking history, but the arguments take precedence over breadth. Croft 1996 and Towle 1997 address major facets of arms control in general terms, but they do not take on the entire subject.

Berkowitz, Bruce D. Calculated Risks: A Century of Arms Control, Why It Has Failed, and How It Can Be Made to Work. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
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The author, a political scientist, provides little that is new historically, but he does draw incisive general conclusions from the history of arms control in the 20th century. He argues that nearly all arms control efforts have been fruitless, in large part because they ignored the demand of countries for weapons.
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Burns, Richard Dean. The Evolution of Arms Control: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2009.
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Although the title suggests a chronological approach, the book is actually organized topically. In addition, the nuclear age receives a good deal more attention than Antiquity, or any other age. It is best suited for readers new to the topic.
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Croft, Stuart. Strategies of Arms Control: A History and Typology. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996.
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This book is, unfortunately, lighter on the history than on the typology. Although the author seeks to prove the value of arms agreements, he puts undue emphasis on the text of arms agreements and too little emphasis on the geopolitical context and the practical results of those agreements.
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Freedman, Lawrence. Arms Control: Management or Reform? London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
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This relatively brief book contends that arms control is more useful as a means of managing and stabilizing the world than as a means of imposing change on the world.
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Gray, Colin S. House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
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Drawing on the history of arms control through the 20th century, Gray makes the case that arms control agreements are useless, because hostile countries circumvent arms agreements and friendly countries do not need them. It remains one of the most provocative and important books on arms control.
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Mueller, John. Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
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Mueller contends that countries have become averse to war, and hence more amenable to arms control, because warfare has become intellectually and culturally unfashionable. The emphasis on broad intellectual and cultural transformation brings a fresh and valuable perspective on arms control.
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Towle, Philip. Enforced Disarmament: From the Napoleonic Campaigns to the Gulf War. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
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Towle examines ten cases in which victorious powers imposed disarmament on the defeated, offering valuable insights into the reasons why it resulted in lasting peace in certain cases and not in others.
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Journals

Two periodicals include arms control and disarmament in their core mission: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Arms Control Today. The former features journal-length articles as well as short pieces, some of which are historically focused, while the latter consists primarily of short articles and more often looks at the present and future. Both seek to promote policy change. A more general journal, International Security, frequently publishes journal-length articles, of consistently high quality, on arms control.

Arms Control Today.
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Founded in 1971, the journal is published monthly by the Arms Control Association and hence tends to publish articles supportive of arms control initiatives.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
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Formed in 1945 by scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, this bimonthly publication is avowedly activist, stating that its mission is to publish “information from leading scientists and security experts who explore the potential for terrible damage to societies from human-made technologies” and to investigate “ways to prevent catastrophe from the malign or accidental use of nuclear, carbon-based, and biology-based technologies.” It nevertheless contains some historical scholarship of value.
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International Security.
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Published quarterly since 1976, the journal is headquartered at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. It covers the full spectrum of security affairs but has featured a substantial number of articles on arms control, many of them by leading experts in the field.
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Naval Arms Control in the Interwar Period

The victors of World War I came together in Washington, DC, in 1921 and hammered out a set of restrictions on naval construction, for the purpose of averting the sort of naval competition that had consumed much of the wealth of Great Britain and Germany before the Great War and driven those two countries toward war. The world’s greatest naval powers agreed to limitations on tonnages of capital ships, with the United States and Great Britain having the highest limits, followed by Japan and then France and Italy. Some histories, such as Dingman 1976 and Goldman 1994, have given the Washington Naval Treaty and other agreements of the 1920s credit for discouraging a naval race between the United States and Great Britain. Most, however, concur with Kaufman 1990 that the agreements were deeply flawed, as evidenced by their failure to prevent Japan from abrogating its provisions and accelerating its naval production in the 1930s. For additional information on the topic, see Goldstein and Maurer 1994 and Pelz 1974.

Dingman, Roger. Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 1914–1922. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
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Dingman takes the most positive view of the Washington Conference, citing it as a model of arms control. He fails, however, to examine the breakdown of the treaty, or to explain how so ostensibly good a treaty could fall apart so completely.
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Goldman, Emily O. Sunken Treaties: Naval Arms Control between the Wars. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
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Goldman raises many of the same criticisms of the Washington treaty system as Kaufman, but she is more positive about its short-term benefits, contending that it reduced tensions in China during the 1920s. She also lauds the system for preventing Britain and the United States from engaging in a naval race against one another that could have escalated into war.
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Goldstein, Erik, and John Maurer, eds. The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor. London: Frank Cass, 1994.
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This volume contains a variety of well-researched and insightful essays on the Washington Conference and naval disarmament more generally in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to the expected topics, it includes essays on France, Italy, and China.
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Kaufman, Robert G. Arms Control during the Pre-nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Limitations between the Two World Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
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Kaufman takes a dim view of the attempts to control naval weapons. The United States failed to appreciate Japan’s motives, was naively optimistic that Japan would never want to discontinue its participation in arms control, and failed to undertake actions to curb Japan’s appetite for conquest. The author is a political scientist but generally avoids putting the theories before the facts.
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Pelz, Steven E. Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.
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Relying extensively on Japanese sources, Pelz shows how the five-power Washington naval treaty tried, and failed, to prevent naval arms races and naval warfare. After the Japanese backed out of the treaty in 1935, the United States and Britain belatedly tried to catch up, but not in time to discourage the Japanese from launching a war against them. A very good book.
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Interwar Period—General

These histories encompass the naval treaties between the world wars as well as a series of other international agreements aimed at preventing the growth of land armies. Much of the attention has been accorded to the disarmament that the victorious powers of World War I imposed on a defeated Germany. The many peace conferences held during the period generally ascribed central importance to arms control as keeper of the peace. The question of why the arms control and disarmament efforts failed to avert World War II has engendered rich and lively debate among historians. Burns and Urquidi 1968 provides the most comprehensive accounting. Hall 1987 and Shuster 2007 focus on the details of arms agreements and compliance, while Jaffe 1985 concentrates on British policy. McKercher 1992 covers a broad array of topics.

Burns, Richard Dean, and Donald Urquidi. Disarmament in Perspective: An Analysis of Selected Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements between the World Wars, 1919–1939. 4 vols. Los Angeles: California State College at Los Angeles Foundation, 1968.
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Seeks to identify causes of success and failure for seventeen agreements of the interwar period.
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Hall, Christopher G. L. Britain, America, and Arms Control, 1921–1937. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987.
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Although the detail overwhelms at times, the author does manage to incorporate strategic context effectively into the mechanics of negotiations and the technicalities of ships. Most of the information and interpretations had been published in previous accounts.
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Jaffe, Lorna S. The Decision to Disarm Germany: British Policy towards Postwar German Disarmament, 1914–1919. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985.
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The author demonstrates that disarmament of Germany went from a minor British concern during the war to one of Britain’s main objectives at the Paris peace negotiations.
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McKercher, Brian J. C., ed. Arms Limitation and Disarmament: Restraints on War, 1899–1939. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992.
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An excellent compilation of essays on a broad spectrum of arms control and disarmament topics. As with other works on the period, Britain and the United States receive the most attention, but greater attention is given to less well-explored topics such as the Hague Peace Conference of 1907 and the Coolidge Conference of 1927.
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Shuster, Richard J. German Disarmament after World War I: The Diplomacy of International Arms Inspection 1920–1931. London: Routledge, 2007.
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Shuster focuses on the Interallied Military Control Commission, which was responsible for ensuring German compliance with the disarmament provisions imposed by the victors of World War I. The coverage of the commission’s members and their national governments is interesting, but the study suffers from inattention to Germany’s efforts to circumvent disarmament during the period.
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Disarmament of the Axis Powers

Having failed to disarm Germany permanently after World War I, the victors of World War II went to more extreme measures to prevent Germany and Japan from rearming after the war ended. These measures included military government, long-term military occupation, and incarceration of elements in society deemed highly militaristic. Harries and Harries 1987 provides a full treatment of the Japanese case, while Large 1996 and Ziemke 2005 do the same for Germany. Madsen 1998 provides a focused study on the German navy.

Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarisation of Japan. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
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This study focuses on the development of American occupation policy in Japan and the initial actions of the occupiers, but unfortunately it gives short shrift to the long-term implementation of policy and its long-term ramifications.
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Large, David Clay. Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
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A good account that begins with the demilitarization of Germany after the war and then analyzes how the West Germans and their NATO allies gradually developed plans for rearming West Germany while limiting its power.
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Madsen, Chris. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament, 1942–1947. London: Frank Cass, 1998.
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Breaking much new ground, this book reveals that the British were hell-bent on destroying the German navy after World War II to ensure that Britain would never have to fight another naval war against Germany. The British used German naval officers to complete the destruction of the German navy, then fired them, only to realize soon thereafter that German naval forces needed to be revived for the Cold War.
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Ziemke, Earl F. The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany: 1944–1946. Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2005.
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An official history with details that become excessive at times, it contains much information that cannot be found elsewhere on the disarmament of the German nation.
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Disarmament of Populations

Given the desire of factions and states to hold uncontested power, the confiscation of weapons from populations dates back much further than most arms control initiatives. Historians have given little attention to the subject, however, until very recently, thanks in part to the troubled attempts to disarm the population of Afghanistan. As with other types of disarmament, the disarming of one group has led not to peace but to the victimization of the disarmed by those who retain arms. Isacson 1997 and Patel, et al. 2009 cover a range of historical cases, while Bhatia and Sedra 2008 and Porto, et al. 2007 focus on a single episode.

Bhatia, Michael V., and Mark Sedra. Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict: Armed Groups, Disarmament and Security in a Post-war Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Chronicles how the international community attempted to disarm militias or incorporate them into the national police after the fall of the Taliban. A fascinating study, although it understates the importance of disarmament to the resurgence of the Taliban in 2005.
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Isacson, Adam B. Altered States: Security and Demilitarization in Central America. Washington, DC: Center for International Policy, 1997.
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Addresses the collection of weapons from former soldiers and members of paramilitary groups and argues that the disappearance of external threats in Central America and the rise of liberal democracy have rendered military organizations unnecessary.
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Patel, Ana Cutter, Pablo de Greiff, and Lars Waldorf, eds. Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-combatants. New York: Social Science Research Council, 2009.
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Social science theorizing and recent historical cases make up the bulk of this edited volume, which focuses on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of combatants in postconflict environments. Although most of the history is not as thorough as one might like, some of it is valuable because it covers aspects of postconflict disarmament for which evidence is often scarce.
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Porto, João Gomes, Chris Allen, and Imogen Parsons. From Soldiers to Citizens: Demilitarization of Conflict and Society. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.
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An interesting look at the demilitarization of Angolans during and after decades of civil strife, although the book is marred by the contrivances of social science.
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Economics of Disarmament

The cost of weaponry rose exponentially in the 20th century with the advent of more complex and more destructive weapons, heightening concerns about armaments bankrupting states. Peden 2007 and Ghosh 1984 maintain that defense spending has inhibited economic growth and investment in other types of government spending. Schwartz 1998 is less convinced that the effects of defense spending are so negative.

Ghosh, Pradhip K., ed. Disarmament and Development: A Global Perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984.
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Most of the authors contend that disarmament has been a critical obstacle to the development of underdeveloped countries, a position that appears to overstate the importance of military expenditures and understate the role of corrupt indigenous elites.
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Peden, G. C. Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Contending that Britain’s national strategy has been driven by the quest for technological improvement, Peden shows that the rising costs of new technology put intense demands on Britain’s resources and forced it to decrease the quantity of armaments while the quality increased. Arms control agreements could be and, at times, were harnessed to serve those ends.
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Schwartz, Stephen I. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998.
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A useful chronicle of American spending on nuclear weapons, including sections on the dismantling of nuclear weapons and the associated costs.
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Nuclear Arms Control

The detonation of the first atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 convinced mankind for the first time that warfare threatened the existence of the entire planet, and, consequently, the nuclear era witnessed unprecedented interest in arms control. Much historical debate has centered on the reasons why the nuclear era has been free of wars between the nuclear powers, with arms control advocates citing international agreements, realists contending that self-interest convinced the nuclear powers to avoid major war, and culturalists attributing the restraint to a newfound moral aversion to war. The most important contributions to the debate include Carter 1989 and Mueller 2010. Volumes such as Freedman 1989 and Kolkowicz and Joeck 1984 have focused on the details of arms control strategies, negotiations, or verification. Bundy 1988 and Gaddis, et al. 1999 provide comprehensive and robust overviews of the subject, while Newhouse 1989 tackles similar ground in somewhat less inspired fashion. Most of the histories focus on the Cold War, but Rhodes 2010 provides a treatment of the post–Cold War period.

Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Random House, 1988.
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The National Security Advisor during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Bundy offers a highly insightful account based on decades of research and personal involvement.
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Carter, April. Success and Failure in Arms Control Negotiations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
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A former disarmament activist contends that achieving effective arms control is extremely difficult and, less convincingly, offers recommendations for overcoming the numerous obstacles.
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Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 2d ed. London: Macmillan, 1989.
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Freedman begins with the development of strategic bombing doctrine, explains how it was modified when nuclear weapons came into existence, and then follows alterations to nuclear strategy in the ensuing decades.
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Gaddis, John Lewis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds. Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Focuses on the nuclear diplomacy of ten statesmen from all sides of the Cold War. All ten held power in the first two decades of the Cold War, so the history trails off after the 1960s. Each chapter is written by a specialist on the particular individual, so the quality is high.
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Kolkowicz, Roman, and Neil Joeck, eds. Arms Control and International Security: The Nuclear Weapons Freeze and Arms Control. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984.
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A compilation of essays by some of the leading arms control practitioners and thinkers, though there is not much new here.
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Mueller, John E. Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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In this provocative study, Mueller contends that nuclear weapons have proven militarily and politically useless and are unlikely to be more useful in the future. Their main impact, he says, has been to cause unnecessary massive spending on nuclear weapons and technologies to thwart them. A worthwhile read for anyone interested in nuclear arms control.
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Newhouse, John. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf, 1989.
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Well written and detailed but not very deep or appreciative of context, this book concentrates on arms control agreements.
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Rhodes, Richard. The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World without Nuclear Weapons. New York: Knopf, 2010.
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Chronicles nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War, based on the rather limited source material available, and advocates total nuclear disarmament.
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United States

These accounts focus primarily on the American side of nuclear arms control. Most were written during or shortly after the events they address, and are therefore limited in access to information and inclined to use the past to recommend actions for the future. Krass 1997 covers the broadest range of subject matter. Mandelbaum 1979 is broad in scope but is limited in time frame by its time of publication. Seaborg and Loeb 1987 is restricted to study of the Johnson presidency, and Talbott 1988 concentrates on the long career of Paul Nitze, while Nichols and Boykin 1987 offers a mishmash of differing views on US arms control. Ritter 2010 is the most concerned with using history to support a present-day agenda.

Krass, Allan S. The United States and Arms Control: The Challenge of Leadership. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
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In this overview of American arms control policy since World War II, Krass emphasizes the importance of compliance and provides excellent discussion of the organizations engaged in verification, thanks in part to his experience at the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. A substantial fraction of the book is dedicated to policy prescriptions.
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Mandelbaum, Michael. The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons, 1946–1976. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
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Argues that liberal disarmament policies were unsuccessful in the three decades after World War II, and that nuclear weapons did not reduce the importance of power politics among states.
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Nichols, W. Gary, and Milton L. Boykin, eds. Arms Control and Nuclear Weapons: U.S. Policies and the National Interest. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987.
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The contributors provide differing views on the merits of various American arms control strategies, with some employing considerably more history than others.
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Ritter, Scott. Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy, from FDR to Obama. New York: Nation Books, 2010.
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The author contends that no viable controls have ever been placed on production of nuclear weapons, warning that the “addiction” of the United States to nuclear weapons has long been a menace to world peace.
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Seaborg, Glenn T., and Benjamin S. Loeb. Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987.
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Drawing extensively on his own involvement in arms control negotiations as the head of the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1960s, Seaborg attributes American advances in arms control during the period to the focus and persistence of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
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Talbott, Strobe. The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace. New York: Knopf, 1988.
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Follows Nitze’s career from his advocacy of a massive nuclear arsenal to his championing of nuclear weaponry reductions.
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Soviet Union

Most of these histories addressed the Soviet side of the equation at a time when archival evidence from the Soviet Union was virtually nonexistent. Many of them, nevertheless, made good use of open-source information to provide insights into Soviet behaviors. Arbatov 1988 offers the most solid evidence from the Soviet side. Haslam 1990 and Sherr 1988 provide useful overviews of Soviet policy on nuclear arms control, while Mandelbaum 1990 covers a hodgepodge of views. Garthoff 1994 and Rhodes 2007 fault the United States for the lackluster results of arms control negotiations, whereas Morris 1988 is more critical of the Soviet Union. Weber 1991 endeavors to prove certain theories of political science.

Arbatov, Alexei G. Lethal Frontiers: A Soviet View of Nuclear Strategy, Weapons, and Negotiations. New York: Praeger, 1988.
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A Soviet scholar provides well-grounded analysis of Soviet perspectives, as well as Soviet perceptions of American perspectives.
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Garthoff, Raymond L. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994.
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Puts most of the blame for the breakdown of détente and the accompanying arms control initiatives on the United States. The volume of sources is impressive, but the proximity to events left the author with little access to classified materials.
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Haslam, Jonathan. The Soviet Union and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons in Europe, 1969–87. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
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An excellent early history showing how nuclear weapons shaped the international dynamics in Europe during the waning years of the Cold War.
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Mandelbaum, Michael, ed. The Other Side of the Table: The Soviet Approach to Arms Control. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1990.
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Attempts to fill the gap of Western knowledge of Soviet arms control policy, from the 1950s to the 1980s, but, as the editor acknowledges, the lack of access to internal Soviet deliberations forced the contributors to rely heavily on speculation.
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Morris, Charles R. Iron Destinies, Lost Opportunities: The Arms Race between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. 1945–1987. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
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Morris seeks to explain the meteoric rise in American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles and the ineffectiveness of arms control efforts. Like most books written during the Cold War, it is on much firmer ground in explaining the American side than the Soviet side and the early years of the Cold War than the later years.
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Rhodes, Richard. Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. New York: Knopf, 2007.
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Chronicles the Cold War arms race, with heavy emphasis on Reagan and Gorbachev. Richard Perle and other American opponents of disarmament are blamed for scuttling negotiations between the two statesmen.
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Sherr, Alan B. The Other Side of Arms Control: Soviet Objectives in the Gorbachev Era. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
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Studies a valuable topic, but because of the inaccessibility of sources it is necessarily short on evidence and long on speculation.
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Weber, Steve. Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
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Analyzes US-Soviet negotiations on antiballistic missile systems, MIRV, and antisatellite weapons, mainly in order to prove his own variant of game theory and other theories that will make most historians cringe.
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Other Nations

As nuclear weapons have become easier and less expensive to manufacture, smaller countries have sought to build their own nuclear arsenals. The great powers have sought to prevent them from doing so, for fear that an increase in the number of nuclear powers would increase the likelihood of a nuclear war. Fry, et al. 1990; Reed and Stillman 2009; and Schrafstetter and Twigge 2004 chronicle efforts to limit nuclear proliferation. Siegel 1997 addresses the US confrontation in 1994 with North Korea over the latter’s nuclear program, which demonstrated the difficulty that even the world’s most powerful country faced in combating proliferation. Ganguly and Hagerty 2005 shows the impact of nuclear proliferation in conflicts between India and Pakistan. In this instance, nuclear proliferation appears to have had a positive impact, because the possession of nuclear weapons on both sides discouraged each from going to war.

Fry, Michael P., Patrick Keatinge, and Joseph Rotblat, eds. Nuclear Non-Proliferation and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. New York: Springer Verlag, 1990.
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Examines the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the light of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970.
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Ganguly, Sumit, and Devin T. Hagerty. Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.
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Analyzes the role of nuclear weapons and the attempts to limit those weapons in recent showdowns between India and Pakistan.
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Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith, 2009.
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Written by two former designers of nuclear weapons, this volume is rich in technical details, and the authors do a good job of demonstrating the relevance of the details to national nuclear policy. The geographic spread is impressive, considerably wider than in most histories of nuclear weapons. The later chapters focus on current events.
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Schrafstetter, Susanna, and Stephen Twigge. Avoiding Armageddon: Europe, the United States, and the Struggle for Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1945–1970. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
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Incorporates the role of western European nations in nuclear arms control better than previous accounts.
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Siegel, Leon V. Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
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Focuses on the crisis between the United States and North Korea in 1994, which seemed to come close to the precipice of war.
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Nuclear Testing

During the 1950s, the destructive power of nuclear weapons mushroomed, and so did awareness of the harmful effects on the environment and humanity of nuclear detonations. As a result, the great powers gained an interest in restricting the testing of nuclear weapons. The Americans and the Soviets needed a decade, from 1954 to 1963, to come up with a mutually agreeable nuclear test ban, as Divine 1978, Greene 2007, and Oliver 1998 explain.

Divine, Robert A. Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
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An excellent rendition of the internal American debate over the nuclear test ban during the Eisenhower administration.
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Greene, Benjamin P. Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945–1963. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
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The author reveals that President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the need to ban atmospheric nuclear testing because of the harmful effects of radiation, but he refused to pursue a deal with the Soviets because of warnings from scientific advisers that it would undermine the development of the US nuclear arsenal and would be exploited by the untrustworthy Soviets.
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Oliver, Kendrick. Kennedy, Macmillan, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1961–63. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998.
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Coverage of the test ban agreement is decent, but the primary ambition is to demonstrate the centrality of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the negotiations.
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Verification

With the securing of arms control agreements came a need to verify compliance. The histories that focus on verification have tended to concentrate on technical requirements and political constraints. Hirschfeld 1987 addresses the use of intelligence in verification. Altmann and Rotblat 1989; Brown 1995; Schrag 1989; and Scribner, et al. 1985 cover all of the aspects of verification.

Altmann, Jürgen, and Joseph Rotblat, eds. Verification of Arms Reductions: Nuclear, Conventional, and Chemical. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1989.
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Heavy on technical and scientific details, but some of the contributions deal extensively with political affairs.
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Brown, James, ed. Old Issues and New Strategies in Arms Control and Verification. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Press, 1995.
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A mixed bag, derived from the Fifth Annual International Arms Control and Verification Conference at Southern Methodist University.
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Hirschfeld, Thomas J., ed. Intelligence and Arms Control: A Marriage of Convenience. Austin, TX: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, 1987.
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The contributors include some of the most noteworthy practitioners of the late Cold War.
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Schrag, Philip G. Listening for the Bomb: A Study in Nuclear Arms Control Verification Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989.
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An interesting account of American and Soviet agreements to permit verification at each other’s nuclear testing sites, but one constrained by efforts to fit decisions into theoretical boxes.
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Scribner, Richard A., Theodore J. Ralston, and William D. Mertz. The Verification Challenge: Problems and Promise of Strategic Nuclear Arms Control Verification. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1985.
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Addresses all of the major challenges in verifying compliance with nuclear treaties.
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Popular Movements

Although the principle of disarmament is an ancient one, it acquired widespread popularity only in the 20th century, with the rise of more destructive weapons and changes in Western attitudes toward war. DeBenedetti 1980 and Lynch 1999 address the peace movements of the interwar period and their undoing at the hands of Germany and Japan. Breyman 2001, Katz 1986, Mariner and Piehler 2009, Meyer 1990, Wittner 1984, and Wittner 2009 concentrate on popular movements that have championed nuclear disarmament. Written predominantly by members or proponents of nuclear disarmament movements, these histories tend to credit these movements with actual reductions in international nuclear armaments, often to the neglect of the views of policymakers about armaments and their nations’ interests.

Breyman, Steve. Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
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A zealous veteran of the antimissile movement, the author advances the tenuous argument that the West German antimissile movement deserves the credit for leading Ronald Reagan to agree to nuclear controls with Mikhail Gorbachev.
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DeBenedetti, Charles. The Peace Reform in American History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
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DeBenedetti contends that the roots of America’s peace movement stretch back to the colonial era. He focuses mainly on radical pacifists, and the book’s lengthy narration of persons and events gives short shrift to meaningful analysis.
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Katz, Milton S. Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1957–1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986.
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Provides a workmanlike history of SANE and makes thinly substantiated claims about the influence of the committee on larger events.
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Lynch, Cecelia. Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
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The author challenges the view that the interwar peace movements were uniformly pacifistic and naive. While she shows that elements of the peace movements demonstrated a previously unacknowledged pragmatism, she does not damage the long-standing view that faith by the peace movements in multilateral cooperation and arms control was decisively discredited by the rearming and subsequent war making of the Axis powers.
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Mariner, Rosemary B., and G. Kurt Piehler, eds. The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009.
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In this eclectic collection of essays, scholars ponder the impact of nuclear weaponry on American society and, to a much lesser extent, the impact of American society on nuclear weaponry. Those interested in nuclear disarmament will find sporadic references to the topic.
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Meyer, David S. A Winter of Discontent: The Nuclear Freeze and American Politics. New York: Praeger, 1990.
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Relies heavily on dense social-science theorizing to explain the growth of the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s, advancing the dubious proposition that the nuclear freeze movement deserves credit for Reagan’s decision to seal agreements on nuclear limitations with Gorbachev.
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Wittner, Lawrence S. Rebels against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933–1983. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
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The author, who says he was motivated to write this study through his involvement with the peace movement as a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War and through his desire to abolish war, covers pacifism from the 1930s to the nuclear disarmament movement of the 1970s and early 1980s. Despite its polemical tone, it is a useful study.
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Wittner, Lawrence S. Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
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A condensation of a three-volume history on the topic. The author contends that citizen activists were responsible for reducing the production of nuclear arms and for averting a nuclear holocaust, a conclusion that gives too little credit to the geopolitics of the Cold War and the end of that conflict.
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Organizations

Concern about nuclear weapons led to the creation of governmental and international organizations for the express purpose of limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons. Like many organizational histories, these are liable to exaggerate the general importance of the organizations under study. Beker 1985 addresses the role of the United Nations in disarmament, while Clarke 1979 tackles the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Fischer, et al. 1985 covers the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Beker, Avi. Disarmament without Order: The Politics of Disarmament at the United Nations. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985.
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A focused study of the ability of the United Nations to achieve lasting arms control agreements, it is now somewhat dated but still useful. Beker emphasizes that the independence of the great powers and their rivalries with one another rendered the United Nations incapable of fulfilling its aspirations as a mechanism for disarmament.
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Clarke, Duncan L. Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. New York: Free Press, 1979.
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A useful institutional history, although the author’s adoration of the agency and controversial director Paul Warnke colors some of the analysis.
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Fischer, David, Paul Szasz, and Jozef Goldblat. Safeguarding the Atom: A Critical Appraisal. London: Taylor and Francis, 1985.
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Assesses efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that companies comply with international arms control agreements.
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Chemical and Biological Weapons

As Mayor 2003 notes, biological and chemical warfare date back to ancient times. Most of the historical study, however, covers the 20th century, during which the use of poison gas in World War I spurred widespread interest in limitations on biological and chemical weapons. These weapons were seldom used after World War I, for reasons that remain a matter of ongoing debate. Some maintain that international treaties led combatants to refrain from their use, while others argue that combatants avoided using them because it would lead their adversaries to employ the same nasty weapons against their soldiers. Brown 1968 focuses on the first half of the 20th century, whereas Mauroni 2003 is concerned with the second half of the century. Adams 1990 and Spiers 2010 provide good overviews spanning the entire 20th century. Crone 1992 is focused on the science and technology of chemical weapons and their disarmament. Sims 1988 and Sims 2001 concentrate on the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention agreement.

Adams, Valerie. Chemical Warfare, Chemical Disarmament. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
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Provides an excellent overview of chemical warfare and chemical disarmament in the 20th century. As a former practitioner, Adams is intimately familiar with the details.
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Brown, Frederic J. Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.
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Focuses primarily on chemical warfare during the world wars and the interwar period.
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Crone, Hugh D. Banning Chemical Weapons: The Scientific Background. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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This book provides a history of the science of chemical weapons and the technical factors that must be considered in efforts to control, or ban, these weapons.
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Mauroni, Albert J. Chemical Demilitarization: Public Policy Aspects. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
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Based in part on personal experience, the author chronicles the US Army’s reduction of its chemical weapons arsenal. He reveals that a small number of outspoken citizens and politicians played crucial roles in guiding the process, roles that often outstripped the merits of their arguments. He also shows that the US Army was slower than other services to learn the art of standing up to Congress.
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Mayor, Adrienne. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Duckworth, 2003.
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The author breaks a great deal of new ground in cataloging biological and chemical weapons during ancient times. Recognizing the gruesome and dastardly character of such weapons, the ancients at times refrained from their use and production, generally out of fear of retaliation rather than based on any formalized agreement.
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Sims, Nicholas A. The Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament: Vicissitudes of a Treaty in Force, 1975–85. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988.
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Traces the negotiations that culminated in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention agreement of 1972, and analyzes the troubled history of its implementation.
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Sims, Nicholas A. The Evolution of Biological Disarmament. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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Continues the story of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention agreement from 1985 to 1998.
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Spiers, Edward M. A History of Chemical and Biological Weapons. London: Reaktion, 2010.
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Provides a concise history of chemical and biological weapons, beginning with usage during World War I and then moving on to subsequent efforts to restrict usage.
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Space

The extension of human technology into space was driven as much by defense concerns as by human curiosity and the desire for national prestige. Begun in earnest well after the nuclear arms race was in full swing, the space race was informed by the Cold War debates about arms limitation and appears to have benefited as a result. For many years, Stares 1985 was the only in-depth history in this field. Moltz 2008 provides a badly needed update.

Moltz, James Clay. The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.
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Contends that the United States and the Soviet Union demonstrated considerable restraint in the militarization of space during the Cold War.
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Stares, Paul B. The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
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An important early history.
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US Congress

Although international agreements require the approval of the US Senate, historians have as yet devoted little attention to the role of Congress in arms control. No book-length treatment has been produced, but Barnhart 1987 and Krepon and Caldwell 1991 provide some valuable essays.

Barnhart, Michael, ed. Congress and United States Foreign Policy: Controlling the Use of Force in the Nuclear Age. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.
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The bulk of the book concerns the imposition of congressional control over US foreign policy, but a few of the essays delve into arms control.
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Krepon, Michael, and Dan Caldwell, eds. The Politics of Arms Control Treaty Ratification. New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.
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Useful essays on US Senate ratification of major arms control treaties, a subject that has received little scholarly attention.
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Specific Agreements

Histories of individual arms control agreements have provided important insights into the broad subjects of arms control and negotiations. Borawski 1988 ably addresses the Stockholm Conference on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe. The START negotiations provide the subject matter for Kartchner 1992, while the less well-known negotiations that led to the Seabed Arms Control Treaty of 1971 are the focus of Ramberg 1978.

Borawski, John. From the Atlantic to the Urals: Negotiating Arms Control at the Stockholm Conference. London: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988.
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A detailed and helpful recounting of the Stockholm Conference on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe.
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Kartchner, Kerry M. Negotiating START: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the Quest for Strategic Stability. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992.
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Focused on the START negotiations, this book goes up to the end of the Cold War and thus lacks access to internal governmental deliberations, but it does contain a wealth of open-source information as well as a host of valuable insights.
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Ramberg, Bennett. The Seabed Arms Control Negotiations: A Study of Multilateral Arms Control Conference Diplomacy. Denver, CO: University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies, 1978.
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Analyzes the negotiations that led to the 1971 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union that banned placement of nuclear weapons on the ocean floor. The author is more interested in negotiations theory than he is in arms control.
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