Nuclear Issues

"Ukraine's denuclearization had been a controversial issue even as it was negotiated, leaving bitter traces in the country's political and public discourse. As a student of political science in Kyiv in the mid-1990s, I remember being outraged by the sense of injustice: how could the states that rely on their own nuclear deterrents demand the nuclear disarmament of others? More so that one of these states, Russia, has never fully come to terms with Ukraine's independence. Since then, I came to research a doctoral dissertation on the denuclearization of post-Soviet successor states and, in the process, learned a great deal about Ukraine's nuclear disarmament that dispelled many of my preconceptions."

"For nearly a century, in short, offshore balancing prevented the emergence of dangerous regional hegemons and pre­served a global balance of power that enhanced American security. Tellingly, when U.S. policymakers deviated from that strategy—as they did in Vietnam, where the United States had no vital interests—the result was a costly failure."

"The conventional wisdom among those who looked at the Middle East used to be that you had a choice either of supporting the autocrat or being stuck with the religious extremists. The extraordinary diffusion of information created in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries reveals a strong middle that we weren't fully aware of. What is more, new technologies allow this new middle to coordinate in ways unseen before Twitter, Facebook, and so forth, and this could lead to a very different politics of the Middle East. This introduces a new complexity to our government's dealings with the region."

"...[A]ll this shows is that a special relationship need not be an antiseptically harmonious and boring one to still be special. On the contrary: What is special, and atypical, is that the relationship has grown rather than suffered from its conflicts. The "long wait" in the nuclear domain was punctuated by a generous British offer of bases for U.S. B-29 bombers and culminated in unprecedented and intensified cooperation in the nuclear arena. Suez precipitated the "golden days" of the Anglo-American relationship under Macmillan, Eisenhower and Kennedy. The twin crises over the Falklands and Grenada did not prevent George Shultz from concluding that the Reagan-Thatcher relationship was "as close as any imaginable between two major leaders." The disputes over Bosnia presaged a deep cooperation in the Kosovo War. One need not look at the "special relationship" through a Panglossian lens to conclude that it has been real and durable, and has made an enormous contribution to the successful conclusion of the Cold War and the effort at maintaining international order in a disorderly post–Cold War world."

This review essay examines a set of books and documents that illuminate the dominant American threat perceptions in the post–September 11 environment and analyse both the strategies and the new directions that have emerged in U.S. policy in response to the new threat perceptions.

"...how can the United States maximize the benefits that primacy brings and minimize the resistance that its power sometimes provokes?"