Miller on Trachtenberg and Jervis on SALT

Note

Steven E. Miller reviews two journal articles: Marc Trachtenberg, “The United States and Strategic Arms Limitation during the Nixon-Kissinger Period: Building a Stable International System?” Journal of Cold War Studies 24:4 (Fall 2022): 157-197; and Robert Jervis., “The Many Faces of SALT,” Journal of Cold War Studies 24:4 (Fall 2022): 198-214

At a moment when arms control is deeply troubled and may be dying, two eminent scholars, Marc Trachtenberg and the late Robert Jervis, have taken a fresh look at the beginnings of strategic arms control fifty years after the signing in Moscow of the SALT I agreements in May of 1972. They do so from different vantage points. Trachtenberg, an accomplished historian, draws on voluminous relevant documentary evidence now available to offer a more complete story of the origins and impact of the first strategic arms control negotiations. Jervis, a political scientist who has done hugely influential work on the role of perceptions in international politics, has written here an interpretive essay that examines how understandings of SALT shifted as political and intellectual contexts changed. Though these are two quite different essays, the extent to which their themes and conclusions overlap is striking....