The Great Universal Embrace

1989 SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACK

Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1983 to '87, the author participated in three summits and played a key role in the 1987 INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Treaty which led to a reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles and broke new ground in verification techniques. Summit meetings are not conducive to serious business, he opines, recalling that Reagan and Gorbachev "spent much of their time congratulating one another; the rest was spent misunderstanding each other." In this rambling but informative book, Adelman argues that traditional U.S.-Soviet arms control is conceptually bankrupt, and that sound verifiable accords on strategic, conventional and chemical weapons are more likely to be achieved by means of an informal, individual, reciprocal approach: "Rather than go for an agreement without real arms control, we should seek real arms control without necessarily going for an agreement." Current "pactomania," with its naive expectation that "parchment brings peace," is at a dangerous dead end, he stresses.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has written a first-hand account of the dramatic series of superpower summits that highlighted the Reagan years. Tantalizing details of Reykjavik, Geneva, and Washington are interspersed with vivid, personal portraits of Gorbachev and Reagan. Adelman also shares his personal views on arms summitry, saying it has a dismal historical record, that it will continue to be disappointing, and that U.S. diplomats require more "dexterity and patience." The reader will need some, too. For a more balanced account, see A Game for High Stakes , edited by Leon Sloss and M. Scott Davis (Ballinger Pub. Co., 1986).
- John Yurechko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.