Hard Line

During the Reykjavik summit of 1987, bureaucratic intrigue and infighting set the stage for the meeting between the two world leaders, as the American president nearly signs away America's strategic nuclear deterrent

In bristling, economical prose Perle, right-wing assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, throws a spotlight on behind-the-scenes maneuvering at the highest political levels. His engrossing first novel skewers the paper jousting and sound-bite scrambling common among White House advisers anxious to keep policy on track. It's 1998 when Harvard professor Michael Waterman looks back on events surrounding a 1987 summit meeting requested by the Soviets to discuss limits on nuclear missile deployment in Europe. The Defense department wants to remove all but short-range nuclear missiles from Europe and will give no ground on full deployment of SDI. Waterman, then assistant secretary of Defense, fights to keep this position in favor with the president. His counterpart and nemesis at the State department, Daniel Bennet, opposes this hard-line stance, feeling it will get in the way of an agreement-- any agreement--at the summit. A battle of press leaks, secret memos and influence-peddling ensues as State and Defense jockey for the role of chief policymaker as summit fireworks wane. Waterman's and Bennet's bosses aid their assistants but retain primary loyalty to the president when ambition derails one of their proteges. Perle breathes vibrant, if partisan, life into characters who are caught up in the internecine scrambling for authority that precedes any major White House action.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Former Reagan Administration assistant secretary of defense for international security Perle presents a policy-driven thriller- …-clef about State Department perfidy and the valiant, dedicated, selfless assistant secretary of defense for international security in the administration of a nameless but eerily familiar 3x5 card- flipping President who battles to save the nation from the aforementioned perfidy and from anyone in either hemisphere who would threaten the Strategic Defense Initiative. You thought the Soviets were mean and treacherous, but that's just because you don't know the real threat to peace, stability, and the balance of power--those oily, stupidly trusting, cynical WASPs who run the State Department. They're really bad. Beltway insiders are sure to be left gasping by the devastating portrait of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Dan Bennet, a totally unprincipled Princetonian who uses his old college roommate, now a liberal Stanford professor, as a back-channel to the Soviets in order to undermine the hard-hitting, coldly realistic, and increasingly successful SDI-dependent foreign policy espoused by ultradedicated Assistant Secretary of Defense, talented amateur cook, and neglectful husband Michael Waterman. How lucky the President, the Secretary of Defense, and, well, the country are to have Waterman, who stays working late at the Pentagon night after night to craft a defense policy based on reason and fact rather than Liberal Sentiment. But Waterman is about to face his greatest battle. After dreaming up a stunningly simple but immensely powerful course of action to take in the area of intermediate-range European-based missiles, he realizes that all his wonderful work is about to go down the tubes, sabotaged by the hateful Assistant Secretary Bennet, who has his own plan to give the Soviets the nuclear candy-store just for the sake of a silly treaty. Bennet and Waterman go toe-to-toe as the President and the General Secretary do the summit thing.... All the breezy charm and subtle thrills of a Nixon memoir. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In his first novel, a Reagan-era assistant secretary of defense (ASD) pits Michael Waterman, an ASD suspiciously like his creator, against duplicitous Russians and naive State Department functionaries. Perle dissects policy battles between State and Defense with wit and venom but stupefying detail, explaining how the president almost, but not quite, gave away the Cold War at a summit suspiciously like Reykjavik. Essentially a platform for voicing the author's belief that the tough policies he advocates caused the collapse of the Soviet empire, the novel features excellent prose, tiny plot, and minimal characterization. For Washington insiders and the largest public libraries.
- Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.