GLOBALIZING REAGAN'S INF TREATY

When it was concluded more than a quarter century ago, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union was hailed as a disarmament watershed, eliminating entire classes of nuclear missiles from the arsenals of the arms-racing Cold War superpowers. Over the intervening decades, there have been repeated calls to convert this legacy treaty into a new international norm against nuclear and missile proliferation by broadening it into a global prohibition on ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Indeed, variations on this proposal have been knocking around for so long and with so little success that the entire concept has come to be dismissed by many knowledgeable insiders as something of a farce. Looking beyond its inauspicious pedigree, however, this viewpoint suggests that the time is opportune for Washington to give the idea a fresh look. Drawing on a detailed review of the history of “Global INF” and an analysis of the contemporary context, the author recommends that the Obama administration consider a simple declaratory approach that promises modest initial benefits, avoids previous and foreseeable pitfalls, and plausibly lays a solid foundation for achieving significant long-term progress.     

NUCLEAR REDUCTIONS AND MIDDLE EAST STABILITY

The United States faces a series of strategic and policy conundrums as it attempts to promote strategic stability in the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East. This article examines the relationship between a reduced US nuclear arsenal and strategic stability in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. It argues that a series of interrelated political and military factors play a much more significant role in regional security and stability than the US strategic arsenal, which has never, with a few extraordinary exceptions, played a direct role in maintaining regional security. The United States has constructed a system of regional stability based on conventional deterrence and defense that has seen it forward base forces at various installations in the region in combination with efforts to arm, train, and equip host-nation militaries. Nuclear weapons have never played a prominent role in this regional system. Evidence presented in this article suggests that there is no compelling reason for the United States to abandon and/or modify the defensive system of conventional deterrence and defense by adding nuclear-backed guarantees to the mix.     

A continuous game of ambush

The article considers a two-person competitive problem in which a traveller wishes to choose a path across a rectangle from left to right in such a way as to avoid being ambushed by his adversary who has placed obstacles within the rectangle. Our results supplement those that have already been obtained by Ruckle and they indicate that, under certain conditions, the players need to adopt rather sophisticated strategies if they are to act optimally. This suggests that a complete solution to the problem could be difficult.     

Book reviews

John Horsfield, The Art of Leadership in War. The Royal Navy From the Age of Nelson to the End of World War II. Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1980. Pp. 240; £14.75.

John Joseph Timothy Sweet, Iron Arm: The Mechanization of Mussolini's Army, 1920–1940. Westport, Connecticut &; London: Greenwood Press. 1980. Pp. 207; £15.50.

Peter H. Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper. Princeton, N.J: Princeton U.P., 1980. Pp. 328; £8.60.

Greg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945–1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Pp. 425; $15.00.

Geoffrey Smith and Nelson W. Polsby, British Government and its Discontents. New York: Basic Books, and London: Harper and Row, 1981. Pp. 202; £7.95.

Seweryn Bialer (ed.), The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press and London: Croom Helm, 1981. Pp. 441; £14.95.

Jerry F. Hough, Soviet Leadership in Transition. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution and Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. 175; £12.00 (hb.) and £3.95 (pb.)

Edward F. Mickolus, Transnational Terrorism: A Chronology of Events 1968–1979. London: Aldwych Press, 1980. Pp. 967; £39.95.

Barry Rubin, The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1941–47; The Road to the Cold War, London: Frank Cass, 1980. Pp. 254; £14.50;

Daniel Heradstveit, The Arab‐Israeli Conflict; Psychological Obstacles to Peace. Oslo: Universittsforlaget, 1979. Pp. 234; £11.60;

Janice Gross Stein, and Raymond Tanter, Rational Decision‐making; Israel's Security Choices 1967. Columbus. Ohio; Ohio State University Press, 1980. Pp. 399; $35.     

A family of games on 1,∞)2 with payoff a function of y/x

A two-parameter class of games on 1,∞)² is studied. The games may be regarded as analogs of Silverman games, having continuous payoff function in place of a step function of y/x. This change is motivated by a desire to move toward a model for competitive situations where the penalty for overspending increases with the amount of overspending. There are some similarities to games with bell-shaped kernel. For most of the region considered in the plane of the two parameters there are solutions of finite type, which are obtained explicitly. There are, however, pockets in this plane where no optimal strategies have been found and possibly where none of finite type exist.