Overview

By 1979, the Cold War was raging for some 30 years, and both the Soviet Union and the United States had built up huge arsenals of nuclear weapons-enough destructive power to kill every human on the planet several times over. In 1979, the SALT II nuclear weapons reduction treaty was signed by President Jimmy Carter and was submitted to the US Senate for ratification. Despite a public approval rating of 70%, the SALT II treaty ran into stiff opposition from the newly-emerging conservative political movement. Hawkish conservative groups were philosophically opposed to arms control, and instead favored a sharp increase in American military power. After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 elections, the Cold War re-ignited--the US undertook its most massive military expansion since the Second World War. This volume presents a selection of testimony before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee during the debate over the ratification of SALT II. The arguments that were made in 1979 reflect the tenor of those times, when the Cold War against the Evil Empire was about to heat up again to white hot levels, and when nuclear tensions reached their highest points since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

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9781610010177

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