Focusing especially on the history of the MX program, this book examines the process of U.S. weapons procurement decision making. The authors demonstrate that strategic and general political factors (as opposed to bureaucratic concerns) play a far more decisive role in the decision-making process than is indicated in previous studies of weapons procurement. They also point to the significant contributions of congressional and public debate in influencing U.S. policy concerning weapons procurement. The authors conclude that the pattern of decision making with regard to the MX reflects a change that began in the 1970s and thus will be significant in explaining procurement policy in the decade ahead.

In late 1979 President Jimmy Carter approved the deployment of the MX weapons system, dubbed "man's largest project", across millions of acres of Great Basin land in Nevada and Utah. Officials sought to enlist citizen support with offers of jobs and calls for patriotic sacrifice. A coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, Western Shoshones, and Mormons battled with words and protest for two years to keep the weapons system out of their homelands. Drawing on interviews and records of involved organizations, Matthew Glass recounts the story of the citizens' struggle against the national security bureaucracy. He applies the critical social theory of Jurgen Habermas to show how the coalition's discourse differed from that of other antinuclear groups, undercutting in the process the role nuclear weapons have often played within the civil religion of American nationalism, a fact that may have contributed to the movement's success.

There have been scientific studies of the nuclear arms race, and there have been political exposés -- yet no book until now has given the general reader a complete and accessible history of the events, forces and factors that have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. In this revealing account, Ronald Powaski examines two basic questions: What keeps the nuclear arms race going and why is it so difficult to end? Starting with the opening days of World War II, when Roosevelt gave the go-ahead for the secret development of the atom bomb, the famous Manhattan Project, Powaski traces the unfolding arms race up to the current day. He takes us through Truman's decision to use the bomb against Japan in 1945, the Cold War era and the missile crisis of Kennedy's administration, to the detente years of the seventies and the defense and arms control policies of Ronald Reagan, including "Star Wars" and START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). As Powaski explains, both the United States and the Soviet Union now have a combined total of almost 50,000 nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms treaties and agreements are threatening to collapse, he argues, while the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons throughout the world has given many countries the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Emphasizing the role of the United States, Powaski shows how one president after another has promised to do his utmost to end the nuclear weapons competition, yet each one has actually increased the quantity or quality of these weapons in the American arsenal. March to Armageddon reveals this startling discrepancy between presidential words and actions.--Publisher description.

Most people think Star Wars began with the ideas of Ronald Reagan, but its roots reach decades further back. In this first scholarly account of the origins of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), historian Don Baucom traces these roots back to the dawn of the missile age in 1944. He finds SDI emerging after a period of nearly 40 years from forces generated by technological developments, changing strategic conditions, and the collapse of the SALT arms control negotiations of the 1970s.