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The Dynamics Of Domestic Politics And Arms Control: The Salt Ii Ratification Debate

Dan Caldwell
Reviewed by By Gregory F. Treverton
Summer 1991
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Dan Caldwell
University of South Carolina Press
1991
234 pp.
$32.95

SALT II's fate is of more than passing interest now that its successor, START I, looks like it too might have trouble being ratified, if it ever gets negotiated. Caldwell's telling of the story is detailed and he lets his interviewees speak for themselves (perhaps a little too much so). Negotiators in the Bush administration must surely agree with one of his conclusions: just as Carter should have quickly finished SALT II and ratified it as Nixon's treaty, so should they have quickly finished and ratified START I as Reagan's handiwork.

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