Rockets' Red Glare: Missile Defenses and the Future of World Politics
A helpful collection of essays by a mixture of academics and policymakers, this volume offers an accessible introduction to missile defense. A concise history of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is followed by surveys of the political and technological environments for missile defense, a more general section dealing with arms control and domestic political considerations, a collection of essays on regional views of missile defense, and summaries of a dozen key documents. A useful primer on a complex policy problem.
Related
The Clinton administration supports crippling economic sanctions that punish the Iraqi people but seems ready to live with the demise of international inspections to monitor Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. Washington has it exactly backward. It should offer Baghdad a blunt trade: lightened sanctions in return for renewed, intrusive arms inspections. The sweeping sanctions regime does nothing to advance U.S. interests, undermine Saddam, or contain Iraq. Leaving Saddam's arsenal unwatched is folly. Better to have arms inspections without sanctions than sanctions without arms inspections.
As Cold War threats have diminished, so-called weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- have become the new international bugbears. The irony is that the harm caused by these weapons pales in comparison to the havoc wreaked by a much more popular tool: economic sanctions. Tally up the casualties caused by rogue states, terrorists, and unconventional weapons, and the number is surprisingly small. The same cannot be said for deaths inflicted by international sanctions. The math is sobering and should lead the United States to reconsider its current policy of strangling Iraq.
A raft of new books confronts a very real threat--the terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction--and propose vital, though moderate, responses.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.