Perhaps the most iconoclastic of a new generation of strategic thinkers, the author challenges widely held assumptions about the arms race. Eschewing a simple action-reaction spiral, he identifies eleven major factors which drive an arms race and six patterns of interactions among competitive states. In a work that must be taken seriously, even by those who may not be persuaded, Gray questions many of the "truths" about the undesirability or uniqueness of the Soviet-American strategic arms competition, seeing it more as part of the normal warp and woof of international politics.
