THE RIGHT BOOKS

Now, in the final quarter of the year 1988, we begin to be able to discern the military and political impact of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. In The Cure That May Kill: Unintended Consequences of the INF Treaty (The Institute for European Defense & Strategic Studies, 13/14 Golden Square, London, England, W1R 3AG; $8), Angelo Codevilla, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues that it is shaping up pretty much as many of its opponents warned it would.

In The Arms-Control Delusion, published last year and reviewed in this space (December 18, 1987), Mr. Codevilla (writing with Senator Malcolm Wallop) described the arms-control process as following inexorably from a fixed and faulty logic; now, in the treaty’s aftermath, he finds no reason to moderate his earlier judgment. Codevilla, who is also the author of the recently published While Others Build: The Commonsense Approach to the Strategic Defense Initiative (Free Press), and the forthcoming War (written with Paul Seabury, to be published by Basic Books in 1989), argues in the present instance that, contrary to claims made by advocates of the treaty that it would increase stability and allay fears within the NATO Alliance, the effect has been quite the opposite. INF, he believes, has been yet another unnecessary measure weakening NATO militarily, as well as an added blow to its morale—especially in West Germany, where an increasing number of people apparently have concluded that, absent land-based NATO systems capable of striking within territory defended by the Warsaw Pact, battlefield weapons ought to be negotiated away as a source of vulnerability rather than of strength. “The decision to withdraw the U.S. missiles,” Codevilla writes, “is part of a chain of military and political events which logically leads nowhere else. Unfortunately… the INF Treaty is not the beginning of that chain—a ‘dangerous precedent’ which could lead to unwanted things in the far-off future if it became established. Rather, it is nearer to the end; and it may well prove to be the point at which the flow of events has become irreversible.”

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Now, in the final quarter of the year 1988, we begin to be able to discern the military and political impact of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. In The Cure That May Kill: Unintended Consequences of the INF Treaty (The Institute for European Defense & Strategic Studies, 13/14 Golden Square, London, England, W1R 3AG; $8), Angelo Codevilla, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues that it is shaping up pretty much as many of its opponents warned it would.

In The Arms-Control Delusion, published last year and reviewed in this space (December 18, 1987), Mr. Codevilla (writing with Senator Malcolm Wallop) described the arms-control process as following inexorably from a fixed and faulty logic; now, in the treaty’s aftermath, he finds no reason to moderate his earlier judgment. Codevilla, who is also the author of the recently published While Others Build: The Commonsense Approach to the Strategic Defense Initiative (Free Press), and the forthcoming War (written with Paul Seabury, to be published by Basic Books in 1989), argues in the present instance that, contrary to claims made by advocates of the treaty that it would increase stability and allay fears within the NATO Alliance, the effect has been quite the opposite. INF, he believes, has been yet another unnecessary measure weakening NATO militarily, as well as an added blow to its morale—especially in West Germany, where an increasing number of people apparently have concluded that, absent land-based NATO systems capable of striking within territory defended by the Warsaw Pact, battlefield weapons ought to be negotiated away as a source of vulnerability rather than of strength. “The decision to withdraw the U.S. missiles,” Codevilla writes, “is part of a chain of military and political events which logically leads nowhere else. Unfortunately… the INF Treaty is not the beginning of that chain—a ‘dangerous precedent’ which could lead to unwanted things in the far-off future if it became established. Rather, it is nearer to the end; and it may well prove to be the point at which the flow of events has become irreversible.”