Word: talbott
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Curiously, Talbott opens himself to such criticism by occasionally treating the Soviets with equal disdain. In his Prologue he comments on a quote by Yuri Andropos in January...
THERE IS a brooding presence in Deadly Gambits. In page after page, it makes its presence vaguely felt. Strobe Talbott offers the reader glimpses, tantalizing hints of an influence we sense must be crucial to his story. But through hundreds of pages of well-written, exhaustively-researched work. Talbott barely acknowledges the existence of this presence. It must be the Soviet Union (they are the other super-power, aren't they?), yet judging from the title, the introduction, and almost the entire work, it might as well be our imagination...
...reader cannot help but admire Talbott for his obvious concern about nuclear weapons, for his intelligence, for his grasp of the issues, and not least for his keen and conscientious attention to the importance of individuals in foreign policy negotiation. Deadly Gambits will clearly enter the history books on a par with such works as Robert I. Kennedy '40's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and George F. Kennan's writings on containment. But this dual account of the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) talks and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) suffers critically from an almost exclusive focus...
...Talbott's treatment of the SS-20 continues his deceptive even-handedness. He first brands it as a weapon "designed to circumvent" the limits of SALT I, "a classic example of the Soviet penchant for playing as close as possible to the edge of what is permissible...but nonetheless upsetting the stability and predictability that arms control is meant to help achieve." And then he gives the central argument for deployment in the absence of an equitable agreement...
...comes the unsurprising news, courtesy of a new book by Time diplomatic correspondent Strobe Talbott, that all along these negotiations, Reagan has failed to understand many of the basic disarmament policies of his government. Why should Gromyko take us seriously? Why, indeed, given the record, should we take the sudden about-face in U.S. approach, Reagan's soothing words, and the apparent pell-mell scramble for a Chernenko-Reagan summit seriously...