Lettow, Paul 1977–

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Lettow, Paul 1977–

(Paul Vorbeck Lettow)

PERSONAL: Born 1977. Education: Princeton University, A.B. (summa cum laude); Oxford University, D.Phil.

ADDRESSES: Home—Cambridge, MA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Oxford University, Oxford, England, former teacher in American history.

WRITINGS:

Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: In Paul Lettow's debut book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the author "has made a major and thoroughly researched contribution to the study of Ronald Reagan's presidency," commented Lawrence D. Freedman in Foreign Affairs. Lettow suggests that it was President Reagan's fierce anti-nuclear beliefs that fueled his policies toward the Soviets and led him to support unlikely defense strategies such as the Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as SDI or "Star Wars"). Lettow maintains that Reagan's support of such programs was not politically hollow, but was instead always part of a larger plan to push the Soviets toward disarmament

Lettow reports that Regan's hatred of nuclear weapons ran so deep that he would have abolished all such devices if he had been able to. Though the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine had kept the balance of power equalized through much of the cold-war conflict, Reagan still found it abhorrent. During one particularly heady summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October of 1986, the Americans and Soviets almost agreed to a complete dismantling of their nuclear arsenals, after they "reached that point in a mood of almost casual enthusiasm," noted National Interest contributor Geoffrey Smith. Other diplomatic failures at Reykjavik precluded any meaningful move toward complete disarmament, but Lettow shows that the policy was seriously considered at least once during Reagan's presidency.

Instead of pushing the Soviets for disarmament, which likely would not have been effective, Reagan kept upping the financial ante in the perpetual arms race that had enmeshed the United States and Soviet Union throughout the cold war. Lettow stresses "Reagan's determination, especially in the early years, to make nuclear competition prohibitively expensive for the Soviets," Smith remarked. "Every time he intensified such competition, he was making it more and more difficult for the Soviet Union to keep up and therefore bringing serious disarmament that much closer."

Reagan knew that the Soviet economy was weak and in danger of collapsing, but he also knew that the Soviets would feel obligated to spend beyond their means in order to keep pace with the Americans. If the United States increased their weapons stockpile, the Soviets would have to do so as well. Whenever the United States proposed a system such as SDI, the Soviets would have to expend resources to figure out how to match it or overcome it. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was never convinced that SDI was intended solely as a defensive system, Lettow noted. "The fear in Washington was that SDI might turn out to be useless," Smith commented. "The fear in Moscow was that it might turn out to be a means of militarizing space and therefore be a decisive technological advance in the Cold War." This fear kept the Soviets rushing to find ways to best the American system even though it was never deployed.

Readers of Lettow's book are "are left with a counter-intuitive proposal," noted Josh Green in the San Francisco Chronicle. "In order to reduce nuclear weapons we should spend untold billions to show our enemies they will have to build more of them to keep up? Reagan never intended to bomb the Soviets back to the Stone Age; he wanted to spend them into an economic tailspin, according to Lettow." SDI might not have worked in physical reality, but its greatest accomplishment showed that, in the most important way, it worked perfectly. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Lettow's book a "comprehensively researched, well-crafted monograph," while Jay Freeman concluded in Booklist that Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is "a well-done, informative study."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Arms Control Today, March, 2005, review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 46.

Booklist, January 1, 2005, Jay Freeman, review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 790.

Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2005, Lawrence D. Freedman, review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 136.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2004, review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 1185.

National Interest, spring, 2005, Geoffrey Smith, "Who Won the War?," review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 119.

Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2005, review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, p. 48.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2005, Josh Green, "The Great Communicator Revisited: Historians Land Early Blows in the Slugfest over Reagan's Legacy," review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.