Keep Space for Peace

Edited by Tony Simpson
September 2012
Spokesman
Distributed By Coronet Books
ISBN: 9780851248165
104 pages
$17.50 Paper Original

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For 20 years or so, since the 1980s, Star Wars or 'missile defence' had a long record of test failures. The ambition to hit a bullet with a bullet was proving extremely difficult to achieve. Usually, they missed or crashed. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the global strategic balance shifted. The Cold War gave way to serial Western wars on Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, whilst expansion of NATO and the encirclement of Russia moved ahead. Opportunities for constructive co-operation with Russia were spurned by the US, as Stephen Cohen again points out. At the same time, the revised architecture of missile defence now appears more effective, as Bruce Gagnon argues. China's rise, and Obama's 'pivot' to the Pacific, complicate the picture, so that Russia's security interests are much more closely shared with China than during the long years of Cold War. For some historical perspective on nuclear confrontations, we revisit Bertrand Russell's personal role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

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