Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union
Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika is the definitive history of the implementation of the INF Treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in all its complexities, and the lengths both sides went to “trust, but verify” this successful and unique historic disarmament process. It demonstrates how two nations fundamentally at odds with one another could come together and rid the world of weapons which threatened international peace and security and, indeed, all of humanity. Those engaged were pioneers in what was to be the new frontier of superpower arms control—on-site inspection—that would define compliance verification for future treaties and agreements to come. Their work represents not just a guide to but the standard upon which all future on-site inspections will be based and judged.
Ritter traces in great detail the formation of the On-Site Inspection Agency, who was involved, and how a technologically advanced compliance verification system was installed outside the gates of one of the most sensitive military industrial facilities in the remote Soviet city of Votkinsk, nestled in the foothills of the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. He draws upon his own personal history— occasionally hilarious, occasionally fraught with peril— as well as the recollections of the other inspectors and personnel involved, and an extensive archive of reports and memoranda relating to the work of OSIA to tell the story of how OSIA was created, and the first three years of inspection operations at the Votkinsk portal monitoring facility. The Votkinsk Portal, circa December 1988, was the wild, wild East of arms control, a place where the inspectors and inspected alike were writing the rules of the game as it played out before them.
This treaty implementation did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. Ritter captures, on a human level, the historic changes taking place inside the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev due to the new policies of perestroika and glasnost that gripped the Soviet Union during this time, and their real and meaningful impact on the lives of the Soviet people, and the economic functioning of the Soviet nation. Much of it was for the worse.
The INF treaty was not only born of these new policies, but also helped trigger meaningful changes inside the Soviet Union due to the economic and political implications brought on by the cessation of missile production in a factory town whose lifeblood was missile production.
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Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union
Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika is the definitive history of the implementation of the INF Treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in all its complexities, and the lengths both sides went to “trust, but verify” this successful and unique historic disarmament process. It demonstrates how two nations fundamentally at odds with one another could come together and rid the world of weapons which threatened international peace and security and, indeed, all of humanity. Those engaged were pioneers in what was to be the new frontier of superpower arms control—on-site inspection—that would define compliance verification for future treaties and agreements to come. Their work represents not just a guide to but the standard upon which all future on-site inspections will be based and judged.
Ritter traces in great detail the formation of the On-Site Inspection Agency, who was involved, and how a technologically advanced compliance verification system was installed outside the gates of one of the most sensitive military industrial facilities in the remote Soviet city of Votkinsk, nestled in the foothills of the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. He draws upon his own personal history— occasionally hilarious, occasionally fraught with peril— as well as the recollections of the other inspectors and personnel involved, and an extensive archive of reports and memoranda relating to the work of OSIA to tell the story of how OSIA was created, and the first three years of inspection operations at the Votkinsk portal monitoring facility. The Votkinsk Portal, circa December 1988, was the wild, wild East of arms control, a place where the inspectors and inspected alike were writing the rules of the game as it played out before them.
This treaty implementation did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. Ritter captures, on a human level, the historic changes taking place inside the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev due to the new policies of perestroika and glasnost that gripped the Soviet Union during this time, and their real and meaningful impact on the lives of the Soviet people, and the economic functioning of the Soviet nation. Much of it was for the worse.
The INF treaty was not only born of these new policies, but also helped trigger meaningful changes inside the Soviet Union due to the economic and political implications brought on by the cessation of missile production in a factory town whose lifeblood was missile production.
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Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union

Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union

by Scott Ritter
Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union

Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union

by Scott Ritter

Overview

Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika is the definitive history of the implementation of the INF Treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in all its complexities, and the lengths both sides went to “trust, but verify” this successful and unique historic disarmament process. It demonstrates how two nations fundamentally at odds with one another could come together and rid the world of weapons which threatened international peace and security and, indeed, all of humanity. Those engaged were pioneers in what was to be the new frontier of superpower arms control—on-site inspection—that would define compliance verification for future treaties and agreements to come. Their work represents not just a guide to but the standard upon which all future on-site inspections will be based and judged.
Ritter traces in great detail the formation of the On-Site Inspection Agency, who was involved, and how a technologically advanced compliance verification system was installed outside the gates of one of the most sensitive military industrial facilities in the remote Soviet city of Votkinsk, nestled in the foothills of the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. He draws upon his own personal history— occasionally hilarious, occasionally fraught with peril— as well as the recollections of the other inspectors and personnel involved, and an extensive archive of reports and memoranda relating to the work of OSIA to tell the story of how OSIA was created, and the first three years of inspection operations at the Votkinsk portal monitoring facility. The Votkinsk Portal, circa December 1988, was the wild, wild East of arms control, a place where the inspectors and inspected alike were writing the rules of the game as it played out before them.
This treaty implementation did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. Ritter captures, on a human level, the historic changes taking place inside the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev due to the new policies of perestroika and glasnost that gripped the Soviet Union during this time, and their real and meaningful impact on the lives of the Soviet people, and the economic functioning of the Soviet nation. Much of it was for the worse.
The INF treaty was not only born of these new policies, but also helped trigger meaningful changes inside the Soviet Union due to the economic and political implications brought on by the cessation of missile production in a factory town whose lifeblood was missile production.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781949762617
Publisher: Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 09/01/2022
Pages: 370
Sales rank: 509,741
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. He is author of 9 books, and is widely interviewed.

Read an Excerpt

“Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.”
Job 30:26

I had heard about it long before I first laid eyes on it. Entitled “Good Defeats Evil”, the bronze sculpture was of Saint George on horseback, slaying a Dragon that was made from missile parts—a quintessential depiction of disarmament. The massive bronze statue (standing some 36 feet high and weighing in at 40 tons) had been presented to the United Nations by the Soviet Union on the world organization’s 45th Anniversary on October 24, 1990. It was the work of Zurab Tsereteli, a renowned artist from the Republic of Georgia, and commemorated the landmark Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 7, 1987.
Tsereteli’s installation made use of metal bits and components from decommissioned US Pershing II and Soviet SS-20 missiles. These two missiles were the yin and the yang of the INF treaty. The Soviet deployment of the road-mobile SS-20, armed with three nuclear warheads, had, in 1979, tipped the nuclear balance of power in Europe to Moscow. The US had responded by deploying the Pershing II missile, which could reach Moscow from its launch sites in West Germany in less than 8 minutes, threatening the Soviets with nuclear annihilation.
Previous arms control treaties sought to limit the number of missiles in the respective arsenals of the US and Soviet Union. The INF treaty was different—it banned these missiles, and others like them, altogether. The Pershing II and SS-20 became the symbols of the INF treaty, paired together as a reminder of both the evil man could create, and the ability of man, if he had the will, to overcome that evil.
On the morning of September 23, 1991, I took advantage of my presence in New York City to examine Tsereteli’s sculpture up close and in person. I left the Helmsley Hotel and walked down 42nd Street, toward First Avenue. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and New York City was laid out before me in all its glory. I paused before crossing First Avenue, admiring the line of flag poles that fronted the United Nations compound, the colorful banners of its many member countries snapping in the breeze. Tsereteli’s statue was installed in a park just inside the gate to the UN compound.
Good defeats Evil.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Good Defeats Evil vii

Prologue

Missile Crisis 1

Chapter 1 A Rendezvous with History 31

Chapter 2 The Human Factor 65

Chapter 3 Trust But Verify 102

Chapter 4 Perestroika in the Hinterland 140

Chapter 5 The Year of Living Dangerously, Part One 176

Chapter 6 The Year of Living Dangerously, Part Two 219

Chapter 7 The Road to Kapustin Yar 260

Chapter 8 A Changing of the Guard 293

Epilogue

Castles in the Air 329

Glossary of Terms 343

Endnotes 346

Index 354

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