Introduction

Summary

For the first time in a quarter of a century working with the problems of the arms race and arms control, I am beginning to get scared. These are not my words, but those of William Epstein, a disarmament expert, which he penned forty-five years ago.¹ Epstein’s concern arose from an array of adverse circumstances. India had detonated a nuclear explosive device in 1974, becoming what he (wrongly) believed was only the world’s sixth nuclear-armed State (in fact, Israel had already produced nuclear weapons). Also in 1974, Britain had resumed explosive nuclear testing for the first time in a decade; the United States was increasing the sophistication of its manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles on its missiles in order to deliver multiple warheads while also engaging in the development of new nuclear-armed cruise missiles; and the Soviet Union was producing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) of its own to equip its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).