The Evolution of Arms Control From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age [Paperback]

This is a concise, comprehensive, and scholarly work. Burns (emer., history, California State Univ., Los Angeles) traces arms control efforts back to the Punic Wars, and in some cases beyond. The most common types of efforts have been imposed on the vanquished by the victors. However, the Treaty of Versailles established a multilateral body to enforce its terms, the League of Nations, but it was easily subverted. The problems with arms control agreements are trying to distinguish between offensive and defensive weaponry, state sovereignty, technological change, and verification. One of the more interesting parts of the book deals with chemical weapons. Again, the origins go back to antiquity in attempts to control or outlaw such weapons as Greek fire, the poisoning of wells, and other chemical and biological agents. There have been many diplomatic attempts, all of which the author includes, to outlaw such weapons. But, they are still available and used. More successful have been attempts to control nuclear weapons, perhaps because these attempts have largely been bilateral. This is an excellent reference book and should be acquired by academic libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections.Burns chronicles the progression of arms negotiations, allowing readers to visualize the intricacy of arms control and grasp the difficulties of finding common ground in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Whether the world's diplomatic efforts will be successful remains to be seen. Still, a major contribution. & Highly recommended.Written for anyone interested in arms control and disarmament issues as well as military history, this book reviews the historic means and techniques for arms control such as demilitarization, regulation of arms manufacturing, stabilizing international environments and the outlawing of war. A section also reviews nuclear weaponry before and after the Cold War and the emergence of biological and bacterial lÓ9