The master of the game

With the signing and ratification of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union took the first step ever toward significantly reducing the number of nuclear weapons threatening the world. Even more important, they seemed to be moving closer to a truly epochal agreement that would bring cuts in long-range missiles, at last reversing the arms race that has been going on inexorably since the end of the Second World War. The story behind these events is the story of forty years of argument and disappointment, of secret dealings and false hopes and struggles in the corridors of power in Washington and Moscow. No single man has been so deeply a part of it, for so long, as Paul Henry Nitze. Now 82, and active as ever, he is the focus of Strobe Talbott's brilliant behind-the-scenes report, an intimate history of the whole span of arms control diplomacy rounded out with a detailed narrative of the last three momentous years.