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. 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.
PRAISE:
“An absorbing account of how the U.S. verified the key agreement that ended the Cold War. Should be read and absorbed by all who wonder how we can overcome the rush to war today.” —JACK MATLOCK, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
“Scott gives us a fascinatingly intimate account of the bumpy on-site road to effective inspection/verification. Bumpy even in the presence of the mutual trust existing at the time. That trust is now squandered. God help us.” —RAY McGOVERN, Former senior CIA analyst for Soviet/Russian affairs
“Ritter’s riveting personal history of nuclear arms control as seen from the inside, with its intense personal and institutional conflicts, could not come at a more propitious moment. Ritter is telling us that America’s dispute with Russia today must not prevent the renewal of serious arms talks, with all of their difficulty.” —SEYMOUR HERSH, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Investigative Journalist
“Scott Ritter’s book could not be timelier…” —DANIEL ELLSBERG, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
CLARITY PRESS, INC.
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 resides in Upstate New York, where he writes on issues pertaining to arms control, the Middle East and national security. Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika is Mr. Ritter’s tenth book.
Scott Ritter has testified before a combined Armed Services/Foreign Affairs hearing of the US Senate, and before the House Foreign Relations and National Security committees. He has testified before a combined Armed Services/ Foreign Affairs hearing of the US Senate, and before the House Foreign Relations and National Security committees. He has spoken to NATO, the United Nations, the British, Canadian, Italian, French, Iraqi, Japanese and European Parliaments. He has done public speaking engagements at Harvard, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale and Columbia, and dozens of other public and private universities and colleges across the country. He has spoken before the Council on Foreign Affairs, Chatham House and RUSI (in London), and various World Affairs Councils.