Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control (review)

170 SAISREVIEW arguments which have driven Quebec nationalism. American readers will likely benefit from Mr. Dion's insight, though they may wish to continue their reading on the subject before drawing any conclusions. Stark, in one of the most original and valuable pieces in the book, considers the emerging strains of Canadian nationalism, primarily as it has emerged in English Canada. He identifies four principal types of Canadian nationalism: Trudeau nationalism; the progressive/socialist Canadian nationalism of the left; Reform nationalism, espoused by the Western-based Reform Party; and Charter of Rights nationalism, built around the ideals of this 1982 addition to the Canadian Constitution. These forms of Canadian nationalism can trace their roots through history and have largely taken shape in the crucible ofrecent constitutional crises. Stark sometimes seems to forget his audience though, making reference to people and events unlikely to be familiar to most Americans. He nonetheless offers an excellent analysis of the current trends, and places them in cogent contrast to the strains of Quebec nationalism which Dion considers in his chapter. The final chapter will have a familiar ring to readers who have followed the past six or seven months of Canadian constitutional wrangling. Here, Banting offers us several lurid scenarios of an apocalyptic Canadian future after what he conjectures will be the ultimate failure of attempts to find an accommodation between the ideas described by Dion and Stark, within the institutions described by Weaver. Sadly, the failure of carrots in the current round of constitutional talks has brought out ofthe closet many sticks, and Banting chooses to brandish each with a certain relish. The American reader may simply wish to note the existence, and apparent intellectual legitimacy of such bullying, rather than despair at the prospect of Canadian collapse. The Brookings Institution, however, deserves credit for its sponsorship of this study. In the past ten years, Brookings largely limited its focus on Canadian affairs to questions oftax policy and free trade. With this book, they have made a welcome change for the better. Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control. By Steve Weber. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. 349 pp. $37.50/Hardcover. Reviewed by David J. Karl, MA., SAIS, 1989, and Ph.D. Candidate, School of International Relations, University ofSouthern California. It is the great misfortune of scholars of international security affairs that the Cold War ended when it did. Over the last decade the academic field of security studies underwent a striking revitalization that produced a wave of pathbreaking scholarship, much of it on the U.S.-Soviet rivalry in world affairs. Yet, just as headway was being made in understanding the dynamics of superpower competition, the Cold War ended in such an abrupt and definitive fashion that one is forced to question the future relevance of much of this scholarship. This irony is poignantly illustrated in Cooperation and Discord in U.S.Soviet Arms Control. Steve Weber has crafted an impressive and sophisticated work on why the superpowers during the Cold War were able to cooperate in BOOK REVIEWS 171 certain arms control issues but not in others. His focus is on a relatively neglected area of inquiry: the role played by strategic doctrines in promoting or impeding arms control cooperation. Weber makes a compelling argument that ideas matter in the diplomacy of arms control to a far greater extent than is generally recognized. To him, the conceptual understandings that states have of the nature of nuclear deterrence are powerful determinants of arms control outcomes, as they crucially influence how states evaluate the prospects for security cooperation, what bargaining behaviors states adopt to test these prospects, and the manner in which such behaviors interact to produce, sustain or undercut cooperative arrangements between states. One of the book's strengths is the dynamic and multifaceted perspective it offers ofarms control as a bargaining process between states. It is a perspective that sheds a controversial light on the record of superpower cooperation in the nuclear security issues. Weber, for instance, attributes the volatile history of arms control to the fundamental differences in U.S. and Soviet strategic doctrines and the unsynchronized way in which they evolved. While the concepts...