"Richard Dean Burns's The Evolution of Arms Control is at once a timely and significant contribution to the literature of the subject, written in plain English by one of America's leading historian of arms control and disarmament. This thoughtful book will provide both generalists and specialists a better understanding of the multidimensionality of the most important issue of our age. All politicians and their advisers should give this work a careful read as they consider how their policies will enhance or inhibit the development of a more stable, secure world." -- Joseph M. Siracusa Author of Real-World Nuclear Deterrence (with David G. Coleman) Professor and Director of Global Studies at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia "With President Obama, and former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger calling for 'A World Without Nuclear Weapons,' arms control is in the news more than in decades... What will happen this time? With its well documented facts and chronologies, Richard Dean Burns' highly readable history of arms control will help the reader navigate the difficult waters of international diplomacy and gain new insight about where the Obama administration may succeed." -- Philip E. Coyle, Senior Advisor, World Security Institute former Assistant Secretary of Defense

The Evolution of Arms Control: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age is the first world history of arms control through time.

Drawing on his knowledge of the comparative history of warfare and arms control across preliterate, ancient, medieval, and modern polities, Richard Dean Burns focuses longitudinally on such perennial arms control issues as negotiation, verification, and compliance. Although he does not, for example, allege that war elephants and nuclear weapons are of equal destructive potential, he does discern instructive similarities between Carthage in 202 BCE and Iraq in 1991 AD.

Arms control and disarmament measures have been pursued and adopted throughout the history and prehistory of human warfare: sometimes as protocols recognizing evolving humanitarian taboos; sometimes as terms imposed by the victors on the vanquished; and sometimes as accords negotiated between rivals fearful of mutual destruction. Arms control measures ramped up in significance and urgency at the dawn of the 20th century by the introduction of rapid-fire weapons, aircraft, chemical agents, and submarines, and again at mid-century with the advent of weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological—with sophisticated delivery systems. As Burns makes clear, the enormous increase in destructive potential brought about by thermonuclear weaponry essentially changed the nature of war and, therefore, of arms control.

• 15 illustrations