The Dead Hand recounts high-level decision-making around nuclear and biological weapons, and how nations engaged in arms races and arms control, particularly the USA and USSR during the eras of Reagan and Gorbachev.

I summarised the parts I found most insightful in order to clarify my own understanding. I post these extremely compressed notes here in the hope that they will introduce you to some new concepts and/or help you decide whether to read the book. I usually do not attempt to verify facts. (Interpretations I make are in brackets.)

Strategic misunderstandings

Through much of the Cold War, USSR leadership believed that the USA might launch a surprise nuclear attack on the USSR. US leadership considered this out of the question, in large part because it seemed implausible that an aggressor could ‘win’ a nuclear war, though some USSR and US generals did believe in the idea of ‘winning’ a nuclear war. Further, when NATO spies got hold of documents written by USSR leadership detailing a project to notice signs of the USA preparing a first strike, key US figures thought it was more likely that this was part of a propaganda campaign against the USA or against the intermediate-range Pershing missiles being stationed in Europe than that USSR leadership really thought the USA might launch a first strike.

Poor understanding was sometimes mistaken for bad faith. In a proposal to reduce the number of long-range nuclear weapons, Reagan included the ask that, for both the USA and the USSR, ‘no more than half of those warheads be land-based’. This seemed to him like a great idea, reducing danger to both countries. Brezhnev saw this as hard to take in good faith because the USSR was much more dependent on land-based missiles than the USA. (This was a very large detail to be ignorant of, and I think it would have seemed unlikely to me that this proposal was in good faith even with my basic knowledge of the situation.)

Some US political leaders hypothetically wanted to crush the USSR, or communism, but wanted peace much more. (Reconciling various statements, e.g. reconciling fiery speeches about the badness of communism with letters declaring a full commitment to peace, seems like it would have been hard for USSR leadership.)

The accuracy of CIA information was often poor, regarding both weapons activity and the attitudes of USSR leaders. USSR intelligence about the US econom...

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