Articles Comments

Walter C Uhler » Archive

Unilateral Steps Undermine Foreign Security

August 6th, 2001 | Add a Comment

Originally published in Defense News Notwithstanding the warmth and chemistry resulting from U.S. President George W. Bush’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 and July 22, the latter quite clearly, if diplomatically, warned the American leader about the risks associated with any unilateral action regarding the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty or national missile defense (NMD). As he noted at the post-summit news briefing: “And taking into account the fact that the United States and the Russian Federation, as no one else, as no other country of the world, have accumulated huge amounts of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, we bear a special responsibility for maintaining the common peace and security in the world, for building a new architecture of … Read entire article »

Filed under: Bush Administration, Foreign Policy

Misreading the Soviet Threat

March 15th, 2001 | Add a Comment

Originally published in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies (London) Review Of: Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Pp.xix + 291, appendices, notes, references, index. $49.95. ISBN 0-89096-805-5 Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp.viii + 232, appendix, glossary, bibliog., index. $24.50. ISBN 0-271-01791-0 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Pp.604, notes, index. $30. ISBN 0-684-81081-6 Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Pp.592, glossary, notes, index. $30. … Read entire article »

Filed under: American History, Book Reviews, Military History, Russian History

The Writing Genius of Don DeLillo

February 11th, 2001 | Add a Comment

Originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer As a hard-core enthusiast of Don DeLillo’s work, I must dispute the assertion in Carlin Romano’s fine review of The Body Artist (Inquirer, Feb. 4) that it’s “DeLillo diminished.” Over the last three decades, I’ve laughed myself to tears over Billy’s precious description of his college course about “The Untellable” (in End Zone), been stunned to numbness by Glen Selvy’s final encounter with the running dogs of war (in Running Dog), and attracted and repelled by the verisimilitude of Bucky Wunderlick’s world as rock; musician icon, (in Great Jones Street). That was before becoming a hard-core addict after reading DeLillo’s first masterpiece, White Noise, with its “Hitler Studies” professor who doesn’t know German, its “airborne toxic event” that forces the town’s evacuation and … Read entire article »

Filed under: Cultural Criticism