SSI Live Podcast – Ep 123 – Obama and the Bomb

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Frank Jones, a distinguished fellow of the US Army War College, on his recently published book Obama and the Bomb: New START, Russia, and the Politics of post-Cold War Arms Control. The conversation explores the historical significance of this now expired bi-lateral treaty and Frank’s assessment of the conditions required to achieve this type of great-power cooperation.

Brennan Deveraux

Welcome back to SSI Live. I’m your host, Brennan Deveraux, still filling in for John Deni. I’m joined today by Dr. Frank Jones, a distinguished fellow of the US Army War College, where he taught in the Department of National Security and Strategy. Previously, Frank had retired from the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a senior executive. He’s the author or editor of four books and numerous articles on US national security.

For this conversation, we’ll be discussing Frank’s recently published book, Obama and the Bomb: New START, Russia, and the Politics of post-Cold War Arms Control. Thanks for joining me today, Frank.

Frank Jones

Well, thank you for the invitation.

Deveraux

Obama and the Bomb is a detailed account of the administration’s efforts to negotiate a new version of one of the last remnants of the Cold War, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Or START. I guess, in this case, New START. The book follows the steps from concept through negotiation and eventually ratification, dropping readers behind the scenes of the frustrating bureaucratic process of debate and compromise required to formalize a treaty.

So, Frank, I’ll just jump right in. This is a pretty specific topic. I’m curious why you chose it.

Frank Jones

Yeah, it’s a combination of interests. Really. The first aspect of it was I was just interested in international negotiations. I’d been doing some work on the Korean armistice, and I became fascinated with how negotiations occur. The second aspect was that I just published a few years earlier, a book on Senator Sam Nunn, who had been on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. Chairman of that. He was very interested in arms control issues. And then the third reason really is I used to be in charge of a course here at the War College called “The Theory of War and Strategy.” I reintroduced or introduced into the curriculum nuclear strategy as a lesson. I felt that that had, in the post-Cold War era, had gone out of people’s mind.

But at the same time, Iran was looking to build a nuclear arsenal. And also, North Korea was in the news. So, I thought students in joint PME, professional military education, had to be aware of nuclear weapons again and the strategy and the theories of deterrence.