The Reagan Administration and the INF Controversy

The bureaucratic and diplomatic discussions and related policy decisions that shaped the administration’s position on Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) between 1981 and 1983 are the focus of this article. This article shows how and why the Reagan administration employed delaying tactics within NATO to diminish the centrality that arms control had gained in the détente era, prioritized modernization over arms control, and failed to pursue serious negotiations with the Soviet Union. This failure, however, was also due to the arising of an unwitting and unlikely alliance that formed between the staunchest anti-détente elements of the administration and the pro-détente and arms control members of European NATO countries, particularly West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.