The Dead Hand

Reagan, Gorbachev and the Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race

by David E. Hoffman
Published by Icon Books; Dist. by Allen and Unwin
RRP $24.99 in paperback « ISBN 9781785785313

In 2010, a year after its publication, this book won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for its author, David E. Hoffman, whose career included a six year stint as The Washington Post’s Moscow bureau chief.

This edition, published in 2018, includes a new foreword, prompted by more recent developments that have seen the gains of the Reagan/Gorbachev eroded. As he writes,

‘One of the most enduring lessons of the Cold War was that danger lurked not only in the terrifying weapons … but also in the minds of men.’

He points of course to one man in particular: Vladimir Putin.

As we know, during the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals large enough to guarantee obliteration of the enemy. During this time, the Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the ‘dead hand,’ a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to awe the Soviets into submission, pushed hard for the creation of space-based missile defenses. It is from this ‘dead hand’ that the book’s title emerged.

Drawing on top-secret documents from deep inside the Kremlin, memoirs, and interviews in both Russia and the United States, Hoffman introduces the scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies who saw the world sliding toward disaster and tells the gripping story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and many others struggled to bring the madness to an end.

Until that is, the accession of Vladimir Putin and his ambitions for a resurgent Russian state.

Verdict: a thought-provoking read in the current geopolitical climate.