Luke Griffith's "Unraveling the Gray Area Problem"

Luke Griffith is Professor of History and Government at New Mexico Junior College.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Unraveling the Gray Area Problem: The United States and the INF Treaty, and reported the following:

My manuscript, Unraveling the Gray Area Problem: The United States and the INF Treaty, passes the Page 99 Test. Page 99 establishes a domestic and international context for the Reagan administration’s approach to the rapid buildup of Soviet SS-20 ground-based intermediate-range missiles.

Page 99 reveals several unique themes of my study about the United States and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of December 1987.

Page 99 shows how Democrats in Congress and peace activists in the US nuclear freeze movement complicated American theater nuclear statecraft in the early 1980s. For instance, Congressman Ronald Dellums (D-CA) proposed to cancel funding for the Pershing II missile, a system that President Ronald Reagan planned to station in Europe.

In addition, page 99 contains fresh evidence about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) story—my exclusive interviews with former US policymakers. For example, I included a novel anecdote from Ambassador Richard Burt, who remembered how peace protests in West Germany had a profound impact on Reagan’s thinking about nuclear weapons. Shocked to see protestors in Bonn, Reagan asked Burt, “‘what are they doing?” Burt replied: “Mr. President, they are protesting you.” “‘He was a guy who made a living…by being a popular, public figure,” Burt recalled, “so that had an impact. The anti-nuclear movement dovetailed with his own growing thoughts about nuclear weapons.”

Learn more about Unraveling the Gray Area Problem at the Cornell University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue