As Japan faces the most serious nuclear incident that the world has seen since Chernobyl, prompting a global re-evaluation of the safety of otherwise of nuclear power. it seems somehow fitting that David E. Hoffman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Dead Hand is here to remind us of a time when not just nuclear power but nuclear weapons were completely out of control, and the threat of Armageddon was a very real and tangible prospect, with the USA and the Soviet Union pointing enough nuclear warheads at one another to unleash the equivalent of tens of thousands of Hiroshimas. Hoffman is interested in the thinking behind the arms race, the gradual move towards talks on disarmament, the issue of command and control over nuclear weapons and the fate of the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union after its rapid disintegration.

After the detente and arms limitation talks of the 1970s, the Reagan presidency was initially defined by Reagan’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as an ‘Evil Empire’, seemingly making it impossible for meaningful conversations between the two sides. Yet beneath the bluster, Reagan dreamed of eliminating nuclear weapons completely – and once he had a Soviet counterpart with whom he felt he could do business, Gorbachev, the two men made considerable strides, for the own reasons, in moving their countries towards a position where disarmament became worthy of consideration. Reagan’s determination to develop the Strategic Defence Initiative (‘Star Wars’) meant that these moves did not bear fruit until after he had left office, but Hoffman leaves us in no doubt where the credit belongs.

The fascinating subplot to this diplomatic process, however, is the tale of the weapons systems that were still being developed by both sides, but especially by the Soviets, during the same time period. The Dead Hand of the title refers to a semi-automated nuclear retaliation mechanism developed by the Soviets that would have resulted in the triggering of a mass launch of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles against the US even if the Soviet leadership had not been able to explicitly authorise it. Most worrying, despite the fact that all nations had agreed to stop working on them in the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (including the USSR), the Soviet Union had a massive concealed biological weapons programme, developing and stockpiling weaponised anthrax, smallpox and new, virulent strains of viruses and bacteria that have thankfully never been seen outside the laboratory.

After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the massive legacy of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had to be dealt with, and Hoffman describes the work done to deal with these – although he makes the point that by no means can we be certain that such weapons could never fall in to the hands of terrorists and other non-state actors – many are still out there.

The Dead Hand is a chilling and very necessary book, meticulously researched and excellently written, and a timely reminder that while the Cold War may be long over, we are still living with the consequences, however little most of us may be aware of that fact.

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