Dr. Kiron Skinner on how to manage Russia.
U.S. Cold War presidential directives coalesced around precepts that defense experts and foreign policy elites advocated: Mutual Assured Destruction (having enough nuclear retaliatory power so that the adversary would not risk a first strike); containing Soviet expansionism, especially in key industrial centers; nuclear arms control negotiations at all costs; the policy of linkage—tying U.S.-Soviet negotiations on one front to bilateral progress on other fronts; and preemptive concession making to demonstrate goodwill toward the Soviet Union.
All of that changed when President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 75 on January 17, 1983.
Read more: http://www.hoover.org/taskforces/military-history/strategika/13/skinner
