Defense critics went after not only the ABM but also – among others – the MIRV, MaRV, and MX missile systems; the B-1 bomber; and the CVAN-70 aircraft carrier—all with limited or no success. Ironically, Johnson does not discuss Congress’ response towards President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or “Star Wars”), introduced in 1983, widely credited with helping to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Could it be that presidents like Reagan knew what they were doing when they opposed the United States unilaterally terminating weapons systems that could be used as bargaining chips in arms control negotiations? Johnson does not consider this possibility, instead crediting the new internationalists with forcing presidents to the bargaining table with the Soviets.

Johnson has made a significant contribution in responding to the late US Senator Daniel P. Moynihan’s lament that “the neglect of congressional history is something of a scandal in American scholarship.” At the same time, he left plenty of room for others to fill in the gaps about Congress’s role during the Cold War. One is left to wonder, for instance, how Congress reacted to such defining events of the Cold War as the Berlin blockade, the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban missile crisis, and the uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and China. Moreover, the author ends his narrative in 1985, four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years before the implosion of the Soviet Union. Any student wishing to learn how and why the Cold War ended, and the Congressional reaction to it, will have to search elsewhere.