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Abstract
This interpretive essay explores the multiple, changing faces of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. When SALT I was being negotiated in the early 1970s, it was generally viewed as the product of contemporary arms control theory that stressed the value of crisis stability. The U.S. national security adviser at the time, Henry Kissinger, justified the talks in those terms while also positioning them as part of a broader attempt to forge a détente with the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War ended, Kissinger claimed that he had really been engaging in a holding operation to buy time for the U.S. government to rebuild support for a more assertive policy. Declassified documents reveal that he and President Richard Nixon hoped that technological innovations would yield military and political advantages. The two of them believed that previous administrations had failed to overcome dangerous military vulnerabilities and that the United States could get a better deal because the USSR was more anxious for an agreement than Nixon and Kissinger were. In the end, however, this did not prove to be the case, and SALT was little different from the sorts of policies Nixon and Kissinger had scorned. But SALT I was a centerpiece of détente and a symbol of U.S. and Soviet leaders' recognition that each side had a legitimate interest in the other's military posture.

Most high-profile disasters are followed by demands for an investigation into what went wrong. Even before they start, calls for finding the missed warning signs and an explanation for why people did not "connect the dots" will be common. Unfortunately, however, the same combination of political pressures and the failure to adopt good social science methods that contributed to the initial failure usually lead to postmortems that are badly flawed. The high stakes mean that powerful actors will have strong incentives to see that certain conclusions are—and are not—drawn. Most postmortems also are marred by strong psychological biases, especially the assumption that incorrect inferences must have been the product of wrong ways of thinking, premature cognitive closure, the naive use of hindsight, and the neglect of the comparative method. Given this experience, I predict that the forthcoming inquiries into the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol and the abrupt end to the Afghan government will stumble in many ways.

Throughout my life, politics and political science have been intertwined. I handed out leaflets for Adlai Stevenson at age 12, participated in protests at Oberlin and Berkeley, and, as I developed professional expertise, worked with national security agencies. Conflict has been a continuing interest, particularly whether situations are best analyzed as a security dilemma or aggression. In exploring this question, I was drawn into both political psychology and signaling, although the two are very different. I have continued to work on each and occasionally try to bring them together. My thinking about strategic interaction led to a book-length exploration of system effects, a way of thinking that I believe is still insufficiently appreciated in the discipline and among policy makers. My research continues to be stimulated by both developments in the discipline and unfolding international politics.

On 1 May 1919, the acting secretary of the Navy, Franklin D, Roosevelt, wrote the Secretary of State as follows: It is a fundemental principle that the foreign policy of our government is in the hands of the State Department….As it is upon our foreign policy that naval estimates must be based, it will be recognized that the Navy Departments has a vital interest in this question. It is probable that certain policies are of such immportance to our national interest that they must be defended at all cost. On the other hand certain policies are not, by the expense they would entail, justified if they lead to war.