Book Details

Arms control and missile defense are once again at the forefront of the American national security agenda. Not surprisingly, the debate has broken down along well-worn lines. Arms control advocates dismiss the idea of missile defense as a dangerous and costly folly. Missile defense advocates argue that the U.S. should move aggressively to defend itself against missile attack.With clear and lively prose free of partisan rhetoric, Defending America provides reliable, factual analysis of the missile defense debate. Written for a general audience, it assesses the current and likely future missile threat to the United States, examines relevant technologies, and suggests how America’s friends and foes would react to a decision to build a national missile defense. Lindsay and O'Hanlon reject calls for large-scale systems as well as proposals to do nothing, instead arguing for a limited national missile defense.

James M. Lindsay (born November 29, 1959, Winchester, Massachusetts), is the Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy. He is also the award-winning coauthor of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy and former Director for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council. In 2008, he was the principal author of a Department of Defense funded $7.6 million Minerva Research Initiative grant entitled "Climate Change, State Stability, and Political Risk in Africa." He is the author of a CFR blog on American foreign policy, The Water’s Edge.