Examines the way competing interpretations of evidence form the basis for arguments over appropriate defense postures. Indicates that it is only as participants in a policy dispute move to develop validity standards appropriate to the particular dispute that resolution becomes possible. (MS)

Traces the theoretical significance of using names as titles for situations, and applies this analysis to the United States' intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programs. Argues that the names given to ICBMs preserve their utility as weapons by linking them to the myths of the nineteenth-century western frontier. (MM)

Argues that the use of historical events as rhetorical artifacts has sustained cold war assumptions and attitudes; that rhetorical events provide composites for rhetorical histories which become the basis for argumentative appeals; and that these rhetorical histories continue to permeate American diplomacy in general and arms negotiations in…

The symbolic presence of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has been and continues to be the pivot point in all summitry rhetoric between the American President and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. To examine some of the rhetorical choices made by Gorbachev to dramatize his vision of why Ronald Reagan refuses to…