Summary
A long-time staple of International Relations courses, this new edition continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation, while looking at the regions and issues now at the forefront of the nuclear question. Over the past fifteen years, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons has been a staple in International Relations courses because of its brevity and crystal-clear explanations. The new edition, An Enduring Debate, continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation and the dangers of a nuclear-armed world. With new chapters on the questions surrounding a nuclear North Korea, Iran, and Iraq and the potential for a world free of nuclear weapons, this Third Edition will continue to generate a lively classroom experience.
Country or Region: United States
Sagan, Scott D
Abstract
Scott D. Sagan notes that the question of why states seek to build nuclear weapons has scarcely been examined, although it is crucial to efforts at preventing proliferation. He challenges the traditional realist assumption, accepted uncritically by many scholars and policymakers, that states seek to acquire or develop nuclear weapons primarily for military and strategic reasons. Sagan examines alternate explanations for the demand for nuclear weapons.
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Rhodes, Richard
Summary
The final volume in Richard Rhodes’s prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers–Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States–have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.
Rhodes, Richard
Summary
In rich, human, political, and scientific detail, here is the complete story of the nuclear bomb. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly–or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began merely as an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers–Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann–stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step-by-step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man’s most awesome discovery and invention. “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.
Rhodes, Richard
Summary
Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.
Rhodes, Richard
Summary
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants and a wealth of new documentation to unravel the compelling, shocking story behind this monumental time in human history—its beginnings, its nearly chilling consequences, and its effects on global politics today.
Reiss, Mitchell
Summary
Conventional wisdom has long assumed that nuclear proliferation is inevitable. But as the author points out, the avowed nuclear powers have remained restricted to what he calls “the original five”: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and China. In this well-researched study, Reiss isolates the sources of restraint in six countries capable of building and stockpiling a nuclear arsenal: Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Israel, South Africa and India. These restraints include domestic pressures, bilateral incentives and the consensus against nuclear weapons. The author provides a historical overview of nonproliferation, the role the United States has played in the six case-history countries and clarifies a little-understood phenomenon he describes as “threatening to go nuclear, without actually doing so.” Reiss has served both on the National Security Council and in the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Lettow, Paul
Summary
In this Council Special Report, Paul Lettow examines the shortcomings of the nonproliferation regime and proposes a comprehensive agenda to shore it up. He first explores the challenges facing current arrangements, chief among them the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies needed to produce fissile material. Lettow then makes a variety of recommendations. First, he calls for tighter sanctions on Iran with the goal of dissuading it from continuing its nuclear advances and discouraging others from following Tehran’s path. To combat the spread of enrichment and reprocessing, the report urges the United States to lead nuclear suppliers in developing a system that would allow the sale of relevant equipment and technology only to countries that meet demanding criteria. As regards a potential multilateral nuclear fuel bank, the report argues for limiting participation to states that have a strong nonproliferation record and agree not to make their own nuclear fuel. Lettow further recommends a larger budget, more authority, and various policy changes for the International Atomic Energy Agency so that it can better detect dangerous violations of nonproliferation agreements. Finally, he urges a series of steps in the United Nations Security Council to punish violators and deal with countries that seek to withdraw from the NPT while in noncompliance with their obligations.
To read the report, click here.
Jervis, Robert
Summary
Robert Jervis argues here that the possibility of nuclear war has created a revolution in military strategy and international relations. He examines how the potential for nuclear Armageddon has changed the meaning of war, the psychology of statesmanship, and the formulation of military policy by the superpowers.
Kahn, Herman
Summary
Kahn argued that though nuclear war may seem highly unlikely, indeed unthinkable, to many people it is not impossible. Today, four decades into the nuclear area, not thinking about nuclear war is no longer an option. Nuclear weapons exist and cannot be disinvented, writes Mr. Kahn, so it is crucial to maintain a military strong United States, while we make every effort to enhance deterrence. However, for a government to pursue deterrence at any cost, without contingency plans should its efforts fail, is not only irresponsible but immoral. Mr. Kahn supports no first use, which he began advocating more than twenty years ago; the only justification for maintaining a nuclear arsenal is to deter, balance, or correct the use of nuclear weapons by others. This thoughtful, comprehensive examination of nuclear war is vitally important as the last word on the subject by one of America’s most influential thinkers.
Kahn, Herman
Summary
On Thermonuclear War was controversial when originally published and remains so today. It is iconoclastic, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and finally it is calm and compellingly reasonable. The book was widely read on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the result was serious revision in both Western and Soviet strategy and doctrine. As a result, both sides were better able to avoid disaster during the Cold War.
The strategic concepts still apply: defense, local animosities, and the usual balance-of-power issues are still very much with us. Kahn’s stated purpose in writing this book was simply: “avoiding disaster and buying time, without specifying the use of this time.” By the late 1950s, with both sides H-bomb-armed, reason and time were in short supply. Kahn, a military analyst at Rand since 1948, understood that a defense based only on thermonuclear arnaments was inconceivable, morally questionable, and not credible.
The book was the first to make sense of nuclear weapons. Originally created from a series of lectures, it provides insight into how policymakers consider such issues. One may agree with Kahn or disagree with him on specific issues, but he clearly defined the terrain of the argument. He also looks at other weapons of mass destruction such as biological and chemical, and the history of their use. The Cold War is over, but the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and the lessons and principles developed in On Thermonuclear War apply as much to today’s China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as they did to the Soviets.
Kahn, Herman
Summary
In this widely discussed and influential book, Herman Kahn probes the dynamics of escalation and demonstrates how the intensification of conflict can be depicted by means of a definite escalation ladder, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war. At each rung of the ladder, before the climb proceeds, decisions must be made based on numerous choices. Some are clear and obvious, others obscure, but the options are always there.
Thermonuclear annihilation, says Kahn, is unlikely to come through accident; but nations may elect to climb the ladder to extinction. The basic material for the book was developed in briefings delivered by Kahn to military and civilian experts and revised in the light of his findings of a trip to Vietnam in the 1960s. In On Escalation he states the facts squarely. He asks the reader to face unemotionally the terrors of a world fully capable of suicide and to consider carefully the alternatives to such a path.
In the never-never land of nuclear warfare, where nuclear incredulity is pervasive and paralyzing to the imagination even for the professional analyst, salient details of possible scenarios for the outbreak of war, and even more for war fighting, are largely unexplored or even unnoticed. For scenarios in which war is terminated, the issues and possibilities of which are almost completely unstudied, the situation is even worse. Kahn’s discussion throws light on the terrain and gives the individual a sense of the range of possibilities and complexities involved and are useful.
Fischer, David
Summary
Although nearly fifty countries have a nuclear capacity, and many more are working towards this goal, only a few are actually in possession of nuclear weapons. Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons addresses the problem of how to prevent the wide acquisition of such weapons, and is particularly relevant in light of the collapse of the post-war power structure and the intensive militarization of the Middle East.
In this study, David Fischer surveys the success of the international regime set up to stop the spread of nuclear weapons since the mid-1960s. He gives particular emphasis to the fact that 138 nations have renounced the bomb since 1968 and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the non-proliferation treaty. Fischer sets forth the reasons that the membership should extend to France and China, and discusses the 1995 conference that will decide the future of this treaty.
Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons provides evidence of the relationship between the development of nuclear power and the acquisition of nuclear weapons and of the dangers involved in the growing use of plutonium and the building of nuclear submarines. David Fischer provides a detailed and comprehensive view of the ongoing conflict between nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation, and examines both the short- and long-term prospects for non-proliferation.
Ferguson, Charles D., and William C. Potter
Summary
The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism, a new book from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, assesses the motivations and capabilities of terrorist organizations to acquire and use nuclear weapons, to fabricate and and detonate crude nuclear explosives, to strike nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, and to build and employ radiological weapons or “dirty bombs.”
Ferguson, Charles D., Perry, William J., and Scowcroft, Brent
Summary
The Task Force report, titled U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, focuses on near-term policies to reduce nuclear weapons to the lowest possible level consistent with maintaining a credible deterrent, while also ensuring that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe, secure, and reliable for as long as it is needed. “The imperative before the Obama administration,” the report says, “is to use all available tools to prevent the use and further acquisition of nuclear weapons.” The Task Force is comprised of eminent leaders of the national security community and is directed by CFR Senior Fellow Charles D. Ferguson.
Click here to download the report.
