Author: Vipin Narang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Get Book Here
Book Description
The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.
Author: Praful Bidwai
Publisher: Signal Books
ISBN: 9781902669250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Get Book Here
Book Description
Nuclear tests in India and Pakistan brought the threat of nuclear war back to the world's centre stage. The tests and nuclear moves have raised regional tension, increased poverty in already impoverished nations, and could possibly have fuelled an arms race which goes beyond the borders of the two countries. This text examines the causes and consequences of India and Pakistani nuclear tests. The book provides a framework for understanding the global context of these tests, and looks at approaches for nuclear abolition in Asia and the West.
Author: Brad Roberts
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804797153
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Get Book Here
Book Description
“An excellent contribution to the debate on the future role of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in American foreign policy.” ―Contemporary Security Policy This book is a counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States can and should do more to reduce both the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategies and the number of weapons in its arsenal. The case against nuclear weapons has been made on many grounds—including historical, political, and moral. But, Brad Roberts argues, it has not so far been informed by the experience of the United States since the Cold War in trying to adapt deterrence to a changed world, and to create the conditions that would allow further significant changes to U.S. nuclear policy and posture. Drawing on the author’s experience in the making and implementation of U.S. policy in the Obama administration, this book examines that real-world experience and finds important lessons for the disarmament enterprise. Central conclusions of the work are that other nuclear-armed states are not prepared to join the United States in making reductions, and that unilateral steps by the United States to disarm further would be harmful to its interests and those of its allies. The book ultimately argues in favor of patience and persistence in the implementation of a balanced approach to nuclear strategy that encompasses political efforts to reduce nuclear dangers along with military efforts to deter them. “Well-researched and carefully argued.” ―Foreign Affairs
Author: Andrea Stricker
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781727337334
Category : Nuclear nonproliferation
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thirty years ago, in 1988, the United States secretly moved to end once and for all Taiwan's nuclear weapons program, just as it was nearing the point of being able to rapidly break out to build nuclear weapons. Because intense secrecy has followed Taiwan's nuclear weapons program and its demise, this book is the first account of that program's history and dismantlement. Taiwan's nuclear weapons program made more progress and was working on much more sophisticated nuclear weapons than publicly recognized. It came dangerously close to fruition. Taipei excelled at the misuse of civilian nuclear programs to seek nuclear weapons and implemented capabilities to significantly reduce the time needed to build them, following a decision to do so. Despite Taiwan's efforts to hide these activities, the United States was able to gather incriminating evidence that allowed it to act, effectively denuclearizing a dangerous, destabilizing program, that if left unchecked, could have set up a potentially disastrous confrontation with the People's Republic of China (PRC). The Taiwan case is rich in findings for addressing today's nuclear proliferation challenges.
Author: Andrew Futter
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030487377
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Get Book Here
Book Description
This comprehensively updated second edition provides an introduction to the political, normative, technological and strategic aspects of nuclear weaponry. It offers an accessible overview of the concept of nuclear weapons, outlines how thinking about these weapons has developed and considers how nuclear threats can continue to be managed in the future. This book will help you to understand what nuclear weapons are, the science behind their creation and operation, why states build them in the first place, and whether it will be possible for the world to banish these weapons entirely. Essential reading for all students of International Relations, Security Studies and Military History.
Author: Kenneth D. Bergeron
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262261722
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Get Book Here
Book Description
The dangers of a United States government plan to abandon its fifty-year policy of keeping civilian and military uses of nuclear technology separate. In December 1998, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced that the U.S. planned to begin producing tritium for its nuclear weapons in commercial nuclear power plants. This decision overturned a fifty-year policy of keeping civilian and military nuclear production processes separate. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is needed to turn A-bombs into H-bombs, and the commercial nuclear power plants that are to be modified to produce tritium are called ice condensers. This book provides an insider's perspective on how Richardson's decision came about, and why it is dangerous. Kenneth Bergeron shows that the new policy is unwise not only because it undermines the U.S. commitment to curb nuclear weapons proliferation but also because it will exacerbate serious safety problems at these commercial power facilities, which are operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and are among the most marginal in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review of the TVA's request to modify its plants for the new nuclear weapons mission should attract significant attention and opposition. Tritium on Ice is part expose, part history, part science for the lay reader, and part political science. Bergeron's discussion of how the issues of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear reactor safety have become intertwined illuminates larger issues about how the federal government does or does not manage technology in the interests of its citizens and calls into question the integrity of government-funded safety assessments in a deregulated economy.
Author: William J. Perry
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1950665186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Get Book Here
Book Description
The President has the power to end the world in minutes. Right now, no one can stop him. Since the Truman administration, America has been one "push of a button" away from nuclear war—a decision that rests solely in the hands of the President. Without waiting for approval from Congress or even the Secretary of Defense, the President can unleash America's entire nuclear arsenal. Almost every governmental process is subject to institutional checks and balances. Why is potential nuclear annihilation the exception to the rule? For decades, glitches and slip-ups have threatened to trigger nuclear winter: misinformation, false alarms, hacked warning systems, or even an unstable President. And a new nuclear arms race has begun, threatening us all. At the height of the Cold War, Russia and the United States each built up arsenals exceeding 30,000 nuclear weapons, armed and ready to destroy each other—despite the fact that just a few hundred are necessary to end life on earth. From authors William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in the Carter administration, and Tom Z. Collina, the Director of Policy at Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation in Washington, DC, The Button recounts the terrifying history of nuclear launch authority, from the faulty 46-cent microchip that nearly caused World War III to President Trump's tweet about his "much bigger & more powerful" button. Perry and Collina share their firsthand experience on the front lines of the nation's nuclear history and provide illuminating interviews with former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Congressman Adam Smith, Nobel Peace Prize winner Beatrice Fihn, senior Obama administration officials, and many others. Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb.
Author: Bob Woodward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 198218292X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Get Book Here
Book Description
The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history. But as #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink. This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Intimate scenes are supplemented with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making Peril an unparalleled history. It is also the first inside look at Biden’s presidency as he began his presidency facing the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.
Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Get Book Here
Book Description
The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, 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 shows us how the stage was set for a second tragic war when Iraq secretly destroyed its nuclear infrastructure and reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq. We see how the efforts of U.S. weapons labs laid the groundwork for nuclear consolidation in the former Soviet Union, how and why South Africa secretly built and then destroyed a small nuclear arsenal, and how Jimmy Carter’s private diplomacy prevented another Korean War. We also see how the present day represents a nuclear turning point and what hope exists for our future. Rhodes 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, suggesting what might make it possible. Powerful and persuasive, The Twilight of the Bombs is an essential work of contemporary history.
Author: Stephen M. Younger, PhD
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061537195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Get Book Here
Book Description
From his years in U.S. weapons systems to his meetings with nuclear arms experts in Moscow, former weapons designer Stephen M. Younger has witnessed firsthand the making of nuclear policy. With a deep understanding of both the technology and the politics, he guides us from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War and into the present day, illuminating how nuclear weapons fit into our globalized, war-plagued world. Younger reveals the myths and realities of how these weapons work, and how our nuclear policy evolved to what it is today. Does the United States genuinely need a massive stockpile in an era of precision bombs and missile defense? Under what circumstances might we need nuclear weapons in the future? How does the proliferation of weapons in the hands of other nations affect our own nuclear policy?--From publisher description.
