John A. Vasquez explains the processes that cause the spread of interstate war by looking at how contagion worked to bring countries into the First World War. Analysing all the key states that declared war, the book is comprised of three parts. Part I lays out six models of contagion: alliances, contiguity, territorial rivalry, opportunity, 'brute force' and economic dependence. Part II then analyses in detail the decision making of every state that entered the war from Austria-Hungary in 1914 to the United States and Greece in 1917. Part III has two chapters - the first considers the neutral countries, and the second concludes the book with an overarching theoretical analysis, including major lessons of the war and new hypotheses about contagion. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, conflict studies and international history, especially those interested in the spread of conflict, or the First World War.

The Small Arms Survey 2015 examines the role of weapons and armed violence in humanity's appropriation of the earth's wildlife and mineral riches - in Africa, where the poaching of elephants and rhinos is becoming increasingly militarised, and near resource extraction sites around the world. In addition to presenting updates on the UN small arms process and the top arms importers and exporters, the volume assesses how recent technological developments affect weapons marking, record-keeping, and tracing; reviews small arms flows to Egypt, Libya, and Syria; and evaluates a stockpile management initiative in south-east Europe. The 'armed actors' section sheds light on the arms and ammunition used by insurgents in northern Mali, the decline of the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda, and the use of floating armouries by private security companies in the Indian Ocean. This edition also analyses conditions that are driving young people to adopt high-risk coping strategies in Burundi.

The 33rd edition of the SIPRI Yearbook analyses developments in 2001 in: Security and conflict, Military spending and armament, non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament, with extensive annexes on arms control and disarmament agreements and a chronology of security- and arms control-related events as well as a comprehensive glossary of terms and membership of international organizations.

The international trade in guns, tanks, and missiles is a global multi-billion dollar business. This book explores the complexities and realities of the global conventional weapons trade and provided an engaging introduction to the trade, the effects and the consequences of these weapons in the contemporary world.

The intelligence community's flawed assessment of Iraq's weapons systems -- and the Bush administration's decision to go to war in part based on those assessments -- illustrates the political and policy challenges of combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In this comprehensive assessment, defense policy specialists Jason Ellis and Geoffrey Kiefer find disturbing trends in both the collection and analysis of intelligence and in its use in the development and implementation of security policy.

Analyzing a broad range of recent case studies -- Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, North Korea's defiance of U.N. watchdogs, Russia's transfer of nuclear and missile technology to Iran and China's to Pakistan, the Soviet biological warfare program, weapons inspections in Iraq, and others -- the authors find that intelligence collection and analysis relating to WMD proliferation are becoming more difficult, that policy toward rogue states and regional allies requires difficult tradeoffs, and that using military action to fight nuclear proliferation presents intractable operational challenges.

Ellis and Kiefer reveal that decisions to use -- or overlook -- intelligence are often made for starkly political reasons. They document the Bush administration's policy shift from nonproliferation, which emphasizes diplomatic tools such as sanctions and demarches, to counterproliferation, which at times employs interventionist and preemptive actions. They conclude with cogent recommendations for intelligence services and policy makers.

This yearbook continues SIPRI's annual analyses of developments in major armed conflicts, in conflict prevention, management and resolution, and in peacekeeping, developments in chemical and biological weapons, new military technology, world military expenditure, nuclear explosions, arms production, the arms trade, and nuclear, chemical, and biological arms control. Special studies in this volume: * area studies of China and Korea, the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, and Europe * the Nordic Rapid Reaction Forces * military research and development in the OECD countries * multilateral security-related export control measures * negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban and a ban on the production of fissile material * conventional arms control in Europe * the nuclear non-proliferation regime after the NPT Review and Extension Conference * efforts to strengthen the constraints on `inhumane' conventional weapons The Yearbook has unique collections of official documents concluded during the year in the field of arms control, disarmament and international security. The annual accounts and analyses are heavily footnoted, providing a comprehensive bibliography in each subject area.

This book examines the likely implications of the CTB for nuclear modernization programmes and the non-proliferation regime. The key considerations affecting decisions by states to join the CTB are reviewed and the likely impact of these decisions on the treaty's non-proliferation goals is assessed.

Conventional Arms Control: Perspectives on Verification provides an analysis of the political and operational problems of the verification of conventional arms control. The emphasis is on post-cold war Europe and the authors examine the verification problems and opportunities presented by the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and, with regard to the constraints imposed by the negotiators on the verification mechanism, provide a short history of the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) and CFE negotiations which led to the Treaty. The book also highlights verification aspects of the operational approach to arms control, as illustrated by negotiations on confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs), examining the evolution of the CSBM verification regime within the CSCE process from the Helsinki Final Act to the Vienna Document 1992. The Open Skies Treaty, its history and its relationship to aerial verification mechanisms in general are analysed. The need to verify force structures and the problems involved are discussed, and the verification lessons of the 1991 Persian Gulf War are presented.

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has proven the most complicated and controversial of all arms control treaties, both in principle and in practice. Statements of nuclear-weapon States from the Cold War to the present, led by the United States, show a disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty, and an unwarranted underprioritization of the civilian energy development and disarmament pillars of the treaty. This book argues that the way in which nuclear-weapon States have interpreted the Treaty has laid the legal foundation for a number of policies related to trade in civilian nuclear energy technologies and nuclear weapons disarmament. These policies circumscribe the rights of non-nuclear-weapon States under Article IV of the Treaty by imposing conditions on the supply of civilian nuclear technologies. They also provide for the renewal and maintaintenance, and in some cases further development of the nuclear weapons arsenals of nuclear-weapon States. The book provides a legal analysis of this trend in treaty interpretation by nuclear-weapon States and the policies for which it has provided legal justification. It argues, through a close and systematic examination of the Treaty by reference to the rules of treaty interpretation found in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that this disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty leads to erroneous legal interpretations of the Treaty, prejudicing the legitimate legal interests of non-nuclear-weapon States.

This book examines the question: is the elimination of nuclear weapons politically feasible and technically practical? With the end of the cold war, a re-thinking of the nuclear foundations of international security is imperative. There are no compelling reasons to perpetuate a cold war-era nuclear security approach. Neither is the world ready to abolish nuclear weapons by agreement. What it is ready for, however, is a radical reappraisal of conventional strategic and disarmament wisdom. The book's explicit focus on non-nuclear security takes issues with prevailing pro- and anti-nuclear views. The study challenges the assumptions of the strategic community that there is no alternative to nuclear security in an anarchic international system and of the advocates of radical nuclear disarmament who propose solutions at the expense of security. Instead, the contributors argue that nuclear weapons abolition should be seen as a long-term process, pursued on a broad political front, aimed at a steady transformation of international politics that encourages security co-operation between states. Individual chapters of the book address the major conceptual, technical, and economic issues in t

In 2017, North Korea shocked the world: test-flying a missile capable of reaching the US, exploding the most powerful nuclear device tested anywhere in a quarter-century, and declaring its nuclear deterrent complete. Today, Kim Jong Un's growing nuclear stockpile represents a grave threat to international security. But this programme means more to him than world glory. State propaganda calls it the 'treasured sword': Kim is determined to keep ruling, and he sees his nukes as the key to regime survival. Kim Jong Un and the Bomb explores the history of North Korea's nuclear weapons development, its present power, and the prospects of containing Kim's arsenal. This book confronts us with a nuclear-armed North Korea that is not going anywhere, and reveals what this means for the US, South Korea and the world. Ankit Panda is an award-winning writer and international security expert. He is Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, and a senior editor at The Diplomat. He lives in New York.

Steven Hurst traces the development of the Iranian nuclear weapon crisis across its historical context: from the conception of Iran's nuclear programme under the Shah in 1957 to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. Emphasising the centrality of domestic politics in decision-making on both sides, Hurst adopts a broader perspective on the Iranian nuclear programme and explains the continued failure of the USA to halt it. He reveals how President Obama's alterations to the American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about a resolution.

Why and how do countries buy the armaments and defence equipment they do buy? The first volume of this study, published in 1998, examined in detail the processes that lie behind arms procurement decisions in six arms-recipient countries: China, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. This second volume contains similar case studies based on extensive original research by experts from the national academic and defence communities in six more countries. It considers in particular whether arms procurement can become more responsive to the broader objectives of security and public accountability.

The nuclear age is coming to the Middle East. Understanding the scope and motivations for this development and its implications for global security is essential. The last decade has witnessed an explosion of popular and scholarly attention focussed on nuclear issues around the globe and especially in the Middle East. These studies fall into one of four general categories. They tend to focus either on the security and military aspects of nuclear weapons, or on the sources and mechanisms for proliferation and means of reversing it, or nuclear energy, or the logics driving state policymakers toward adopting the nuclear option. The Nuclear Question in the Middle East is the first book of its kind to combine thematic and theoretical discussions regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear energy with case studies from across the region. What are the key domestic drivers of nuclear behaviour and decision-making in the Middle East? How are the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council seeking to employ nuclear energy to further guarantee and expedite their hyper-growth of recent decades? Are there ideal models emerging in this regard that others might emulate in the foreseeable future, and, if so, what consequences is this development likely to have for other civilian nuclear aspirants? These region-wide themes form the backdrop against which specific case studies are examined.