![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Weapons & equipment > Nuclear weapons
This examination of the implementation of the nuclear non-proliferation regime focuses on critical developments, technological in particular, currently endangering the regime. Crucial technologies affecting nuclear weapon proliferation and their potential ramifications for the NPT regime as a whole are examined and potential policy options which could ameliorate or perhaps eliminate the resulting dangers are analysed. Developments and problems raised by the nuclear programmes in Iraq and North Korea receive special attention. The book contributes to the discussion and debate occurring in preparation for the 1995 NPT Extension and Review Conference.
"A pioneering political-scientific history. . . . Lucidly composed,
meticulously documented, and handsomely presented."--The
Annals
This title was first piblished in 2000: Christoph Bluth provides a comprehensive and timely analysis of strategic nuclear arms policy in the United States and Russia and examines the collaborative efforts to reduce nuclear weapons through arms control and render nuclear weapons and fissile materials in Russia secure. He concludes that the end of the Cold War has created new and unprecedented dangers and that these dangers require a greater political will and cooperation which have so far been lacking.
The full inside story The full and fascinating inside story of Anglo-American nuclear relations from 1957 to 1962 is told for the first time in this book. This period saw the creation of a close and exclusive relationship of nuclear collaboration between Britain and the United States, with an agreement on atomic co-operation, the establishment of the facilities for US nuclear submarines in the UK, and the sale of US missiles, including Thor and Polaris for the British strategic submarine force. Revelations from formerly top secret documents Ian Clark's detailed analysis of newly declassified official documents reveals that, while special, the Anglo-American nuclear partnership was not without tension and rivalry. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sought to combine interdependence-which reduced costs-with national policies on nuclear strategy, NATO, nuclear co-operation with France, and nuclear testing; the result was conflict with US administrations. Dr Clark examines such critical issues as British nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union and co-ordination with US nuclear war plans, cancellation of the Blue Streak missile, the bargain over Skybolt and the Holy Loch base, the diplomacy of the Skybolt crisis in 1962, and British ambitions for Polaris. The frank revelations contained in the formerly top secret British and American documents from the period enable him to offer fundamentally new and sometimes controversial interpretations of events in this dramatic period.
This book investigates what is driving Iran's nuclear weapons programme in a less-hostile regional environment, using a theory of protracted conflicts to explicate proliferation. Iran's nuclear weapons program has alarmed the international community since the 1990s, but has come to the forefront of international security concerns since 2000. This book argues that Iran's hostility with the United States remains the major causal factor for its proliferation activities. With the US administration pursuing aggressive foreign policies towards Iran since 2000, the latter's security threat intensified. A society that is split on many important domestic issues remained united on the issue of nuclear weapons acquisition after the US war in Iraq. Consequently, Iran became determined in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons and boldly announced its decision to enrich uranium, leaving the US in no doubt about its nuclear status. This book underscores the importance of protracted conflicts in proliferation decisions, and underpinning this is the assumption that non-proliferation may be achieved through the termination of intractable conflicts. The aims of this work are to demonstrate that a state's decision to acquire nuclear weapons depends largely on its engagement in protracted conflicts, which shows not only that the presence of nuclear rivals intensifies the nuclear ambition, but also that non-nuclear status of rival states can promote non-proliferation incentives in conflicting states inclined to proliferate. This study will be of great interest to students of Iran, Middle Eastern politics, nuclear proliferation and international relations theory. Saira Khan is a Research Associate in the McGill-University of Montreal Joint Research Group in International Security (REGIS).
In the more than sixty years since the advent of nuclear weapons, there has been little meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament. Some countries have nuclear weapons, while other states are forbidden to acquire them, a status quo that lacks rational basis and cannot be sustained. In this remarkable collection, scholars and policy analysts argue that humankind has a choice: either allow nuclear weapons to continue to proliferate throughout the world or move toward their complete elimination. The vast majority of people on the planet would surely opt to abolish nuclear weapons. But decisions about nuclear weapons are not made by the public, but by small groups of political elites. Consequently, in a world with nuclear weapons, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a small number of individuals, whose perceptions, communications, and judgment determine whether there is to be a future. The contributors to this volume provide historical perspective on nuclear weapons policy; explore the role of international law in furthering the prospects of nuclear weapons abolition; consider the obstacles to abolition; present a path to achieving a nuclear weapons-free world; and look beyond abolition to consider issues of post-abolition sovereignty and general and complete disarmament. The goal of a nuclear weapons-free world can be awakened by an engaged citizenry bringing pressure from below in demanding action from political leaders. This book contributes to this awakening and engagement.
This book explores the conditions under which Nuclear Weapons Free Zones (NWFZs) can be established. It analyzes four hypotheses that explain the factors contributing to the formation of NWFZs, building upon realist, constructivist and liberal theories from international relations. Through structured focused comparison, the book presents and compares the emergence of NWFZs in Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, which is a prospect for a NWFZ. The book argues that NWFZ projects depend on the following conditions: the security interest of regional states in avoiding nuclear threats, preexisting regional institutions and regional economic cooperation, leadership by a core of regional powers and shared interest in spreading non-proliferation norms. Democracy is not a necessary condition, but democratization can help overcome barriers presented by hesitant or opposed regional governments. As too many of the mentioned necessary conditions are lacking in the Middle East, a NWFZ project, thus, will be possible only after major political changes. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, security studies and International Relations.
The United States is the only country to have dropped the atomic bomb. Since the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every US president has threatened nuclear war. This concise history shows how the U.S. has used nuclear weapons to bolster its imperial ambitions. Leading nuclear specialist and peace campaigner Joseph Gerson explains why atomic weapons were first built and used - and how the U.S. uses them today to preserve its global empire. Gerson reveals how and why the U.S. made more than twenty threats of nuclear attack during the Cold War - against Russia, China, Vietnam, and the Middle East. He shows how such theats continued under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and George W. Bush. The book concludes with an appeal for nuclear weapons abolition and an overview of the history of the anti-nuclear movement. Drawing from a wide range of sources, this fascinating and timely account shows how the U.S. has used nuclear weapons to dominate the world.
Pakistan is a vitally important country in the contemporary global political system. It is a de facto nuclear state, and a pivotal country in the War on Terror. This book provides a comprehensive study of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, investigating the implications of its emergence as a nuclear weapons state. Setting out the historical background of Pakistani nuclear development, the book examines the lessons for proliferation that can be drawn from the Pakistan case. It explains the changes and continuities of Pakistan's nuclear policy, assessing its emerging force posture and the implications for Pakistani, South Asian and global security. It also considers the extent to which Pakistan can be said to have a nuclear doctrine, the Pakistani nuclear command and control system, and the relationship between Pakistan and the Non-Proliferation regime. Addressing the issue of whether Pakistan should be viewed as a proliferator, and the implications of a nuclear Pakistan for global terrorism, Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons is an important study of all the major issues surrounding Pakistan's emergence as a nuclear power.
Making the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party 's nuclear tests in 1998 its starting point, this book examines how opinion amongst India 's attentive public shifted from supporting nuclear abstinence to accepting and even feeling a need for a more assertive policy, by examining the complexities of the debate in India on nuclear policy in the 1990s. The study seeks to account for the shift in opinion by looking at the parallel processes of how nuclear policy became an important part of the public discourse in India, and what it came to symbolise for the country 's intelligentsia during this decade. It argues that the pressure on New Delhi in the early 1990s to fall in line with the non-proliferation regime, magnified by India 's declining global influence at the time, caused the issue to cease being one of defence, making it a focus of nationalist pride instead. The country 's nuclear programme thus emerged as a test of its ability to withstand external compulsions, guaranteeing not so much the sanctity of its borders as a certain political idea of it that of a modern, scientific and, most importantly, sovereign state able to defend its policies and set its goals.
This new volume explores what the acquisition of nuclear weapons
means for the life of a protracted conflict.
The book argues that the significance of the possession of
nuclear weapons in conflict resolution has been previously
overlooked. Saira Khan argues that the acquisition of nuclear
weapons by states keeps conflicts alive indefinitely, as they are
maintained by frequent crises and low-to-medium intensity violence,
rather than escalating to full-scale wars. This theory therefore
emphasises the importance of nuclear weapons in both war-avoidance
and peace-avoidance. The book opens with a section explaining its
theory of conflict transformation with nuclear weapons, before
testing this against the case study of the India--Pakistan
protracted conflict in South Asia. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic
studies, IR and Asian politics and security.
This edited volume explores competing perspectives on the impact of nuclear weapons proliferation on the South Asian security environment. The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world's foremost security concerns. The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of newly nuclear states, and the potential for future international crises, are of particular concern. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test of proliferation's effects on the crisis behaviour of newly nuclear states. This volume creates a dialogue between scholars who believe that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent, and those who believe that nuclear weapons have made South Asia more conflict prone. It does so by pairing competing analyses of four major regional crises: the 1987 "Brasstacks" crisis, the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1990, the 1999 Kargil war, which occurred after the nuclear tests; and the 2001-2 Indo-Pakistani militarized standoff. In addition, the volume explores the implications of the South Asian nuclear experience for potential new nuclear states such as North Korea and Iran.
This book investigates what is driving Iran's nuclear weapons programme in a less-hostile regional environment, using a theory of protracted conflicts to explicate proliferation. Iran's nuclear weapons program has alarmed the international community since the 1990s, but has come to the forefront of international security concerns since 2000. This book argues that Iran's hostility with the United States remains the major causal factor for its proliferation activities. With the US administration pursuing aggressive foreign policies towards Iran since 2000, the latter's security threat intensified. A society that is split on many important domestic issues remained united on the issue of nuclear weapons acquisition after the US war in Iraq. Consequently, Iran became determined in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons and boldly announced its decision to enrich uranium, leaving the US in no doubt about its nuclear status. This book underscores the importance of protracted conflicts in proliferation decisions, and underpinning this is the assumption that non-proliferation may be achieved through the termination of intractable conflicts. The aims of this work are to demonstrate that a state's decision to acquire nuclear weapons depends largely on its engagement in protracted conflicts, which shows not only that the presence of nuclear rivals intensifies the nuclear ambition, but also that non-nuclear status of rival states can promote non-proliferation incentives in conflicting states inclined to proliferate. This study will be of great interest to students of Iran, Middle Eastern politics, nuclear proliferation and international relations theory. Saira Khan is a Research Associate in the McGill-University of Montreal Joint Research Group in International Security (REGIS).
This book looks at the prospects for international cooperation over nuclear weapons proliferation in the 21st century. Nuclear weapons served as stabilizing forces during the Cold War, or the First Nuclear Age, on account of their capability for destruction, the fear that this created among politicians and publics, and the domination of the nuclear world order by two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the potential for nuclear weapons acquisition among revisionist states, or even non-state actors including terrorists, creates the possibility of a 'wolves eat dogs' phenomenon in the present century. In the 21st century, three forces threaten to undo or weaken the long nuclear peace and fast-forward states into a new and more dangerous situation: the existence of large US and Russian nuclear weapons arsenals; the potential for new technologies, including missile defenses and long-range, precision conventional weapons, and a collapse or atrophy of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and the opening of the door for nuclear weapons to spread among more than the currently acknowledged nuclear states. This book explains how these three 'weakening' forces interact with one another and with US and Russian policy-making in order to create an environment of large possibilities for cooperative security - but also of considerable danger. Instead, the choices made by military planners and policy-makers will create an early twenty-first century story privileging nuclear stability or chaos. The US and Russia can, and should, make incremental progress in arms control and nonproliferation. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation and arms control, strategic studies, international security and IR in general. Stephen J. Cimbala is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of numerous works in the fields of international security, defense studies, nuclear arms control and other topics. He has consulted for various US government agencies and defense contractors.
India s Nuclear Bomb and National Security gives an analytic account of the dynamics of India's nuclear build up. It puts forward a new comprehensive model, which goes beyond the classic strategic model of accepting motives of arming behaviour, and incorporates the dynamics in India s nuclear programme. The core argument of the book surrounds the question about India's security considerations and their impact on India's nuclear policy development. Karsten Frey explores this analytic model by including explanatory variables on the unit-level, where interests are generally related to symbolic, less strategic values attributed to nuclear weapons. These play a significant role within India's domestic political party competition and among certain pressure groups. They also impacted India's relationship with other countries on non-proliferation matters, for example the concept of the country's 'status' and 'prestige'. Identifying the role of the strategic elite in determining India's nuclear course, this book also argues that one of the pivotal driving forces behind India's quest for the nuclear bomb is India's struggle for international recognition and the strong, often obsessive sensitivities of India's elite regarding 'acts of discrimination' or 'ignorance' by the West towards India.
The Project on Nuclear Issues 2013 conference series included events at Northrop Grumman in May, Sandia National Laboratory in July, and CSIS in December, before concluding with a Capstone Conference at Offutt Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Strategic Command, in March 2014. The papers included in this volume are a collection of some of the presentations delivered at the Capstone Conference. Spanning a wide range of technical and policy issues, these selected papers hope to further discussion in their respective areas, as well as contribute to the success of the greater nuclear community.
This book offers a broader theory of nuclear deterrence and examines the way nuclear and conventional deterrence interact with non-military factors in a series of historical case studies. The existing body of literature largely leans toward the analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence and it is often implicitly assumed that nuclear weapons are so important that, when they are present, other factors need not be studied. This book addresses this omission. It develops a research framework that incorporates the military aspects of deterrence, both nuclear and conventional, together with various perceptual factors, international circumstances, domestic politics, and norms. This framework is then used to re-examine five historical crises that brought two nuclear countries to the brink of war: the hostile asymmetric nuclear relations between the United States and China in the early 1960s; between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1960s; between Israel and Iraq in 1977-1981; between the United States and North Korea in 1992-1994; and, finally, between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The main empirical findings challenge the common expectation that the threat of nuclear retaliation represents the ultimate deterrent. In fact, it can be said, with a high degree of confidence, that it was rather the threat of conventional retaliation that acted as a major stabilizer. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, cold war studies, deterrence theory, security studies and IR in general.
Previous works on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) have approached the topic from the point of view of the U.S. and its allies, while Cuban experiences have still not been sufficiently discussed. This book presents new aspects which have seldom - or never - been offered before, giving a detailed account of the crisis from a Cuban perspective. It also investigates the archaeological and anthropological aspects of the crisis, by exploring the tangible and intangible remains that still can be found on the former Soviet missile bases in the Cuban countryside, and through interviews which add a local, human dimension to the subject.
This edited volume explores competing perspectives on the impact of nuclear weapons proliferation on the South Asian security environment. The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world's foremost security concerns. The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of newly nuclear states, and the potential for future international crises, are of particular concern. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test of proliferation's effects on the crisis behaviour of newly nuclear states. This volume creates a dialogue between scholars who believe that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent, and those who believe that nuclear weapons have made South Asia more conflict prone. It does so by pairing competing analyses of four major regional crises: the 1987 "Brasstacks" crisis, the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1990, the 1999 Kargil war, which occurred after the nuclear tests; and the 2001-2 Indo-Pakistani militarized standoff. In addition, the volume explores the implications of the South Asian nuclear experience for potential new nuclear states such as North Korea and Iran.
A much-needed exploration of when, and under what conditions, could a conflict transform to a level of almost indefinite protraction. Saira Khan argues that with the acquisition of nuclear weapons by states in a conflict, the situation is transformed to a level of indefinite protraction. She maintains that such crises are embedded in each protracted conflict and that their escalation to war depends on the nuclear status of the adversaries. Khan also shows how pre-nuclear states have a tendency to manage serious crises with full-scale wars, while nuclear adversaries tend to use violent clashes or low-to-medium intensity violence as crises management tools. The occurrence of frequent crises and continuance of low-to-medium intensity violence - functions of the absence of wars - generate a situation where the life of a protracted conflict changes direction. It is this change that transforms the conflict and has a propensity of keeping the conflict alive indefinitely. This book will appeal to all students of strategic studies, international relations and security.
Pakistan is a vitally important country in the contemporary global political system. It is a de facto nuclear state, and a pivotal country in the War on Terror. This book provides a comprehensive study of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, investigating the implications of its emergence as a nuclear weapons state. Setting out the historical background of Pakistani nuclear development, the book examines the lessons for proliferation that can be drawn from the Pakistan case. It explains the changes and continuities of Pakistan's nuclear policy, assessing its emerging force posture and the implications for Pakistani, South Asian and global security. It also considers the extent to which Pakistan can be said to have a nuclear doctrine, the Pakistani nuclear command and control system, and the relationship between Pakistan and the Non-Proliferation regime. Addressing the issue of whether Pakistan should be viewed as a proliferator, and the implications of a nuclear Pakistan for global terrorism, Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons is an important study of all the major issues surrounding Pakistan's emergence as a nuclear power.
Nuclear disarmament is firmly back on the international agenda. But almost all current thinking on the subject is focused on the process of reducing the number of weapons from thousands to hundreds. This rigorous analysis examines the challenges that exist to abolishing nuclear weapons completely, and suggests what can be done now to start overcoming them. The paper argues that the difficulties of 'getting to zero' must not preclude many steps being taken in that direction. It thus begins by examining steps that nuclear-armed states could take in cooperation with others to move towards a world in which the task of prohibiting nuclear weapons could be realistically envisaged. The remainder of the paper focuses on the more distant prospect of prohibiting nuclear weapons, beginning with the challenge of verifying the transition from low numbers to zero. It moves on to examine how the civilian nuclear industry could be managed in a nuclear-weapons-free world so as to prevent rearmament. The paper then considers what political-security conditions would be required to make a nuclear-weapons ban enforceable and explores how enforcement might work in practice. Finally, it addresses the latent capability to produce nuclear weapons that would inevitably exist after abolition, and asks whether this is a barrier to disarmament, or whether it can be managed to meet the security needs of a world newly free of the bomb.
Since the end of the Cold War, globalization has brought new actors to the political arena. One of those which has attracted considerable attention in academic research is civil society or NGOs. Claudia Kissling addresses the topic of civil society participation in the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The regime qualifies well for this objective since it features, given its characteristics as a treaty regime in the international security field, notable legal avenues for civil society participation. The study takes on a twofold perspective. It addresses the empirical question of whether civil society can contribute to the evolution of regimes in the security field, especially when it comes to security cooperation. It also questions whether civil society can, under certain conditions, contribute to the democratic quality of international decision-making. Here, empirical findings are used in order to test normative political theories on the legitimacy and democracy of global institutions.
Entessar & Afrasiabi's Iran Nuclear Negotiations (Rowman & Littlefied, October 2015) offered a thorough analysis of the negotiation process between Iran and the 5+1 great powers about its nuclear program. This book essentially builds upon it, focusing this time on the final nuclear agreement, the ensuing debates around it, and its global and regional ramifications especially in the Middle East. The first section analyzes the agreement through the prism of international relations theories, using a constructivist-critical theory approach. This is followed by an overview of the intense debates in Iran, the West, and other parts of the world, on the nuclear agreement and its various pros and cons, not to mention the connected, yet separate Iran-IAEA agreement. The second section covers Iran's foreign policy and its various priorities, looking in particular at the impact of the nuclear deal on the country's external relations and orientations, contextualized in terms of pre-existing issues and concerns and the profound influence of the nuclear agreement on the perceptions of Iranian power in the region and beyond. Iran's relations with its Arab, Turkish, Russian, and other neighbors are discussed, focusing on both the direct and indirect impact of the nuclear agreement on these relations, especially the paradoxical implications of the nuclear deal with respect to the non-nuclear crises in the Middle East, such as the Syria-Iraq crisis, and the re-alignments that have put Iran at the crossroads of East and West. Other issues covered include energy security, regional economic cooperation, the endemic sectarianism highlighted by Iran-Saudi competition, and the deadlock on the Middle East peace process. The third section then examines the issue of a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone and the likely consequences of the Iran nuclear deal on this prospect, which, in turn, raises the issue of regional proliferation and counterproliferation. The last section explores some possible various scenarios and the challenges of implementation as a relatively long-term agreement, providing specific policy recommendations for the regional actors and the external powers that are stakeholders in the volatile Middle East.
In the 1980s the West German Peace Movement -- fearing that the stationing of NATO nuclear missiles in Germany threatened an imminent nuclear war in Europe -- engaged in massive protests, including sustained civil disobedience in the form of sit-down demonstrations. Civil Disobedience and the German Courts traces the historical and philosophical background of this movement and follows a group of demonstrators through their trials in the German criminal courts up to the German Constitutional Court -- in which their fate was determined in two important constitutional cases. In this context, the volume also analyzes the German Constitutional Court, as a crucial institution of government, in comparative perspective. The book is the first full-length English language treatment of these events and these constitutional decisions, and it also places the decisions at an important turning-point in German constitutional history. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
Medical Medium Cleanse To Heal - Healing…
Anthony William
Hardcover
![]()
|