This volume brings together a collection of leading international experts to revisit and review our understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis, via a critical reappraisal of some of the key texts. In October 1962, humankind came close to the end of its history. The risk of catastrophe is now recognised by many to have been greater than realised by protagonists at the time or scholars subsequently. The Cuban missile crisis remains one of the mostly intensely studied moments of world history. Understanding is framed and informed by Cold War historiography, political science and personal experience, written by scholars, journalists, and surviving officials. The emergence of Soviet (later Russian) and other national narratives has broadened the scope of enquiry, while scrutiny of the operational, especially military, dimensions has challenged assumptions about the risk of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal brings together world leading scholars from America, Britain, France, Canada, and Russia to present critical scrutiny of authoritative accounts and to recast assumptions and interpretations. The book aims to provide an essential guide for students of the missile crisis, the diplomacy of the Cold War, and the dynamics of historical interpretation and reinterpretation. Offering original ideas and agendas, the contributors seek to provide a new understanding of the secrets and mysteries of the moment when the world went to the brink of Armageddon. This book will be of great interest to students of the Cuban missile crisis, Cold War Studies, nuclear proliferation, international history and International Relations in general.

In this engaging scientific memoir, Kenneth Ford recounts the time when, in his mid-twenties, he was a member of the team that designed and built the first hydrogen bomb. He worked with - and relaxed with - scientific giants of that time such as Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and John Wheeler, and here offers illuminating insights into the personalities, the strengths, and the quirks of these men. Well known for his ability to explain physics to nonspecialists, Ford also brings to life the physics of fission and fusion and provides a brief history of nuclear science from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 to the ten-megaton explosion of "Mike" that obliterated a Pacific Island in 1952.Ford worked at both Los Alamos and Princeton's Project Matterhorn, and brings out Matterhorn's major, but previously unheralded contribution to the development of the H bomb. Outside the lab, he drove a battered Chevrolet around New Mexico, a bantam motorcycle across the country, and a British roadster around New Jersey. Part of the charm of Ford's book is the way in which he leavens his well-researched descriptions of the scientific work with brief tales of his life away from weapons.

Once dismissed as ineffectual, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has in the past twenty years emerged as a powerful international organization. Member states allow the IAEA to render judgment on matters vital to peace and security while nations around the globe comply with its rules and commands on proliferation, safety, and a range of other issues. Robert L. Brown details the IAEA's role in facilitating both control of nuclear weapons and the safe exploitation of nuclear power. As he shows, the IAEA has acquired a surprising amount of power as states, for political and technological reasons, turn to it to supply policy cooperation and to act as an agent for their security and safety. The agency's success in gaining and holding authority rests in part on its ability to apply politically neutral expertise that produces beneficial policy outcomes. But Brown also delves into the puzzle of how an agency created by states to aid cooperation has acquired power over them.

China's nuclear capability is crucial for the balance of power in East Asia and the world. As this book reveals, there have been important changes recently in China's nuclear posture: the movement from a minimum deterrence posture toward a medium nuclear power posture; the pursuit of space warfare and missile defence capabilities; and, most significantly, the omission in the 2013 Defence White Paper of any reference to the principle of No First Use. Employing the insights of structural realism, this book argues that the imperatives of an anarchic international order have been the central drivers of China's nuclear assertiveness. The book also assesses the likely impact of China's emerging nuclear posture on its neighbours and on the international strategic balance, especially with the United States. The book concludes by examining China's future nuclear directions in the context of its apparent shift toward a more offensive-oriented international strategy.

This book examines the moral dilemmas of nuclear dissemination, and the justifications of both nuclear pursuit and avoidance by contemporary states. Applying Constructivist methodologies and moral theory, the author analyses a core set of moral dilemmas that ensnare decision-makers amongst state and non-state nuclear aspirants, as well as amongst states committed to preventing horizontal proliferation. The book shows that the character, structure and implications of these dilemmas have not yet been adequately understood or appreciated, and that such an understanding is necessary for an effective set of nonproliferation policies. Furthermore, it shows that the dilemmas' force and political policy import are evident in the 'discourses' that diverse actors undertake to defend their nuclear choices, and how the dilemmas of nuclear aspirants are implicated in those of nuclear preventers. The author advocates a number of policy recommendations that reinforce some already made by scholars and experts but, more importantly, others that advise significantly different courses of action. The book reveals how the moral dilemmas of nuclear aspiration, avoidance, and prevention constitute the security dilemmas and paradoxes that comprise much of the 21st century security environment. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international relations, ethics, and international security studies.

In 1943, Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government at Los Alamos, a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands of men, women, and children spent the war years sequestered in this top-secret military facility. They lied to friends and family about where they were going and what they were doing and then disappeared into the desert. The women came despite the Army's initial objections, as Oppenheimer insisted that would be the only way to recruit the world-class physicists and keep them reasonably sane and content during the years it would take to create this revolutionary new weapon. Conant shows how the stringent security, lack of privacy, spartan living conditions, and loneliness of the isolated mountain hideaway drove some residents to the brink of despair. Yet only a handful gave up and left. Through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of Oppenheimer's first recruits, we see how, for all his flaws, he developed into an inspiring leader and motivated all those involved in the Los Alamos project to make a supreme effort and achieve the unthinkable.

This book is about the future of nuclear weapons, geopolitics, and strategy. It examines the legacy of nuclear weapons on US thinking about some concepts of strategy and geopolitics, namely deterrence, extended deterrence, alliances, and arms control. The purpose of this is to demonstrate just how fundamentally nuclear weapons have influenced American thinking about these concepts. It argues that, given the extent of nuclear weapons' influence on these concepts and the implications for international security, further reductions beyond current Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) levels, and the more absolute idea of nuclear disarmament, may not necessarily be prudent ideas. Nuclear weapons have contributed to the avoidance of major war between states, made alliances more credible and last longer, and have made arms control relatively easier to conceptualize and manage. As such, the author argues, these concepts may become even more difficult to manage in a world where nuclear weapons are marginalized.

The balance of power in South Asia is tenuous. Neighbouring states with nuclear arsenal pose a serious threat in times of conflict and the danger of escalation into a nuclear holocaust in South are ever-present. This book locates the change in India's war doctrine at the turn of the century, following the Kargil War in 1999 between India and Pakistan. It examines how war policy was shaped by the threat posed by India's neighbours and the need for greater strategic assertion. It also reveals that this change was forced by the military's need to adapt itself to the nuclear age. Finally, it raises questions of whether the Limited War doctrine has made India more secure. An astute analysis of not only India's military strategy but also of military doctrine in general, this book will be valuable to scholars and researchers of defence and strategic studies, international relations, peace and conflict studies, South Asia studies as well as government and military institutions.

The future of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy in the 21st century is not entirely predictable from the Cold War past. Nor is it easy to foresee on the basis of what has happened since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Cimbala contends that nuclear weapons and the psychology of nuclear deterrence will remain important after 2000, but the character of that importance will change. No longer will nuclear weapons be the dominators of military technology. Instead, advanced technology conventional weapons, based on information and electronics, will supplant nuclear weapons as the instruments of military supremacy in the 21st century.

What, Cimbala asks, can be expected of nuclear weapons in the 21st century, given what we have learned from previous experience in the Cold War and in the 1990s? Cimbala expects that nuclear weapons will spread among currently non-nuclear states, and states with regional grievances or hegemonic aspirations will seek to deploy small nuclear forces as deterrents against neighbors or against outside intervention by the United States in regional conflicts. Regional rogue states may also obtain nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, as Cimbala explains, the international balance of power is unlikely to change. As he makes clear, power will be less dependent on deployed military platforms and more dependent on information warfare. A thoughtful and provocative analysis that will be of particular interest to policy makers, scholars, and other researchers involved with arms control, security studies, and international relations.

Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 is a path-breaking work that uses biographical techniques to test one of the most important and widely debated questions in international politics: Did the advent of the nuclear bomb prevent the Third World War? Many scholars and much conventional wisdom assumes that nuclear deterrence has prevented major power war since the end of the Second World War; this remains a principal tenet of US strategic policy today. Others challenge this assumption, and argue that major war would have been `obsolete' even without the bomb. This book tests these propositions by examining the careers of ten leading Cold War statesmen-Harry S Truman; John Foster Dulles; Dwight D. Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Josef Stalin; Nikita Krushchev; Mao Zedong; Winston Churchill; Charles De Gaulle; and Konrad Adenauer-and asking whether they viewed war, and its acceptability, differently after the advent of the bomb. The book's authors argue almost unanimously that nuclear weapons did have a significant effect on the thinking of these leading statesmen of the nuclear age, but a dissenting epilogue from John Mueller challenges this thesis.

Epistemic communities represent networks of knowledge-based experts that help articulate cause-and-effect relationships of complex problems, define the self-interests of a state, or formulate specific policies for state decision makers. However, the role of these scientists and knowledgeable professionals in nuclear policy formulation is poorly understood. Thoroughly documented and making excellent use of source material, Politics and the Bomb provides refreshingly new empirical evidence and theoretical analysis of the importance of scientists and experts behind the creation of new non-proliferation agreements. Simply not another book on nuclear proliferation, Sara Z. Kutchesfahani explores the differences in the emergence, composition, and influence mechanisms of the epistemic communities behind the nuclear non-proliferation policy formulation in Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program. In doing so she eloquently demonstrates how the role of these non-proliferation experts lead to the possibility of creating more effective non-proliferation policies in the future and hints at the need to sustain non-proliferation epistemic communities in all countries that can provide input to the global proliferation problem until it is solved.

This book examines the prospects and challenges of a global phase-out of highly enriched uranium-and the risks of this material otherwise being used by terrorists to make atom bombs. Terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, have demonstrated repeatedly that they seek to acquire nuclear weapons. Unbeknownst even to many security specialists, tons of bomb-grade uranium are trafficked legally each year for ostensibly peaceful purposes. If terrorists obtained even a tiny fraction of this bomb-grade uranium they could potentially construct a nuclear weapon like the one dropped on Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands. Nuclear experts and policymakers have long known of this danger but - so far - have taken only marginal steps to address it. This volume begins by highlighting the lessons of past successes where bomb-grade uranium commerce has been eliminated, such as from Argentina's manufacture of medical isotopes. It then explores the major challenges that still lie ahead: for example, Russia's continued use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in dozens of nuclear facilities. Each of the book's thirteen case studies offers advice for reducing HEU in a specific sector. These insights are then amalgamated into nine concrete policy recommendations for U.S. and world leaders to promote a global phase-out of bomb-grade uranium. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, global governance, international relations and security studies.

Since the end of the Cold War, significant attention has focussed on the issue of nuclear deterrence and in particular whether formal nuclear security guarantees from nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear weapons states involving the possible use of nuclear weapons have a place in the twenty-first century global strategic landscape. Growing support for nuclear disarmament in the US and elsewhere has seen serious doubts being raised about the ongoing utility of extended nuclear deterrence. This book provides the first detailed analysis of the way in which extended nuclear deterrence operates in contemporary Asia. It addresses the following key questions: What does the role of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia tell us about the broader role of extended nuclear deterrence in the contemporary international system? Is this role likely to change significantly in the years ahead? O'Neil uses a theoretical and historical framework to analyse the contemporary and future dynamics of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia and challenges many of the existing orthodox perspectives on the topic. Providing a new perspective on debates surrounding extended nuclear deterrence, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and security studies, but also to policy makers and professionals.

Containing the histories (from 1945 to the present) of the nuclear strategies of NATO, Britain and France, and of the defence preferences of the FRG (West Germany) this book shows how strategies were functions of a perceived Soviet threat and an American 'nuclear guarantee'. There were three options for West Europeans: a compromise with differing American needs in NATO, pursued by Britain and the FRG; national nuclear forces, developed by Britain and France; and projects for an independent European nuclear force.

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.

Nuclear technology has been an organizing premise of the international system since 1945. Eight countries have officially acknowledged the possession of nuclear weapons. Many countries have harnessed the atom for electricity generation and other civilian uses. Roughly 440 commercial nuclear reactors operate in thirty countries providing 14 percent of the world's electricity. Volatile oil prices and concerns about climate change have led newly emerging economies in Asia to express keen interest in using nuclear energy to meet growing energy demands. Since the basic technological apparatus for both civilian and military nuclear programs is the same, there are concerns about the potential spread of dual-use technology.

The future stability of the international order depends on the responsible management of their nuclear assets by nuclear powers. The relationship between civilian authorities and the military takes on special significance in states with nuclear weapons or near-weapon capability. The constitutional balance of powers, the delegation of authority during wartime and peace, influences from public opinion and bureaucratic structures on the formulation of doctrine, crisis management, and communications with the international media and the general public are influenced by civil-military relations and organizational culture.

This volume will be of broad interest to scholars of civil-military relations, political science, and political sociology.

In 1983, more than one million Germans joined together to protest NATO's deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. International media overflowed with images of marches, rallies, and human chains as protesters blockaded depots and agitated for disarmament. Though they failed to halt the deployment, the episode was a decisive one for German society, revealing deep divisions in the nation's political culture while continuing to mobilize activists. This volume provides a comprehensive reference work on the "Euromissiles" crisis as experienced by its various protagonists, analyzing NATO's diplomatic and military maneuvering and tracing the political, cultural, and moral discourses that surrounded the missiles' deployment in East and West Germany.

This book offers a new and provocative interpretation of early Cold War history by demonstrating how Christian agency played a pivotal role in the creating of space for the logic of nuclear deterrence and nuclear war fighting in the years 1945-59. Cold War chroniclers have traditionally placed great emphasis on threats of mutually assured destruction to explain the puzzle of nuclear non-use since 1945. Here nuclear deterrence is conceived as a realm of absolute necessity with no room for morality. More recently the idea of 'nuclear taboo' has generated immense interest by challenging conventional wisdom with a compelling argument regarding the conceptual (normative rather than material) bases of nuclear restraint. These accounts narrate the emergence of a distinctive ethical order with a particular premium placed on the role of (Anglo-American) Christian activists in giving rise to anti-nuclear sentiment at a formative stage 1945-59. Yet such a reading elides or obfuscates the fact that Christians were deeply divided in their imaginings. Gorry invites a reassessment of assumptions by offering a balanced examination of Christians as enablers but, more provocatively, as resisters of nuclear prohibitions in the early years of Cold War.

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned. Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers. To contend with today's threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Proceedings of a seminar focusing on planetary emergencies, followed in a multidisplinary approach since 1980 by permanent monitoring panels.

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.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book examines the current debate on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, notably the international non-proliferation regime and how to implement its disarmament provisions. Discussing the requirements of a new international consensus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, this book builds on the three pillars of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT): non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It reviews the impact of Cold War and post-Cold War policies on current disarmament initiatives and analyses contemporary proliferation problems: how to deal with the states that never joined the NPT (India, Pakistan and Israel); how states that have been moving toward nuclear weapons have been brought back to non-nuclear-weapon status; and, in particular, how to deal with Iran and North Korea. The analysis centres on the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation in an increasingly multi-centric world involving China and India as well as the US, the European powers and Russia. It concludes with a description and discussion of three different worlds without nuclear weapons and their implications for nuclear disarmament policies. This book will be of great interest to all students of arms control, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, and IR/security studies in general Sverre Lodgaard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo

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.