An examination of nuclear arms control and defence containing papers that present opposing sides of the debate. Nuclear deterrence, Britain's defence budget, the state of Anglo-American relations, NATO strategies and Mr Gorbachev's security arrangements in Europe proposals are discussed.

Although the authors believe that the level of conventional and nuclear forces in Europe should and will be reduced, they do not consider that the military instrument will have lost all of its value in European political affairs. They still see a need to be prepared for tension and conflict.

This historic document, generally known as 'The Smyth Report, ' was written in secret between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945 at the direction of Major General L.R. Groves, who was in charge of the atomic bomb project, as a 'report to the nation.'

At the battle of Agincourt, over six thousand noblemen--the flower of French knighthood--died in a day-long series of futile charges against a small band of English archers. They charged not simply because they failed to recognize the power of the longbow, but because their whole ethos revolved round an idealized figure of the knight that dated back to Homer: the man of great physical strength and valor, who excelled at hand-to-hand combat with men of equal worth. The bow was an affront to this ideal.
As Robert L. O'Connell points out in this vividly written history of weapons in Western culture, the battle of Agincourt typifies the complex and often paradoxical relationship between men and arms. In a sweeping narrative that ranges from prehistorc times to the Nuclear Age, O'Connell demonstrates how social and economic conditions determine the types of weapons and the tactics employed in warfare and how in turn innovations in weapons technology often undercut social values. He reveals, for instance, how the Church outlawed the use of crossbows--except against muslims--to preserve the status quo of the medieval world; how the invention of the gun required a redefinition of courage from aggressive ferocity to calmness under fire; and how the machine gun in World War I so overthrew traditional notions of combat that Lord Kitchener exclaimed, "This isn't war " Indeed, as O'Connell points out, the technology unleashed in the Great War radically changed our perception of ourselves: weapons had made human qualities almost irrelevant in combat. And with the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity itself became subservient to the weapons they had produced.
While its emphasis is historical, Of Arms and Men also draws on such disciplines as biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and literature to illuminate the course of arms. O'Connell integrates the evolution of politics, weapons, strategy, and tactics into a coherent narrative, one spiced with striking portraits of men in combat and brilliant insight into why men go to war.

More than forty years of commitment to nuclear weapons may have prepared Britain to take part in Armageddon, but not to defend itself against attack. What made British governments choose this path and how have they justified it? How have they responded to the moral questions it raises? Using material from recently-released official documents, Roger Ruston presents a moral history of British defence policy, from the 'lesson' of Appeasement to the nuclear modernizations of the eighties, and answers many of the questions that governments have avoided. The book will be of great interest to defence historians, moralists, politicians, and general readers who need a clear account of their country's defence predicament as a basis from which to devise workable and morally acceptable alternatives.

Providing a rigorous and objective ethical analysis of nuclear deterrence, this book discusses such issues as the Soviet menace, possible holocaust, and strategic imperatives. At the same time, the authors unmask types of deterrence that they perceive essentially as moral evasions, maintaining that deterrence cannot be bluffing, pure counterforce, the lesser (or greater) evil, or a step towards disarmament. Concluding that deterrence is unjustifiable, this book examines the new questions of conscience that this raises for us all.

The development and use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki number among the formative national experiences for both Japanese and Americans, as well as for U.S.-Japan relations throughout the last half of the twentieth century. It is now clear, however, that memories and lessons learned from the bombings are still being reworked and contested, perhaps even more heatedly than they were in 1945. Tracking the development of that fifty-year trajectory, this volume explores the ways in which the bomb has shaped the self-image of both peoples: for Americans, the dominant story is that the bombs provided an appropriate and necessary conclusion to a just war; for Japanese, it is a symbol of their victimization. The distinguished contributors analyze the ways in which memories of the bombs, constantly reworked in the media, in the arts, and in the political arena, continue to define important, albeit often unacknowledged, undercurrents in the U.S.-Japan relationship.

"A pioneering political-scientific history. . . . Lucidly composed, meticulously documented, and handsomely presented."--The Annals
"A fascinating and compelling story of the beginnings of the Chinese nuclear weapon program."--Arms Control Today

President Eisenhower's reliance on atomic weapons created as many problems as he hoped to solve with his defense policy. He hoped to provide a sustainable defense strategy that allowed the United States to maintain its security requirements without creating an excessive economic burden. This defense strategy, known as the New Look, benefitted the U.S. Air Force due to the focus on strategic bombing. However ballistic missiles offered the capability to launch nuclear warheads into the Soviet Union without the risk of their being intercepted. In order to do this, the U.S. required European missile bases to deploy its Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, while efforts continued to develop U.S. based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Deploying atomic missiles to Europe required balancing regional European concerns with U.S. domestic security priorities. In the wake of the Soviet Sputnik launch in 1957, many in the U.S. feared Soviet missile capability. Getting ballistic missiles into Europe mitigated this domestic security issue but convincing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to agree to base missiles in their country raised issues concerning sovereignty, weapons control, and ran the risk of creating divisions in the NATO alliance.

This book offers a novel approach to understanding the puzzle of nuclear proliferation by examining how leaders' beliefs and perceptions about the international system influence states' decisions to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, there is a persisting dilemma over the spread of nuclear weapons for both practitioners and scholars of international affairs. Uncertainty remains whether determined proliferators can be stopped, as shown by the cases of North Korea and Iran. These instances of proliferation raise questions about regional stability, the use of pre-emptive military action, and the potential for reactive-proliferation by neighbouring countries. Despite the serious implications surrounding the spread of these weapons, proliferation scholarship has thus far failed to solve what has been described as the "proliferation puzzle"- why do some countries choose nuclear weapons while others do not? The author argues that understanding basic psychological motivations, such as the role of power and perceptions of self and others, forms a strategic context which provides answers about a leader's willingness to proliferate. Proliferation willingness is a critical, yet frequently overlooked, part of the proliferation equation. Ultimately, it is the combination of willingness and proliferation opportunity (i.e. technical and scientific capabilities) that determines whether a country 'goes nuclear'. By examining several historical instances of proliferation decision-making-in South Africa, India, Libya and Australia-the book's findings highlight the fundamental role of leaders' beliefs in shaping proliferation outcomes. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, political psychology, security studies and IR in general.

The UK is one of nine states possessing nuclear weapons. Renewal of the Trident programme would extend Britain’s commitment to so-called nuclear ‘deterrence’ well into the second half of this century, despite treaty obligations and an ‘unequivocal undertaking’ to disarm. With more than 16,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled worldwide, the risk of one going off by accident or design is increasing every day. Wallis in The Truth about Trident explores the issues Trident presents and raises questions like: what would be the impact of their use? How safe are they in the meantime? Are they really necessary? Can we afford them? Are there better alternatives? This book aims to peel back layers of confusion and deceit to reach the truth about Trident.

By emphasising the role of nuclear issues, After Hiroshima, published in 2010, provides an original history of American policy in Asia between the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, Matthew Jones charts the development of American nuclear strategy and the foreign policy problems it raised, as the United States both confronted China and attempted to win the friendship of an Asia emerging from colonial domination. In underlining American perceptions that Asian peoples saw the possible repeat use of nuclear weapons as a manifestation of Western attitudes of 'white superiority', he offers new insights into the links between racial sensitivities and the conduct of US policy, and a fresh interpretation of the transition in American strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response in the era spanned by the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

This book is an authoritative account of the nuclear weapons inspections regime in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Without a proper understanding of those years, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq after a futile WMD search remain unintelligible. In the 1990s, after adapting to a completely new kind of intrusive inspections with unprecedented access rights, the IAEA discovered and dismantled Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program and put in place an efficient monitoring system which could have contained Saddam Hussein's attempts to reconstitute his nuclear programs - had he ever tried to. However, the politicisation of the inspection process led to an end of the inspections in 1998. Based on various sources including inspection reports and other documents in the archive of the IAEA Iraq Action Team at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme presents completely new information about the weapons inspection regime in Iraq and offers valuable lessons for future non-proliferation and disarmament cases. The book also draws on discourse from Iraqi scientists, which provides a close look into not only the motivation of involved Iraqis, but also Iraqi concealment mechanisms. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, Middle Eastern politics, diplomacy, international security and IR.

Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons-or try to become a Central Asian North Korea? This book takes us inside Kazakhstan's extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present. For Soviet officials, Kazakhstan's steppe was not an ecological marvel or beloved homeland, but an empty patch of dirt ideal for nuclear testing. Two-headed lambs were just the beginning of the resulting public health disaster for Kazakhstan-compounded, when the Soviet Union collapsed, by the daunting burden of becoming an overnight nuclear power. Equipped with intimate personal perspective and untapped archival resources, Togzhan Kassenova introduces us to the engineers turned diplomats, villagers turned activists, and scientists turned pacifists who worked toward disarmament. With thousands of nuclear weapons still present around the world, the story of how Kazakhs gave up their nuclear inheritance holds urgent lessons for global security.

James Bond's amazing gadgets reveal both enthusiasm about technology and fear of its potential ramifications. The popularity of the 007 franchise depends on a seductive formula of sex, violence, and snobbery. Much of its appeal, too, lies in its gadgets: slick, somewhat improbable technological devices that give everyone's favorite secret agent the edge over his adversaries. In Equipping James Bond, Andre Millard chronicles a hundred-year history of espionage technology through the lens of Ian Fleming's infamous character and his ingenious spyware. Beginning with the creation of MI6, the British secret service, Millard traces the development of espionage technology from the advanced weaponry of the nineteenth century to the evolving threat of computer hacking and surveillance. Arguing that the gadgets in the books and films articulate the leading edge of technological awareness at the time, Millard describes how Bond goes from protecting 1950s England from criminal activity to saving a world threatened by nuclear bombs, poison gas, and attacks from space. As a modern and modernizing hero, Bond has to keep up with the times. His film franchise is committed to equipping both Bond and his adversaries with the latest technological gadgets. Simultaneously, Millard stresses, the villains and threats that Bond faces embody contemporary fears about the downside of technological change. Taking a wide-ranging look at factual (and fictional) technology, Millard views the James Bond universe as evidence for popular perceptions of technological development as both inevitably progressive and apocalyptically threatening.

Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb takes up the question of how the world found itself in the age of nuclear weapons - and how it has since tried to find a way out of it. Albert I. Berger charts the story of nuclear weapons from their origins through the Atomic Age and the Cold War up through the present day, arguing that an understanding of the history of nuclear weapons is crucial to modern efforts to manage them. This book examines topics including nuclear strategy debates, weapon system procurement decisions, and arms control conferences through the people and leaders who experienced them. Providing a chronological survey, Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb starts with the major scientific discoveries of the late 19th century that laid the groundwork for nuclear development. It then traces the history of nuclear weapons from their inception to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the reaction to them by key players on both sides. It continues its narrative into the second half of the twentieth century, and the role of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, engaging in the debate over whether nuclear weapons are an effective deterrent. Finally, the closing chapters consider the atomic bomb's place in the modern world and the transformation of warfare in an age of advanced technology. This clear and engaging survey will be invaluable reading for students of the Cold War and twentieth-century history.

Presidential nominations in the United States can sometimes seem like a media circus, over-hyped and overly speculative. Even informed citizens might be tempted to tune them out. Yet understanding the process, one distinct to American politics, is crucial for civic participation. If presidential elections are about who will lead the nation, presidential nominations are about who appears on the ballot. This concise and coherent Citizen's Guide examines who has power in presidential nominations and how this affects who we as citizens choose to nominate, and ultimately to sit in the Oval Office. Political scientist Wayne Steger defines the nominating system as a tension between an "insider game" and an "outsider game." He explains how candidates must appeal to a broad spectrum of elected and party officials, political activists, and aligned groups in order to form a winning coalition within their party, which changes over time. Either these party insiders unify early behind a candidate, effectively deciding the nominee before anyone casts a vote, or they are divided and the nomination is determined by citizens voting in the caucuses and primaries. Steger portrays how shifts in party unity and the participation of core party constituencies affect the options presented to voters. Amidst all this, the candidate still matters. Primaries with one strong candidate look much different than those with a field of weaker ones. By clearly addressing the key issues, past and present, of presidential nominations, Steger's guide will be informative, relevant, and accessible for students and general readers alike.

This collection of essays offers a fresh look at the 1970s, the crucial decade when the nuclear non-proliferation regime took shape. Exploring a broad array of newly declassified archival sources from different countries across the globe, and moving freely across methodological and national barriers, historians from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa discuss the making of the global nuclear order from truly international and transnational perspectives. The result is a fascinating and innovative volume which will remain an essential reference for historians of the nuclear age, of the cold war, and more generally of the evolution of the international system in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International History Review.

Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises—radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War—and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene—an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.

In December 2016, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their iconic "Doomsday Clock" thirty seconds forward to two and a half minutes to midnight, the latest it has been set since 1952, the year of the first United States hydrogen bomb test. But a group of scientists-geologists, engineers, and physicists-has been fighting to turn back the clock. Since the dawn of the Cold War, they have advocated a halt to nuclear testing, their work culminating in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which still awaits ratification from China, Iran, North Korea-and the United States. The backbone of the treaty is every nation's ability to independently monitor the nuclear activity of the others. The noted seismologist Lynn R. Sykes, one of the central figures in the development of the science and technology used in monitoring, has dedicated his career to halting nuclear testing. In Silencing the Bomb, he tells the inside story behind scientists' quest for disarmament. Called upon time and again to testify before Congress and to inform the public, Sykes and his colleagues were, for much of the Cold War, among the only people on earth able to say with certainty when and where a bomb was tested and how large it was. Methods of measuring earthquakes, researchers realized, could also detect underground nuclear explosions. When politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain attempted to sidestep disarmament or test ban treaties, Sykes was able to deploy the nascent science of plate tectonics to reveal the truth. Seismologists' discoveries helped bring about treaties limiting nuclear testing, but it was their activism that played a key role in the quest for peace. Full of intrigue, international politics, and hard science used for the global good, Silencing the Bomb is a timely and necessary chronicle of one scientist's efforts to keep the clock from striking midnight.

The primary mission assigned to the British Army from the 1950s until the end of the Cold War was deterring Soviet aggression in Europe by demonstrating the will and capability to fight with nuclear weapons in defence of NATO territory. This 'surreal' mission was unlike any other in history, and raised a number of conceptual and practical difficulties. This comprehensive study observes how the British Army imagined nuclear war, and how it planned to fight it. Using new archival sources, Simon J. Moody analyses British thinking about tactical nuclear weapons, the role of the Army within NATO strategy, the development of theories of tactical nuclear warfare, how nuclear war was taught at the Staff College, the role of operational research, and the evolution of the Army's nuclear war-fighting doctrine. He argues that the British Army possessed the intellectual capacity for organisational adaptation, but that it displayed a cognitive dissonance about some of the more uncomfortable realities of nuclear war.

Fifty years into the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) regime, the risks of nuclear war, terrorism, and the threat of further proliferation remain. A lack of significant progress towards disarmament will cast doubt upon the viability of the NPT. By recognizing that certain fissile materials are essential to every nuclear weapon and that controlling their usage provides the foundation for international efforts to limit their spread, this book presents a comprehensive framework for nuclear disarmament. Based upon phased reductions, Shea provides a mechanism for the disposal of weapon-origin fissile material and controls on peaceful nuclear activities and non-explosive military uses. He explores the technological means for monitoring and verification, the legal arrangements required to provide an enduring foundation, and a financial structure which will enable progress. This book will be invaluable to professional organizations, arms control NGOs, government officials, scientists, and politicians. It will also appeal to academics and postgraduate researchers working on security studies, disarmament diplomacy and the politics and science of verification.

This new Handbook is a comprehensive examination of the rich and complex issues of nuclear proliferation in the early 21st century. The future of the decades-long effort to prevent the further spread of weapons of mass destruction is at a crossroads today. If international nonproliferation efforts are to be successful, an integrated, multi-tiered response will almost certainly be necessary. A serious, thorough, and clear-eyed examination of the range of threats, challenges, and opportunities facing the international community is a necessary first step. This Handbook, which presents the most up-to-date analysis and policy recommendations on these critical issues by recognized, leading scholars in the field, intends to provide such an examination. The volume is divided into three major parts: Part I presents detailed threat assessments of proliferation risks across the globe, including specific regions and countries. Part II explains the various tools developed by the international community to address these proliferation threats. Part III addresses the proliferation risks and political challenges arising from nuclear energy production, including potential proliferation by aspiring states and nonstate groups. This Handbook will be of great interest to students and practitioners of nuclear proliferation, arms control, global governance, diplomacy, and global security and IR general.