Covering the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the origins and early course of the Cold War, and the advent of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, Churchill and the Bomb explores a still neglected aspect of Winston Churchill's career - his relationship with and thinking on nuclear weapons. Kevin Ruane shows how Churchill went from regarding the bomb as a weapon of war in the struggle with Nazi Germany to viewing it as a weapon of communist containment (and even punishment) in the early Cold War before, in the 1950s, advocating and arguably pioneering what would become known as "mutually assured destruction" as the key to preventing the Cold War flaring into a calamitous nuclear war. While other studies of Churchill have touched on his evolving views on nuclear weapons, few historians have given this hugely important issue the kind of dedicated and sustained treatment it deserves. In Churchill and the Bomb, however, Kevin Ruane has undertaken extensive primary research in Britain, the United States and Europe, and accessed a wide array of secondary literature, in producing an immensely readable yet detailed, insightful and provocative account of Churchill's nuclear hopes and fears.

There have been five central crises in America's post World War II encounter with the Middle East, and the Obama administration now faces a sixth. Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability, and the prospect of Israel launching air strikes to stop it, are ingredients for a conflict that could ruin any residual hopes for fostering peace in the region.
The Sixth Crisis explores the fraught linkages between the Iranian nuclear challenge, the increasing likelihood of an Israeli preventive strike, the continuing Israel-Palestine tragedy, and President Barack Obama's efforts to recast America's relations with the world's Muslims. It is the first full account of the situation since Obama took office. The authors, a former senior official on President Clinton's National Security Council Staff and a leading authority on international politics, lay out in clear and accessible detail the technical and political dimensions of Iran's nuclear program, and the ongoing diplomacy to stop it. They show how Israel's panic about Iran's nuclear threat--combined with its policy toward the Palestinians--is undermining Jerusalem's alliance with America. Tehran, meanwhile, is exploiting tensions between Arab regimes fearful of a nuclear Iran and an Arab public that is both angry about the plight of the Palestinians and resentful of Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region. The Sixth Crisis brilliantly illuminates this fateful juncture. The status quo is on an incline to disaster, and the hopes that President Obama has inspired are threatened by the toxic mixture of Israeli-Palestinian stalemate and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The time bomb of Iran's defiance and Israel's panic has the potential to spark a firestorm that would imperil US interests in the Middle East and engulf Obama's presidency. With the outcome of this unfolding crisis far from certain, The Sixth Crisis is required reading not only for policymakers, but also for anyone interested in world politics.

Since their inception, nuclear weapons have multiplied at an alarming rate, leaving everyone from policymakers to concerned citizens wondering what it will take to slow, stop, or even reverse their spread. With clarity and expertise, Joseph Cirincione presents an even-handed look at the history of nuclear proliferation and an optimistic vision of its future, providing a comprehensive survey of the wide range of critical perspectives. Cirincione begins with the first atomic discoveries of the 1930s and covers the history of their growth all the way to current crisis with Iran. He unravels the science, strategy, and politics that have fueled the development of nuclear stockpiles and increased the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack. He also explains why many nations choose not to pursue nuclear weapons and pulls from this the outlines of a solution to the world's proliferation problem: a balance of force and diplomacy, enforcement and engagement that yields a steady decrease in these deadly arsenals. Though nuclear weapons have not been used in war since August 1945, there is no guarantee this good fortune will continue. A unique blend of history, theory, and security analysis, Bomb Scare is an engaging text that not only supplies the general reader and student with a clear understanding of this issue but also provides a set of tools policymakers and scholars can use to prevent the cataclysmic consequences of another nuclear attack.

Much recent writing about international politics understandably highlights the many changes that have followed from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This book, by contrast, analyzes an important continuity that, the author argues, will characterize international strategic affairs well into the new century: nuclear deterrence will remain at the core of the security policies of the world's great powers and will continue to be an attractive option for many less powerful states worried about adversaries whose capabilities they cannot match. The central role of nuclear deterrence persists despite the advent of a new international system in which serious military threats are no longer obvious, the use of force is judged irrelevant to resolving most international disputes, and states' interests are increasingly defined in economic rather than military terms. Indeed, the author suggests why these changes may increase the appeal of nuclear deterrence in the coming decades. Beginning with a reconsideration of nuclear deterrence theory, the book takes issue with the usual emphasis on the need for invulnerable retaliatory forces and threats that leaders can rationally choose to carry out. The author explains why states, including badly outgunned states, can rely on nuclear deterrent strategies despite the difficulty they may face in deploying invulnerable forces and despite the implausibility of rationally carrying out their threats of retaliation. In the subsequent empirical analysis that examines the security policies of China, Britain, and France and taps recently declassified documents, the author suggests that the misleading standard view of what is often termed rational deterrence theory may well reflect the experience, or at least aspirations, of the Cold War superpowers more than the logic of deterrence itself. Case studies assessing the nuclear deterrent policies of China, Britain, and France highlight the reasons why their experience, rather than that of the more frequently studied Cold War superpowers, better reflects the strategic and economic factors likely to shape states' security policies in the twenty-first century. The book concludes by drawing out the implications of the author's theoretical and empirical analysis for the future role of nuclear weapons.

Herman Kahn was the only nuclear strategist in America who might have made a living as a standup comedian. Indeed, galumphing around stages across the country, joking his way through one grotesque thermonuclear scenario after another, he came frighteningly close. In telling the story of Herman Kahn, whose 1960 book "On Thermonuclear War" catapulted him into celebrity, Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi captures an era that is still very much with us--a time whose innocence, gruesome nuclear humor, and outrageous but deadly serious visions of annihilation have their echoes in the "known unknowns and unknown unknowns" that guide policymakers in our own embattled world.

Portraying a life that combined aspects of Lenny Bruce, Hitchcock, and Kubrick, Ghamari-Tabrizi presents not one Herman Kahn, but many--one who spoke the suffocatingly dry argot of the nuclear experts, another whose buffoonery conveyed the ingenious absurdity of it all, and countless others who capered before the public, ambiguous, baffling, always open to interpretation. This, then, is a story of one thoroughly strange and captivating man as well as a cultural history of our moment. In Herman Kahn's world is a critical lesson about how Cold War analysts learned to fill in the ciphers of strategic uncertainty, and thus how we as a nation learned to live with the peculiarly inventive quality of strategy, in which uncertainty generates extravagant threat scenarios.

Revealing the metaphysical behind the dryly deliberate, apparently practical discussion of nuclear strategy, this book depicts the creation of a world where clever men fashion Something out of Nothing--and establishes Herman Kahn as our first virtuoso of theunknown unknowns.

This will be the first book that deals with the use of commercial satellite imagery to monitor non-proliferation of nuclear weapons non-intrusively from space by an international organisation. The book deals with both the technical as well as policy issues related to the nuclear weapons non-proliferation issues. The authors discuss how an international organisation such as the International Atomic Energy Agency can use information derived from satellites to enhance its policing task.

Now combined in one volume, these two books helped focus national attention in the early 1980s on the movement for a nuclear freeze. "The Fate of the Earth" painted a chilling picture of the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, while "The Abolition" offered a proposal for full-scale nuclear disarmament. With the recent tensions in India and Pakistan, and concerns about nuclear proliferation around the globe, public attention is once again focused on the worldwide nuclear situation. The author is at the forefront of the discussion. In February 1998, his lengthy essay constituted the centerpiece of a special, widely distributed issue of "The Nation" dealing with the nuclear arms race. The relevance of his two books for today's debates is undeniable, as many experts assert that the nuclear situation is more dangerous than ever.
"Reviews of" The Fate of the Earth
"This is a work of enormous force. There are moments when it seems to hurtle almost out of control, across an extraordinary range of fact and thought. But in the end, it accomplishes what no other work has managed to do in the years of the nuclear age. It compels us--and compel is the right word--to confront head on the nuclear peril."
--"New York Times Book Review"
"There have been thousands of commentaries on what this new destructive power of man means; but my guess is that Schell's book . . . will become the classic statement of the emerging consciousness."
--Max Lerner, "New Republic"
"Reviews of" The Abolition
"As always, Schell is interesting and ingenious, eloquent and sometimes moving. He presents his case with clarity, and with candor about its possible shortcomings."
--"New Republic"
"A reasoned argument. . . . As this work will do much to stimulate the ongoing nuclear debate, it is highly recommended."
--"Library Journal"

In this second volume of his nuclear weapon series, John Clearwater continues to investigate the presence of American nuclear weapons in Canada. In Canadian Nuclear Weapons, Clearwater told the story of nuclear weapons that were in the hands of Canadian forces during the Cold War. In U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada, he goes further, looking at nuclear weapons held by American forces on Canadian soil. His purpose is to bring together until-recently secret information about the nature of the nuclear weapons stored, stationed, or lost in Canada by the United States Air Force and the United States Navy, and combines it with known information about the systems in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The history of the atomic bomb in Canada goes back to the first years immediately after World War II when the U.S. government, under the prodding of the newly created Strategic Air command, began a slow and steady process of talks designed to allow Goose Bay to be groomed for the eventual acceptance of nuclear weapons.

Crashes and nuclear accidents. Conspiracies and cover-ups. Clearwater examines them all in great detail. The reader will see for the first time the minutes of Cabinet and the Cabinet Defence Committee meetings in which the storage of nuclear weapons are discussed. Also printed here for the first time are the agreements between Canada and the U.S. for the storage of nuclear weapons. Many of the documents presented here were until recently classified as secret, and many were top secret.

A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state's nuclear potential. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy considers how, since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Church has worked its way into the nuclear forces, the most significant wing of one of the world's most powerful military organizations. Dmitry Adamsky describes how the Orthodox faith has merged with Russian national identity as the Church continues to expand its influence on foreign and domestic politics. The Church both legitimizes and influences Moscow's assertive national security strategy in the twenty-first century. This book sheds light on the role of faith in modern militaries and highlights the implications of this phenomenon for international security. Ultimately, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy interrogates the implications of the confluence of religion and security for other members of the nuclear club, beyond Russia.

This work is the memoir of one of the key scientists involved in the atomic bomb and the chief research assistant and intimate friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer. A prominent member of the Manhattan Project, Robert Serber was one of a team of scientists who assembled the bombs on Tinian Island for transport to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was also one of the first Americans to walk among the Japanese ruins after the catastrophe. Written with science historian Robert P. Crease, this self-portrait is the story of Serber's life before, during and after World War II. It brings into focus the leading figures and events during this period in American science. Serber tells of his wartime experiences at Tinian Island and in Japan, in letters to his wife Charlotte, herself a key player at Los Alamos and the only female group leader there. These letters depict what Serber saw, such as the rows of iron office safes protruding from the rubble of Hiroshima, and the grazing horse whose hair had been scorched on one side by the fireball but was untouched on the other. Serber is also eloquent about the troubles he faced as a result of his refusal to take part in public debate about the morality of his wartime work; how his opposition to rapidly developing the hydrogen bomb earned him the enmity of Edward Teller and others; and how he was investigated and his security clearance challenged, several years before Oppenheimer's. Serber also recounts stories involving Oppenheimer, Murray Gell-Mann, Ernest O. Lawrence and Edward Teller.

Based on an exhaustive review of formerly classified government documents-as well as previously unexplored corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews-Grant F. Smith has written a riveting story of the 1960s diversion of US weapons-grade nuclear material from an Israeli front company in Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli atomic weapons program. The talented but highly conflicted founder of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC)-Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro alongside his close friend and financial backer David Lowenthal-engaged in a ferocious clandestine drive to funnel the most valuable military material on earth that forever tilted the balance of power between Israel and the world. Divert chronicles Zalman Shapiro's journey from crafting ingenious innovations for the Nautilus nuclear submarine in the 1950s to his costly pursuit of America's most advanced hydrogen bomb designs in the 1970s. Tasked during secret summits with high-level Israeli intelligence agents, guided by Israel's top nuclear arms designers, and defended by Israel and its US lobby, Shapiro and NUMEC drove the CIA and FBI from furious outrage to despair. Presidents from LBJ to Jimmy Carter secretly grappled with how to respond to Israel's brazen theft of American nuclear material before finally deciding to bury the entire affair in classified files. But NUMEC's toxic secrets have refused to be buried alive. Newly declassified wiretaps have risen from the grave, detailing Shapiro's utter contempt for worker and nuclear safety. David Lowenthal's role as an international refugee smuggler between the US, Europe and Israel-before organizing financing for NUMEC-is placed under new scrutiny. This explosive story emerges even as the US Army Corps of Engineers struggles to quietly clean NUMEC's toxic waste near Apollo, Pennsylvania with $170 million in taxpayer funding. At a time when America is coming under intense pressure to attack on the mere suspicion that Iran is diverting nuclear material, Divert stands as the ultimate cautionary tale of how US Middle East policy is continually undermined from within by corruption, immunity, deceit and unwarranted secrecy.

It has been over six decades since nuclear weapons were invented and used with devastating effect during the closing stages of World War II, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among the weapons of mass destruction invented so far, nuclear weapons remain unique, not only due to the large-scale destruction they can inflict almost instantaneously, but also due to the insidious and long-term threat they pose to humanity. In spite of being in existence for such a long time, some of the facets of nuclear weapons, especially their immediate and long-term effects remain an enigma for most people. This book is an attempt to demystify some of these aspects and effects of nuclear weapons, so that our civil and military defence planners have a reasonable idea about the scale and magnitude of disaster that will follow a nuclear attack. As a natural corollary, it then examines the type and nature of post-attack disaster management operations that may have to be launched following a counter-value strike. The study also dwells on the various problems associated with the conduct of military operations in a radiologically contaminated environment, with a view to derive viable and technically sound working parameters.

The breakup of the Soviet Union left a cold war nuclear legacy consisting of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and a sprawling infrastructure for their production and maintenance. This book examines the fate of this vast nuclear weapon complex and the unprecedented non-proliferation challenges associated with the breakup of a nuclear weapon state. It describes the high-level diplomatic bargaining efforts to consolidate in Russia the nuclear weapons based in newly independent Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and to strengthen central control over these weapons. It surveys the problems associated with dismantling nuclear weapons and the difficulties involved in safely storing and disposing of large stockpiles of fissile material. It reviews the key provisions of the principal nuclear arms control measures and initiatives, including the START I and START II treaties. Finally, the book assesses the contribution of international assistance programmes to the denuclearization process under way in the former Soviet Union.

This book discusses the decision to use the atomic bomb. Libraries and scholars will find it a necessary adjunct to their other studies by Pulitzer-Prize author Herbert Feis on World War II. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

When plutonium was first manufactured at Berkeley in the spring of 1941, there was so little of it that it was not visible to the naked eye. It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now so much has been produced that we don't know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster.

The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosity it could be the main ingredient of a powerful nuclear weapon. As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium's nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms race the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now it is warehoused around the world the United States alone possesses about forty-seven metric tons but it has almost no practical use outside its role in nuclear weaponry. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden?

In his history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium's story, explaining not only the science but also the people involved."

This work stresses the importance, in making any choice of strategies-including the decision to use or refrain from using nuclear weapons-of gauging the intent behind the opponent's military moves. Dr. Brodie also suggests that the use or threat of use of tactical nuclear weapons may lead to de-escalation, that is, may check rather than promote the expansion of hostilities. The author applies his ideas about escalation to several imagined situations, examining them in relation to experiences in Europe, in the second Cuba crisis, and in Asia. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book is a counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States can and should do more to reduce both the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategies and the number of weapons in its arsenal. The case against nuclear weapons has been made on many grounds-including historical, political, and moral. But, Brad Roberts argues, it has not so far been informed by the experience of the United States since the Cold War in trying to adapt deterrence to a changed world, and to create the conditions that would allow further significant changes to U.S. nuclear policy and posture. Drawing on the author's experience in the making and implementation of U.S. policy in the Obama administration, this book examines that real world experience and finds important lessons for the disarmament enterprise. Central conclusions of the work are that other nuclear-armed states are not prepared to join the United States in making reductions, and that unilateral steps by the United States to disarm further would be harmful to its interests and those of its allies. The book ultimately argues in favor of patience and persistence in the implementation of a balanced approach to nuclear strategy that encompasses political efforts to reduce nuclear dangers along with military efforts to deter them.

This book discusses the decision to use the atomic bomb. Libraries and scholars will find it a necessary adjunct to their other studies by Pulitzer-Prize author Herbert Feis on World War II. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A multifaceted portrait of the Hiroshima bombing and its many legacies On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city's destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world. Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry bring together leading scholars from disciplines ranging from international relations and political theory to cultural history and science and technology studies, who together provide new perspectives on Hiroshima as both a historical event and a cultural phenomenon. As an event, Hiroshima emerges in the flow of decisions and hard choices surrounding the bombing and its aftermath. As a phenomenon, it marked a revolution in science, politics, and the human imagination-the end of one age and the dawn of another. The Age of Hiroshima reveals how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today.

In Resurrecting Nagasaki, Chad R. Diehl explores the genesis of narratives surrounding the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945, by following the individuals and groups who contributed to the shaping of Nagasaki City's postwar identity. Municipal officials, survivor-activist groups, the Catholic community, and American occupation officials all interpreted the destruction and reconstruction of the city from different, sometimes disparate perspectives. Diehl's analysis reveals how these atomic narratives shaped both the way Nagasaki rebuilt and the ways in which popular discourse on the atomic bombings framed the city's experience for decades.

Part I discusses the creation of the Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique and outlines its structure and function. Part II focuses on the development of military atomic policy. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.