"Whole World on Fire focuses on a technical riddle wrapped in an organizational mystery: How and why, for more than half a century, did the U.S. government fail to predict nuclear fire damage as it drew up plans to fight strategic nuclear war? U.S. bombing in World War II caused massive fire damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but later war plans took account only of damage from blast; they completely ignored damage from atomic firestorms. Recently a small group of researchers has shown that for modern nuclear weapons the destructiveness and lethality of nuclear mass fire often--and predictably--greatly exceeds that of nuclear blast. This has major implications for defense policy: the U.S. government has underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons, Lynn Eden finds, and built far more warheads, and far more destructive warheads, than it needed for the Pentagon's war-planning purposes. How could this have happened? The answer lies in how organizations frame the problems they try to solve. In a narrative grounded in organization theory, science and technology studies, and primary historical sources (including declassified documents and interviews), Eden explains how the U.S. Air Force's doctrine of precision bombing led to the development of very good predictions of nuclear blast--a significant achievement--but for many years to no development of organizational knowledge about nuclear fire. Expert communities outside the military reinforced this disparity in organizational capability to predict blast damage but not fire damage. Yet some innovation occurred, and predictions of fire damage were nearly incorporated into nuclear war planning in the early 1990s. The author explains howsuch a dramatic change almost happened, and why it did not. "Whole World on Fire shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't do well, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences. In a sweeping conclusion, Eden shows the implications of the analysis for understanding such things as the sinking of the Titanic, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the poor fireproofing in the World Trade Center.

Since the nuclear genie was let out of the bottle, nuclear weapons have been the exclusive domain of a select few countries. At the dawn of the next millennium, however, the notion that small countries and even a few individuals many acquire and use them, or threaten to, is a major concern. This annotated bibliography presents citations of the current book and journal literature which deal with this dangerous issue. Access is provided through subject, author and titles indexes.

In March 1998, India broke a quarter-century's silence when it detonated a series of nuclear devices in the Rajasthan desert. Having announced it possessed the requisite credentials for membership in the nuclear club in 1974, India quickly disavowed any desire to join, pledging not to develop its capability further.. As the Pokhran explosions revealed, that promise would not be kept for ever, and the principal beneficiary of its breaking was now to be a right-wing government seeking to shore up its shaky political base by demonstrating its commitment to the 'Hindu bomb'. While most in the West were taken unawares by this sudden bellicosity in the land of Ghandi, more scrupulous observers on the South-Asian scene insisted it had a clear history. In this, his first book since the hotly debated In Theory, Aijaz Ahmad untangles many of the intertwined threads of historical and political traditions in a still-too-poorly-understood region of the world.

More than most of us, Mary Palevsky needed to come to terms with the moral complexities of the atomic bomb: Her parents worked on its development during World War II and were profoundly changed by that experience. After they died, unanswered questions sent their daughter on a search for understanding. This compelling, sometimes heart-wrenching chronicle is the story of that quest. It takes her, and us, on a journey into the minds, memories, and emotions of the bomb builders.
Scientists Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Joseph Rotblat, Herbert York, Philip Morrison, and Robert Wilson, and philosopher David Hawkins responded to Palevsky's personal approach in a way that dramatically expands their previously published statements. Her skill and passion as an interlocutor prompt these men to recall their lives vividly and to reexamine their own decisions, debating within themselves the complex issues raised by the bomb.
The author herself, seeking to comprehend the widely differing ways in which individual scientists made choices about the bomb and made sense of their work, deeply reconsiders those questions of commitment and conscience her parents faced. In personal vignettes that complement the interviews, she captures other remembrances of the bomb through commemorative events and chance encounters with people who were "there." Her concluding chapter reframes the crucial moral questions in terms that show the questions themselves to be the abiding legacy we all share. This beautifully written book bridges generations to make its readers participants in the ongoing dialogue about science and philosophy, war and peace.

How will continued proliferation of nuclear weapons change the global political order? This collection of essays comes to conclusions at odds with the conventional wisdom. Stephen Rosen and Barry Posen explore how nuclear proliferation may affect US incentives to confront regional aggression. Stephen Walt argues that regional allies will likely prove willing to stand with a strong and ready United States against nuclear-backed aggression. George Quester and Brad Roberts examine long-term strategic objectives in responding to nuclear attack by a regional aggressor. Richard Betts highlights the potential for disastrous mistakes in moving toward and living in a world heavily populated with nuclear-armed states. Scott Sagan explains how the nuclear nonproliferation policies best suited to some states can spur proliferation by others. Caroline Ziemke shows how the analysis of a state's strategic personality can provide insights into why it might want nuclear weapons and how its policies may develop once it gets them. And, Victor Utgoff concludes that the United States seems more likely to intervene against regional aggression when the aggressor has nuclear weapons than when it does not.

One of the last secrets of World War II is why the Germans failed to build an atomic bomb. Germany was the birthplace of modern physics it possessed the raw materials and the industrial base and it commanded key intellectual resources. What happened?In Heisenberg's War , Thomas Powers tells of the interplay between science and espionage, morality and military necessity, and paranoia and cool logic that marked the German bomb program and the Allied response to it. On the basis of dozens of interviews and years of intensive research, Powers concludes that Werner Heisenberg, who was the leading figure in the German atomic effort, consciously obstructed the development of the bomb and in a famous 1941 meeting in Copenhagen with his former mentor Neils Bohr in effect sought to dissuade the Allies from their pursuit of the bomb. Heisenberg's War is a "superbly researched and well-written book" ( Time ) whose extraordinary story engrosses- and haunts.

This invaluable study provides a unique insider's view of the history of Soviet and Russian policy on nuclear weapons modernization and charts the future evolution of the Russian strategic arsenal. Using information that has only recently become available and introducing new, previously unknown data, Sokov concludes that the most important force behind the evolution of the Soviet and Russian strategic arsenal was the military itself, which sought to increase strategic stability by enhancing the survivability of weapons systems. The highly destabilizing posture of the 1970s and 1980s was, he argues, in a sense 'accidental, ' resulting from the failure of several R&D programs and specific features of the Soviet decisionmaking mechanism. The author demonstrates that the role of such factors as the economic crisis, U.S. modernization programs, and general Russian foreign policy goals has been exaggerated by Western analysts. No matter how hard-pressed, Russia will hold to its current plans, Sokov argues. At the same time, the military will be unlikely to engage in a new arms buildup even if the economic situation improves or a nationalist government comes to power. Instead, stability will be sought through better quality of weapons at progressively lower levels. Introducing a wealth of new information on Soviet and Russian national security policymaking, the author explores in meticulous detail such key issues as decisions on weapons development, arms-control negotiations, and the handling of the Soviet nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The reader will be able to follow the debates and intrigues between military planners, diplomats, and weapons designers as they clashed over the choice of acquisition programs and negotiating positions. With its combination of informed analysis and use of new documentation, this work will be invaluable for all concerned with U.S.-Russian strategic relations.

Until now, there has been no detailed account of Israel's nuclear history. Previous treatments of the subject relied heavily on rumors, leaks, and journalistic speculations. But with "Israel and the Bomb, " Avner Cohen has forged an interpretive political history that draws on thousands of American and Israeli government documents -- most of them recently declassified and never before cited -- and more than one hundred interviews with key individuals who played important roles in this story. Cohen reveals that Israel crossed the nuclear weapons threshold on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, yet it remains ambiguous about its nuclear capability to this day. What made this posture of "opacity" possible, and how did it evolve?

Cohen focuses on a two-decade period from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben-Gurion's vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state was realized. He weaves together the story of the formative years of Israel's nuclear program, from the founding of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, to the alliance with France that gave Israel the sophisticated technology it needed, to the failure of American intelligence to identify the Dimona Project for what it was, to the negotiations between President Nixon and Prime Minister Meir that led to the current policy of secrecy. Cohen also analyzes the complex reasons Israel concealed its nuclear program -- from concerns over Arab reaction and the negative effect of the debate at home to consideration of America's commitment to nonproliferation.

"Israel and the Bomb" highlights the key questions and the many potent issues surrounding Israel's nuclear history. This book will be a critical resource for students of nuclear proliferation, Middle East politics, Israeli history, and American-Israeli relations, as well as a revelation for general readers.

The United States continues to maintain a large nuclear arsenal guided by a deterrence strategy little changed since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Notwithstanding changes in the size and composition of nuclear forces brought about since 1991, the fundamental rationales and planning principles which informed U.S. nuclear policy for decades remain in place--despite the disappearance of a superpower nuclear enemy. In this work, Janne E. Nolan traces the effort to articulate a post-cold war nuclear doctrine through decisions taken in the Bush and Clinton administrations, focusing on the leadership styles of presidents, bureaucratic politics, and broader foreign policy objectives. Based on in-depth interviews with policy participants, this study illuminates in detail the dynamics by which the U.S. government has tried to reflect the dramatically altered international arena in its nuclear policies. In two major policy developments--the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review and the decision to sign the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty--U.S. policy makers sought to define the utility of nuclear weapons after the cold war and to gain broad-based consensus. For many reasons, these efforts were largely unsuccessful in developing coherent policies, with the absence of sustained presidential leadership proving most decisive.

Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. conducted some 66 nuclear bomb tests in the Marshall Islands. In 1959, this scattering of coral atolls was again chosen as the testing site for a new generation of weapons-long-range missiles fired in the U.S. Then in 1984 a missile fired from California was intercepted by one from Kwajalein atoll: SDI, or Star Wars, was declared a realizable dream. As military researcher Owen Wilkes has noted: "If we could shut down the Pacific Missile Range, we could cut off half the momentum of the nuclear race." This is the story of the preparations for war which every day impinge on tire lives of Pacific Islanders caught on the cutting edge of the nuclear arms race. It is the story of a displaced people contaminated by nuclear fallout, forcibly resettled as their own islands become uninhabitable, and reduced to lives of poverty, ill-health, and dependence. It is also a stirring account of the Marshall Islanders themselves, of their resilience and protest, and of their attempts to seek redress in the courts. It is a shocking and timely study.

Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive -- providing "a bigger bang for a buck" --and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort --more than $5 trillion thus far --and its short and long-term consequences for the nation. Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence.

Utilizing archival and newly declassified government documents and data, this richly documented book demonstrates how a variety of factors --the open-ended nature of nuclear deterrence, faulty assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons, regular misrepresentation of and overreaction to the Soviet threat, the desire to maintain nuclear superiority, bureaucratic and often arbitrary decisions, pork barrel politics, and excessive secrecy --all drove the acquisition of an arsenal far larger than what many contemporary civilian and military leaders deemed necessary. These factors also contributed to lax financial oversight of the entire effort by Congress and the executive branch. Atomic Audit concludes with recommendations for strengthening atomic accountability and fostering greater public understanding of nuclear weapons programs and policies.

Contributing authors are Bruce G. Blair, The Brookings Institution; Thomas S. Blanton and William Burr, the National Security Archive; Steven M. Kosiak, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Arjun Makhijani, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research; Robert S. Norris, Natural Resources Defense Council; Kevin O'Neill, Institute for Science and International Security; John Pike, Federation of American Scientists; and William J. Weida, The Colorado College.

For many years historians of the Cuban missile crisis have concentrated on those thirteen days in October 1962 when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Mark White s study adds an equally intense scrutiny of the causes and consequences of the crisis. "Missiles in Cuba" is based on up-to-date scholarship as well as Mr. White s own findings in National Security Archive materials, Kennedy Library tapes of ExComm meetings, and correspondence between Soviet officials in Washington and Havana all newly released. His more rounded picture gives us a much clearer understanding of the policy strategies pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union (and, to a lesser extent, Cuba) that brought on the crisis. His almost hour-by-hour account of the confrontation itself also destroys some venerable myths, such as the unique initiatives attributed to Robert Kennedy. And his assessment of the consequences of the crisis points to salutary effects on Soviet-American relation and on U.S. nuclear defense strategy, but questionable influences on Soviet defense spending and on Washington s perception of its talents for "crisis management," later tested in Vietnam.

This is a fascinating story about private lawyers successfully negotiating with Russian professionals about critical nuclear arms problems during the Cold War from 1983 to 1991. The lawyers demonstrated that committed citizen diplomats could have an influence on official policies when governments were unable or unwilling to negotiate. These delegates produced and distributed scholarly, technically accurate joint papers recommending approaches and solutions to nuclear arms problems which the governments had not resolved because of relations poisoned by fear and distrust. The book describes the extensive efforts of these Track II citizen-diplomats to offset anti-American propaganda permeating Soviet society. It is a 'how to' manual for non-governmental organizations concerned with funding, organizing and managing international conferences on complicated, urgent problems.

Since the 1960s, U.S. political leaders have engaged in a controversial debate regarding the deployment of a strategic ballistic missile defense (BMD) system to protect the American homeland. Using an analytic framework consisting of prerequisites for successful strategic weapon programs, this book assesses BMD proposals from the Cold War era (focusing primarily on the 1967 'Sentinel' proposal). The book develops a consensus-building approach to future strategic BMD policies that is based on lessons learned from Cold War proposals, recent congressional initiatives, and developments in the international security environment. To protect the American people from emerging rogue state threats and potential accidental or unauthorized launches from China and Russia, the United States should deploy a limited strategic BMD system comprising multiple ground-based interceptor sites supported by space-based missile tracking sensors. The study includes a comprehensive arms control proposal aimed at working with Russia and other strategic powers to continue the reduction of Cold War offensive arsenals while deploying limited defenses. Pursuit of the Shield presents a new strategic agenda for a new era, one that will reinforce world peace and security. With a foreword by Senator John Warner, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Israel's foreign policy is perceived to be essentially a defensive one by the international community. Why then is it the only nuclear power which refuses to sign the Non-Poliferation Treaty? What are its true foreign and nuclear policies?;Using the Hebrew press as his main source, veteran human rights campaigner Israel Shahak reveals Israel's strategic foreign policy as presented through its own domestic media: ie what other Israeli Jews are told. He argues that the Israeli government, with the support of the US Jewish lobby, are conducting a global policy aiming to control virtually the whole of the Middle East for their own purposes.

This book provides important new evidence to support the thesis that the primary reason for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not to end the war in Japan, as was said at the time, but to 'make the Russians more manageable'. Drawing on recently released diaries and records of Truman, Eisenhower and others, Alperovitz re-evaluates the assumptions, hesitations and decisions that precipitated the use of atomic weapons and traces how possession of the bomb changed American strategy toward the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference and helped to set it on a course that contributed to the swift beginning of the Cold War. Most historians of the period now agree that diplomatic considerations related to the Soviet Union played a major role in the decision to use the bomb. Atomic Diplomacy pioneered this new understanding. Today we still live in Hiroshima's shadow; this path breaking work is timely and urgent reading for anyone interested in the history - and future - of peace and war.

The radical changes in the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War have made the sheer absurdity of the arms race transparent to virtually all observers. Yet none of the current theories of the arms race provides a coherent and systematic account of how, in the belated words of Time magazine, such a "pathology" developed in the first place. Moreover, none of these theories can readily address--much less explain--the rapid shifts in attitudes toward nuclear weapons that occurred at the start and at the end of the 1980s.

While not denying explanatory value to bureaucratic, technical, political, and economic factors, The Rise and Fall of Nuclearism focuses attention instead on the cultural dimensions of the arms race. It traces the long-term secular changes in Western societies that made the faith in "nuclearism" possible to begin with; and it draws on sociological concepts to explain how such a misplaced faith accrued to nuclear weapons and why this faith eventually came undone. The concept of "moral panic" is central to the argument. Ungar shows that moral panics were precipitated by authentic surges of fear responding to perceived Soviet challenges to American nuclear supremacy; these panics provided the political leverage for large-scale nuclear buildups and made possible the growth of the military-industrial complex in the United States. Elite efforts to orchestrate panics, however, typically failed or backfired.

The key to understanding the episodic nature of the arms race, Ungar argues, lies in the dynamic oscillation between nuclear worship, which viewed the "bomb" as the source of salvation, and nuclear dread, which conjured up images of vaporized cities and an end to civilization. In the concluding chapter he discusses what role nuclear fear--about proliferation, for instance--may continue to play in the post-Cold War world.

Since the beginning of the crisis precipitated by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the threat posed by Iraq's arsenal of ballistic missiles has been the focus of international attention. In the opening days of the U.S.-led military counteroffensive beginning on January 16, 1992, Iraq launched ballistic missiles against population centers in Israel and military bases in Saudi Arabia. The attacks intensified the terror of the war and prompted renewed efforts by the multinational force to destroy Saddam Hussein's military machine. The countries aligned against Iraq were prepared for attacks by chemically armed missiles, but Iraq's missile force proved to be of little military consequence. The missiles that survived the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm were conventionally armed, inaccurate and unreliable. Most of those that were actually launched either were intercepted by American antimissile defenses or failed to hit vital targets. But the political impact of the missiles was inestimable. The strikes symbolized Iraq's determination to prosecute the war no matter what the cost. By threatening to involve Israel, they created severe tensions and posed the risk that multinational military coalition would be dissolved, and they underscored the potential vulnerability of all the states in the region to Iraqi aggression. In this book, Janne E. Nolan argues that the use of missiles is a harbinger of the altered international security environment confronting the Untied States and its allies in the late twentieth century. Long believed to be a distant prospect, the adoption of technological resources to missile development is already occurring in over a dozen developing countries, many of them long-standing regional antagonists. These capabilities present complicated challenges to American interests and foreign policy, challenges that have only begun to be explored as a result of the Iraqi crisis. The author examines the evolution of the international technology market, surveys third world missile programs, and analyzes the military significance of ballistic missiles in potential third world combat. She also discusses the way in which domestic and international policy decisions are made to promote or restrain the export of military technology, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of current policy. Finally, she emphasizes the need for institutional reforms to balance the requirements of protecting the technological edge on which the United States relies for its own security against the growing pressures of international miniaturization.

The implications of a major war in an increasingly industrial world would be far-reaching and incalculable. Releasing Dangerous Forces discusses the ramifications and places special emphasis on the fast growing potential for collateral effects: the release of dangerous forces from civil artifacts. The key issues at stake are not only the unprecedented loss of human life but also the threat to basic human life support systems, both economic and environmental, placing the future of all human existence in doubt.

Recipient of the 1991 Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association Minutes To Midnight is a timely examination of one of the preeminent moral, political, and economic dilemmas of our time. McCrea and Markle explore the dynamics of social movements behind antinuclear weapons campaigns in America--from the earliest post-war atomic scientists' movement to the "ban the bomb" efforts to the ill-fated Freeze movement of the 1980s. The authors note that the atomic scientists' movement was the first attempt by scientists--as scientists--to protest the uses of their own creation. They locate contemporary problems in their historical context by exploring the ways in which traditional pacifist groups provided the infrastructure and directly presaged--in strategy, tactics, and organizational dilemmas--the Freeze movement. The authors use their information on antinuclear protest activity as a way of understanding how social movements are founded, how they fare, and how social change occurs in postindustrial society. This highly readable book will be of interest to a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars, professionals, graduate students, and upper-division undergraduates in political science, peace studies, American studies, sociology and the study of social movements, international relations, and history. "An excellent supplementary reading in college courses on social movements and political sociology. . . will stimulate discussion and debate on perhaps the most important issue of the century." --Contemporary Sociology "The book clearly applies social theory to richly described cases of American protests against nuclear weapons; admirably, the cases are viewed as linked within a broad historical context." --Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse University "For those interested in group theory. . . it does compile some useful information on the strategies and tactics of the various associations discussed. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers." --Choice

Recipient of the 1991 Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association Minutes To Midnight is a timely examination of one of the preeminent moral, political, and economic dilemmas of our time. McCrea and Markle explore the dynamics of social movements behind antinuclear weapons campaigns in America--from the earliest post-war atomic scientists' movement to the "ban the bomb" efforts to the ill-fated Freeze movement of the 1980s. The authors note that the atomic scientists' movement was the first attempt by scientists--as scientists--to protest the uses of their own creation. They locate contemporary problems in their historical context by exploring the ways in which traditional pacifist groups provided the infrastructure and directly presaged--in strategy, tactics, and organizational dilemmas--the Freeze movement. The authors use their information on antinuclear protest activity as a way of understanding how social movements are founded, how they fare, and how social change occurs in postindustrial society. This highly readable book will be of interest to a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars, professionals, graduate students, and upper-division undergraduates in political science, peace studies, American studies, sociology and the study of social movements, international relations, and history. "An excellent supplementary reading in college courses on social movements and political sociology. . . will stimulate discussion and debate on perhaps the most important issue of the century." --Contemporary Sociology "The book clearly applies social theory to richly described cases of American protests against nuclear weapons; admirably, the cases are viewed as linked within a broad historical context." --Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse University "For those interested in group theory. . . it does compile some useful information on the strategies and tactics of the various associations discussed. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers." --Choice

"In numerous crises after World War II-Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East-the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion. Rejecting standard explanations of our leader's logic in these cases, Betts suggests that U.S. presidents were neither consciously blufffing when they made nuclear threats, nor prepared to face the consequences if their threats failed. The author also challenges the myth that the 1950s was a golden age of low vulberability for the United Stateas and details how nuclear parity has, and has not, altered conditions that gave rise to nuclear blackmail in the past. "

Looks at how nuclear weapons have affected the meaning of war, the psychology of statesmanship, and the formulation of military policy.