In the early 1950s the United States wished to concentrate its defence resources on the development of a 4,000 mile range intercontinental ballistic missile. As a stop-gap measure, US defence chiefs hoped to assist Britain with the development of its own intermediate range missile. Despite US concerns that British resources were limited the Air Ministry nonetheless proceeded with the missile, called Blue Streak, to fulfil the operational requirement which would give Britain an independent deterrent which should remain invulnerable until the early 1970s. `Blue Streak: Britain's Medium Range Ballistic Missile' traces the path from the political decision to issue the contracts through the early development and testing both in the UK and in Australia. The reasons for the project's cancellation are considered and Blue Streak's subsequent role as the first stage of the ELDO civilian satellite launcher is noted. A requirement of the project was the need to base the missiles in underground launchers to protect them from attack. This aspect of the project is fully covered using recently available information and specially drawn plans.

This book provides an introduction to political and strategic aspects of nuclear weaponry. It offers an accessible overview of the concept of nuclear weapons, outlines how thinking about these weapons has developed and considers how nuclear threats can continue to be managed in the future. It includes: Coverage of nuclear testing, proliferation, strategy, global actors and disarmament. Analysis of contemporary topics such as nuclear terrorism. A timeline of key nuclear events. Annotated further reading lists helping you to locate sources for essays and assignments. Summaries, study questions and a glossary of key terms Free SAGE journal articles available on the Resources tab The author will be providing regular updates to his suggested web resources, so be sure to check the Resources tab for the most up-to-date. The Politics of Nuclear Weapons is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in Nuclear Politics.

In this unique journey across continents and centuries, award-winning author Patrick Marnham explores the ruthless dictators, dangerous minds and prehistoric precedents behind the development of nuclear power.
The terrifying first use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was the most controversial act of warfare in history, dramatically ending the Second World War but ushering in the age of mass destruction. Yet it was also the climax of a story that extends beyond Japan and Washington: the culmination of decades of scientific achievement and centuries of colonial exploitation.
"Snake Dance" is the account of a journey that turned into a quest to discover how humanity reaches this point. Patrick Marnham travels from the opulent nineteenth-century palaces of King Leopold II of Belgium, built with riches plundered from the Congo, to the lethally derelict nuclear reactor of modern-day Kinshasa. He follows the shipment of Congolese uranium to the deserts of New Mexico for the Manhattan Project's secret test detonation. Here he uncovers the legacies of Robert Oppenheimer and Aby Warburg, two 'mad geniuses' who confronted the devastating power of twentieth-century science in very different ways.
Both men travelled to New Mexico. Oppenheimer was honoured for building a bomb, the ancestor of weapons that have enslaved humanity. Warburg, condemned to obscurity and confined to a mental hospital, regained his sanity by studying the rituals of the Native Americans of the Southwest who, for thousands of years, practiced the ritual of the 'snake dance' in an attempt to harness the power of lightening. And it was in New Mexico, at Los Alamos, that the ultimate act of playing God was realised.
The circle is closed in Japan. Faced with the catastrophe at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in March 2011, scientific man, like the snake dancers, is faced with a power beyond his control. Spanning three continents and the history of civilisation, "Snake Dance" is at once an intrepid intellectual adventure and a wake-up call for mankind.

It's 1961 and the white heat of the Space Race is making the Cold War even colder. Richard Knox is a secret agent in big trouble. He's been hung out to dry by a traitor in MI5, and the only way to clear his name could destroy him. Meanwhile in a secret Russian city, brilliant scientist Irina Valera makes a discovery that will change the world, and hand the KGB unimaginable power. Desperate for a way back into MI5, Knox finds an unlikely ally in Abey Bennett, a CIA recruit who's determined to prove herself whatever the cost... As the age of global surveillance dawns, three powers will battle for dominance, and three people will fight to survive...

Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an aversion to loss, and other strong motivations and values. These findings about the limits of rationality have formed the basis of behavioral economics, an approach that has attracted enormous attention in recent years. This collection of essays applies the insights of behavioral economics to the study of nuclear weapons policy. Behavioral economics gives us a more accurate picture of how people think and, as a consequence, of how they make decisions about whether to acquire or use nuclear arms. Such decisions are made in real-world circumstances in which rational calculations about cost and benefit are intertwined with complicated emotions and subject to human limitations. Strategies for pursuing nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation should therefore, argue the contributors, account for these dynamics in a systematic way. The contributors to this collection examine how a behavioral approach might inform our understanding of topics such as deterrence, economic sanctions, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and U.S. domestic debates about ballistic missile defense. The essays also take note of the limitations of a behavioral approach for dealing with situations in which even a single deviation from the predictions of any model can have dire consequences.

The blockbuster #1 national bestseller Bret Baier, the Chief Political Anchor for Fox News Channel and the Anchor and Executive Editor of Special Report with Bret Baier, illuminates the extraordinary yet underappreciated presidency of Dwight Eisenhower by taking readers into Ike's last days in power. "Magnificently rendered. ... Destined to take its place as not only one of the masterworks on Eisenhower, but as one of the classics of presidential history. ... Impeccably researched, the book is nothing short of extraordinary. What a triumph!"--JAY WINIK, New York Times bestselling author of April 1865 and 1944 In Three Days in January, Bret Baier masterfully casts the period between Eisenhower's now-prophetic farewell address on the evening of January 17, 1961, and Kennedy's inauguration on the afternoon of January 20 as the closing act of one of modern America's greatest leaders--during which Eisenhower urgently sought to prepare both the country and the next president for the challenges ahead. Those three days in January 1961, Baier shows, were the culmination of a lifetime of service that took Ike from rural Kansas to West Point, to the battlefields of World War II, and finally to the Oval Office. When he left the White House, Dwight Eisenhower had done more than perhaps any other modern American to set the nation, in his words, "on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment." On January 17, Eisenhower spoke to the nation in one of the most remarkable farewell speeches in U.S. history. Ike looked to the future, warning Americans against the dangers of elevating partisanship above national interest, excessive government budgets (particularly deficit spending), the expansion of the military-industrial complex, and the creeping political power of special interests. Seeking to ready a new generation for power, Eisenhower intensely advised the forty-three-year-old Kennedy before the inauguration. Baier also reveals how Eisenhower's two terms changed America forever for the better, and demonstrates how today Ike offers us the model of principled leadership that polls say is so missing in politics. Three Days in January forever makes clear that Eisenhower, an often forgotten giant of U.S. history, still offers vital lessons for our own time and stands as a lasting example of political leadership at its most effective and honorable.

Longing for the Bomb traces the unusual story of the first atomic city and the emergence of American nuclear culture. Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. Its workers labored at a breakneck pace, most aware only that their jobs were helping ""the war effort."" The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as ""The Atomic City,"" to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. Oak Ridge's story deepens our understanding of the complex relationship between America and its bombs. Blending historiography and ethnography, Lindsey Freeman shows how a once-secret city is visibly caught in an uncertain present, no longer what it was historically yet still clinging to the hope of a nuclear future. It is a place where history, memory, and myth compete and conspire to tell the story of America's atomic past and to explain the nuclear present.

In this work, Jonathan Schell, the author of The Fate of the Earth, proposes that the defining characteristic of the twentieth century was the uncontrolled acceleration of humankind's capacity for self-destruction, manifested in 'policies of extermination', which culminated in the construction of the species-threatening nuclear arsenals of the Cold War." Schell examines the legacy this leaves for the new millennium: the more than 30,000 nuclear weapons that remain in existence, the crisis of nuclear arms control that has arisen with the unraveling of the ABM treaty, the stalemate of the START talks, the attractive illusion of missile defense, the arrival of nuclear weapons in South-Asia, and the threat of their spread to East Asia and the Middle East. Schell suggests that the world now faces a difficult but inescapable choice between the abolition of all nuclear weapons and their rapid proliferation as nuclear technology and materials seep around the world.

Available for the first time in many years, Commonsense and Nuclear Warfare presents Russell's keen insights into the threat of nuclear conflict, and his argument that the only way to end this threat is to end war itself.
Written at the height of the Cold War, this volume is crucial for understanding Russell's involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and his passionate campaigning for peace. It remains an extremely important book in today's uncertain nuclear world, and is essential reading for all those interested in Russell and postwar history.
Includes a new introduction by Ken Coates, Chairman of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. His compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was a surgical consultant to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and who became a friend of Dr. Hachiya. In a new foreword, John Dower reflects on the enduring importance of the diary fifty years after the bombing.

Robert Jervis argues here that the possibility of nuclear war has created a revolution in military strategy and international relations. He examines how the potential for nuclear Armageddon has changed the meaning of war, the psychology of statesmanship, and the formulation of military policy by the superpowers.

At the request of the President of Harvard University, six Harvard scholars have joined forces to write a book that lays out the facts about nuclear weapons for all concerned citizens who want to think through the nuclear dilemma for themselves. "Living with Nuclear Weapons" is written by specialists for the general reader. It conveys crucial information clearly, concisely, and without technical jargon.

"Living with Nuclear Weapons" presents all sides of the nuclear debate while explaining what everyone needs to know to develop informed and reasoned opinions about the issues. Among the specifics are a history of nuclear weaponry; an examination of current nuclear arsenals; scenarios of how a nuclear war might begin; a discussion of what can be done to promote arms control and disarmament; a study of the hazards of nuclear proliferation; an analysis of various nuclear strategies; and an explanation of how public opinion can influence policy on the nuclear arms question.

Do alliances curb efforts by states to develop nuclear weapons? Atomic Assurance looks at what makes alliances sufficiently credible to prevent nuclear proliferation; how alliances can break down and so encourage nuclear proliferation; and whether security guarantors like the United States can use alliance ties to end the nuclear efforts of their allies. Alexander Lanoszka finds that military alliances are less useful in preventing allies from acquiring nuclear weapons than conventional wisdom suggests. Through intensive case studies of West Germany, Japan, and South Korea, as well as a series of smaller cases on Great Britain, France, Norway, Australia, and Taiwan, Atomic Assurance shows that it is easier to prevent an ally from initiating a nuclear program than to stop an ally that has already started one; in-theater conventional forces are crucial in making American nuclear guarantees credible; the American coercion of allies who started, or were tempted to start, a nuclear weapons program has played less of a role in forestalling nuclear proliferation than analysts have assumed; and the economic or technological reliance of a security-dependent ally on the United States works better to reverse or to halt that ally's nuclear bid than anything else. Crossing diplomatic history, international relations, foreign policy, grand strategy, and nuclear strategy, Lanoszka's book reworks our understanding of the power and importance of alliances in stopping nuclear proliferation.

We are at a critical juncture in world politics. Nuclear strategy and policy have risen to the top of the global policy agenda, and issues ranging from a nuclear Iran to the global zero movement are generating sharp debate. The historical origins of our contemporary nuclear world are deeply consequential for contemporary policy, but it is crucial that decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than myth and misapprehension. In Nuclear Statecraft, Francis J. Gavin challenges key elements of the widely accepted narrative about the history of the atomic age and the consequences of the nuclear revolution.On the basis of recently declassified documents, Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. In case after case, he finds that we know far less than we think we do about our nuclear history. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.Gavin's rigorous historical work not only tells us what happened in the past but also offers a powerful tool to explain how nuclear weapons influence international relations. Nuclear Statecraft provides a solid foundation for future policymaking.

Drawn from the third in a series of conferences at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University on the nuclear legacy of the cold war, this report summarizes the contributors' findings on the importance of deterrence, from its critical function in the cold war to its current role. Although deterrence will not disappear, current and future threats to international security will present relatively fewer situations in which nuclear weapons will play the dominant role that they did during the cold war.
The authors highlight ways in which deterrence has been shaped by surrounding conditions and circumstances. They look at the prospective reliability of deterrence as a tool of statecraft in the emerging international environment. And they look at how arms control agreements have affected deterrence in the past and how they could do so in the future. In addition, they look at the ongoing debates over "de-alerting" (slowing down the capability for immediate launch and rapid nuclear escalation) and the practical considerations related to verification and compliance.

This series started in 1981 with the Erice Seminars when the danger of a nuclear East-West confrontation was menacing the world. The volumes reproduce the crucial steps, from the Nuclear Winter to the Strategic Defense Initiative. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R., new emergencies are now to be faced such as the danger of proliferation of Weapons for Mass Destruction (WMD), the North-South confrontation on ecological problems and the new deal for Science and Technology to help developing countries in their struggle for a better standard of life. The Erice Seminars have attracted the attention of world leaders in Science, Technology and Culture.

This proceedings volume contains presentations, group discussions and reports on terrorism-related issues, such as: motivations; toots and countermeasures; worldwide stability; risk analysis.

Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Oxford, Wien, 2001.