Deterrence remains a primary doctrine for dealing with the threat of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. The author reviews the history of nuclear deterrence and calls for a renewed intellectual effort to address the relevance of concepts such as first strike, escalation, extended deterrence, and other Cold War-era strategies in today's complex world of additional superpowers, smaller nuclear powers, and nonstate actors.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, observers heralded a new era of social progress, seemingly limitless technological advances, and world peace. But within only a few years, the world was perched on the brink of war, revolution, and human misery on an unprecedented scale. Is it possible that today, in the early twenty-first century, we are on the verge of similar, tumultuous times? Blending a detailed knowledge of international security affairs with history, philosophy, psychology, and literature, Th?r?se Delpech vividly reminds us of the signs and warnings that were missed as the "civilized" world failed to prevent both world wars, the Holocaust, Soviet death camps, and Cambodian killing fields that made the twentieth century so deadly. Drawing a parallel between 1905 and 2005, Delpech warns that it could happen again in this current era of increasing international violence and global lawlessness. She looks ahead to imagine various scenarios and regions that could become flashpoints in the future. Winner of the 2005 Prix Femina de l'essai. Praise for the original French edition, L'Ensauvagement "One doesn't know what to admire most in this book: the precision of information, the scope of reference, the originality of the approach..." --Le Nouvel Observateur "From Iranian nuclear ambitions to the Taiwan question, Delpech reviews all the situations which might lead mankind to succumb to the perennial temptation of savagery --a passionate and lucid book." --L'argus de la presse "L'ensauvagement transcends its surface content, articulating great hope that our reason and will might take hold and overcome unreason." --Politique ?trang?re "Combining introspection and prediction, geopolitics and philosophy, Th?r?se Delpech has issued a warning cry." --Politique Internationale

The Iranian regime is in the midst of a dangerous nuclear poker game with the West, playing for the highest possible stakes. Iran, ruled today by Ali Khamenei, the Guide of the Revolution, and the recently elected President Ahmadinejad, has no intention of yielding to international pressure exhorting it to suspend all uranium enrichment activity, a necessary but intermediate step in the process of building nuclear weapons. Iran is also seeking to join the WTO and it had been offered this incentive by the United States and the EU '3' (France, Britain and Germany) in exchange for a promise to cease enrichment. However, President Ahmadinejad's 12 April announcement that Iran has successfully enriched uranium takes the crisis to a higher plane. It also leaves many questions unanswered, above all, how the international community should respond to this unwelcome development. In this hard-hitting analysis of Tehran's intentions, Therese Delpech, one of the world's leading authorities on international nuclear security, outlines how Iran has successfully beguiled the international community for years, aided and abetted by China and Russia, both of which are eager to benefit commercially from Iran acquiring nuclear power. She dissects Iran's nuclear programme in minute detail, drawing on her inside knowledge. The first section of the book retraces the history of Iran's nuclear project from the 1970s -- one that was launched by the former Shah with help from several Western countries -- till today, when national pride, exemplified by Ahmadinejad's bellicose rhetoric, makes it highly unlikely that Tehran will bow to the diktats of the international community. She also examines the period when the programme was resumed, during Iran's war with Iraq (1985-90). The second section picks apart the strategy of the various actors in this global crisis: Iran, the EU '3', the United States, Russia, China and the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency). In the third section, she sets out the various possible solutions in terms of their feasibility, practically and politically: dismantling by force, supervised third party reprocessing, referral to the Security Council, Iranian appeasement. In conclusion, Delpech unravels the tangled regional and international dimensions of the crisis, setting out the enormous impact it is having on the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Israel, America's presence in Iraq and the wider Middle East and the future of the much weakened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP).