The Consequences of American Nuclear Disarmament PDF Download

Author: Christine M. Leah
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319507214
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book is about the future of nuclear weapons, geopolitics, and strategy. It examines the legacy of nuclear weapons on US thinking about some concepts of strategy and geopolitics, namely deterrence, extended deterrence, alliances, and arms control. The purpose of this is to demonstrate just how fundamentally nuclear weapons have influenced American thinking about these concepts. It argues that, given the extent of nuclear weapons' influence on these concepts and the implications for international security, further reductions beyond current Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) levels, and the more absolute idea of nuclear disarmament, may not necessarily be prudent ideas. Nuclear weapons have contributed to the avoidance of major war between states, made alliances more credible and last longer, and have made arms control relatively easier to conceptualize and manage. As such, the author argues, these concepts may become even more difficult to manage in a world where nuclear weapons are marginalized.

Author: Committee on International Security and Arms Control
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309518377
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volume--based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)--describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.

Author: Stephen I. Schwartz
Publisher: Brookings Inst Press
ISBN: 9780815777748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
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. Atomic Audit concludes with recommendations for strengthening atomic accountability and fostering greater public understanding of nuclear weapons programs and policies.

Author: Michael E. O'Hanlon
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815725434
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In 2007 two former U.S. secretaries of state, a defense secretary, and a former senator wrote persuasively in the Wall Street Journal that the time had come to move seriously toward a nuclear-free world. Almost two years later, the Global Zero movement was born with its chief aim to rid the world of such weapons once and for all by 2030. But is it realistic or even wise to envision a world without nuclear weapons? More and more people seem to think so. Barack Obama has declared “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” But that is easier said than done. Michael O’Hanlon places his own indelible stamp on this critical issue, putting forth a “friendly skeptic’s case for nuclear disarmament.” Calls to “ban the bomb” are as old as the bomb itself, but the pace and organization of nonproliferation campaigns have picked up greatly recently. The growing Global Zero movement, for example, wants treaty negotiations to begin in 2019. Would this be prudent or even feasible in a world that remains dangerous, divided, and unpredictable? After all, America’s nuclear arsenal has been its military trump card for much of the period since World War II. Pursuing a nuclear weapons ban prematurely or carelessly could alarm allies, leading them to consider building their own weapons—the opposite of the intended effect. O’Hanlon clearly presents the dangers of nuclear weapons and the advantages of disarmament as a goal. But even once an accord is in place, he notes, temporary suspension of restrictions may be necessary in response to urgent threats such as nuclear “cheating” or discovery of an advanced biological weapons program. To take all nuclear options off the table forever strengthens the hand of those that either do not make that pledge or do not honor it. For the near term, traditional approaches to arms control, including dismantling existing bomb inventories, can pave the way to make a true nonproliferation regime possible in the decades ahead.

Author: Jonathan Pearl
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear disarmament
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
A vigorous debate is occurring among American elites with respect to whether and when the United States should relinquish its nuclear weapons. Bolstering hopes for tangible results is that a U.S. President is again publicly and forcefully supporting disarmament. While this debate, which addresses both technical and political factors related to abolition, may be the most serious one of its kind since the dawn of the nuclear age, the future of U.S. nuclear weapons policy remains uncertain. The general approach advanced today in U.S. policy circles largely hews, after all, to the logic of the past 65 years: arms control and nonproliferation now, disarmament at an undetermined time in the future. Moreover, several conceptual and strategic barriers continue to block serious progress toward U.S. disarmament. By situating the current pro-disarmament rhetoric in this larger historical and strategic context, this monograph argues that there is reason to doubt whether the current push for disarmament will produce meaningful and lasting results.

Author: Nik Hynek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317565215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book examines the issue of nuclear disarmament in different strategic, political, and regional contexts. This volume seeks to provide a rich theoretical and practical insight to one of the major topics in the field of international security: global abolishment of nuclear weapons. Renewed calls for a nuclear weapons-free world have sparked a wide academic debate on both the attainability of such goal and the steps that should be taken. Comparably less attention, however, has been paid to theoretically informed considerations of the consequences of nuclear abolition. Comprising essays from leading scholars and experts within the field, this collection discusses the fundamental theoretical and conceptual foundations of nuclear disarmament and subsequently tries to assess its hypothetical impact in global and regional contexts. The varied methodological approach of the contributors aims to advance a multi-theoretical and multi-perspectival view of the issue. The book is organized in three main sections: ‘Strategic Perspectives’, dealing with the specific constraints and facilitators for the states to achieve their core objectives; ‘Political Perspectives’, with the focus on the power of norms, belief-systems and ideas; and ‘Regional Perspectives’, with the analyses of seven regional and/or state-specific nuclear contexts. As a whole, the volume provides a detailed, complex overview of the risks and opportunities that are embedded in the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world. This book will be of great interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, war and conflict studies, international relations and security studies.

Author: Gro Nystuen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139992740
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 804

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Book Description
Nuclear Weapons under International Law is a comprehensive treatment of nuclear weapons under key international law regimes. It critically reviews international law governing nuclear weapons with regard to the inter-state use of force, international humanitarian law, human rights law, disarmament law, and environmental law, and discusses where relevant the International Court of Justice's 1996 Advisory Opinion. Unique in its approach, it draws upon contributions from expert legal scholars and international law practitioners who have worked with conventional and non-conventional arms control and disarmament issues. As a result, this book embraces academic consideration of legal questions within the context of broader political debates about the status of nuclear weapons under international law.

Author: Thomas C. Schelling
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300253486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
“This is a brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing.”—Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book Review Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s new introduction to the work shows how Schelling’s framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

Author: David Tal
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815631668
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 quickly ushered in a popular and political movement toward nuclear disarmament. Across the globe, heads of state, high-ranking ministers, and bureaucrats led intense efforts to achieve effective disarmament agreements. Ultimately these efforts failed. In The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, David Tal offers a detailed analysis of U.S. policy from 1945 to the summer of 1963, exploring the reasons for failure and revealing the complex motivations that eventually led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty. While previous books have focused on the policies of specific administrations, Tal’s is the first to consider negotiations as an evolving phenomenon that preoccupied three presidents, from Truman to Kennedy. Drawing on extensive archival research, the author examines the profound dilemma faced by leaders on all sides—forced by political pressure to engage in negotiations whose success they saw as injurious to national interests. Far from believing that the nuclear arms race would inevitably lead to war, the United States regarded nuclear weapons as the greatest guarantee that war would not happen.

Author: Olav Njølstad
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136922873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
This book examines the state of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the issues it faces in the early 21st century. Despite the fact that most countries in the world have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) there is growing concern that the NPT is in serious trouble and may not be able to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons. If so, international stability will be undermined, with potentially disastrous consequences, and the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world will become utterly unrealistic. More specifically, the NPT is exposed to four main challenges, explored in this book: challenges from outside, as three countries that have not signed the Treaty – Israel, India and Pakistan – are known to possess nuclear weapons; challenges from within, as some countries that have signed on to the Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states have nevertheless developed or are suspected to be trying to develop nuclear weapons (North Korea and Iran being cases in point); challenges from below in the shape of terrorists and other non-state actors who may want to acquire radioactive materials or even nuclear weapons; and, finally, challenges from above due to the perceived failure of the five legal nuclear weapons states to keep their part of the ‘double bargain’ made by the parties of the NPT and take serious steps towards nuclear disarmament. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international security, war and conflict studies and IR in general.