Knowing Nukes


Book Description

Grounded in representation, agency, irony, cynicism, and related topics central to literary criticism, 'Knowing Nukes' emphasizes the pervasive paradoxes within nuclear discourse, advocating an approach that understands-and does not simply recoil from-the character of modern communication and the odd codes of strategic deterrence.




Seeking the Bomb


Book Description

The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.




How the End Begins


Book Description

An alarming, deeply reported analysis of how close--and how often--the world has come to nuclear annihilation, and why we are once again on the brink.




Peril


Book Description

The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history. But as #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink. This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Intimate scenes are supplemented with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making Peril an unparalleled history. It is also the first inside look at Biden’s presidency as he began his presidency facing the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.




Nuclear Weapons under International Law


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.




UFOs and Nukes


Book Description

SECOND EDITION-REVISED AND UPDATEDThe reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities has been convincingly established. Hundreds of U.S. military veterans now openly discuss these ominous incidents and thousands of declassified government documents substantiate their revelations.Over the past four decades, renowned researcher Robert Hastings has interviewed more than 150 of those veterans regarding their involvement in these astounding cases. On September 27, 2010, CNN live-streamed his UFOs and Nukes press conference in Washington D.C. during which former U.S. Air Force officers described numerous nuclear missiles mysteriously malfunctioning moments after a disc-shaped craft was observed hovering near their underground launch silos.That shocking episode, in March 1967, was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Documented UFO activity occurred at a plutonium processing plant in Washington State as early as January 1945, months prior to the atomic bombings in Japan. Another incident, in October 2010, involved one missile base in Wyoming being unable to communicate with several of its missile launch control capsules just as a huge cigar-shaped craft slowly flew over them.Significantly, documents smuggled out of Russia in the 1990s confirm that Soviet nukes were also the focus of UFO interest during the Cold War era. On one occasion, in October 1982, a number of missiles temporarily activated for launch, as terrified officers attempted to disrupt the unauthorized count-down. After 15 seconds, the anomaly terminated and the equipment returned to standby status. While this was taking place, an enormous disc silently hovered over the base.In short, the evidence presented in UFOs & Nukes makes clear that humans' deadliest weapons have been, since their development and use during World War II, under intense scrutiny by still-unidentified observers possessing tremendously advanced technology.Given these disclosures, it seems evident that the UFO-Nukes Connection is highly significant and perhaps even the key reason these mysterious aerial craft have appeared in our skies over the past seven decades.




Restricted Data


Book Description

"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--




Hiroshima


Book Description

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.




Apocalypse Never


Book Description

Apocalypse Never illuminates why we must abolish nuclear weapons, how we can, and what the world will look like after we do. On the wings of a brand new era in American history, Apocalypse Never makes the case that a comprehensive nuclear policy agenda that fully integrates nonproliferation with disarmament, can both eliminate immediate nuclear dangers and set us irreversibly on the road to abolition. In jargon-free language, Daley explores the possible verification measures, enforcement mechanisms, and governance structures of a nuclear weapon-free world.




Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?


Book Description

For more than 30 years Jenkins has been advising the military, government, and prestigious think tanks on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Now he goes beyond what the experts know to examine how terrorists themselves think about such weapons.