Making Weapons Talking Peace

Making Weapons Talking Peace
Author: Herbert F. York
Publisher:
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1987-12-13
Genre: Current Events
ISBN:

The author, a distinguished physicist and nuclear weapons developer, has participated at almost every stage of the development of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, their delivery systems, and the efforts at arms control. This book chronicles York's involvement, beginning with his work on the Hiroshima bomb and ending with his service as Jimmy Carter's negotiator at the Comprehensive Test Ban talks in Geneva. His odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva has been a journey from the conviction that military might and national security were synonymous to the understanding that technology alone will never generate peace and survival. York also provides vignettes of leading participants in the development of the nuclear weapons dilemma. ISBN 0-465-04338-0: $22.95.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1988-05
Genre:
ISBN:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy
Author: Ray Acheson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2021-06-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178661491X

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy offers a look inside the antinuclear movement and its recent successful campaign to ban the bomb. From scrappy organizing to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and achieving a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons, this book narrates the journey of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and developments in feminist disarmament activism. Acheson explains the process through which diplomats, activists, and nuclear survivors worked together to elevate the horrific humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons, develop new international law categorically prohibiting the bomb, challenge the nuclear orthodoxy, and strengthen norms for disarmament and peace. Told from the perspective of a queer feminist antimilitarist organizer who was involved from the start of the process through to the treaty’s adoption, the book utilizes interviews with dozens of participants, as well as critical theoretical perspectives about transnational advocacy networks, discourse change, and intersectional feminist action. It is meant to provide useful insights for anyone trying to make change amidst structures of power and politics.

Peace Studies

Peace Studies
Author: Matthew Evangelista
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780415339247

The academic field of Peace Studies emerged during the Cold War to address the nature and sources of interstate and internal conflict and methods to prevent it and deal with its consequences.

Cardinal Choices

Cardinal Choices
Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2000-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0804764395

This book is a history of the complex relations between scientific advisors, primarily physicists, and U.S. presidents in their role as decision makers about nuclear weapons and military strategy. The story, unsurprisingly, is one of considerable tension between the "experts" and the politicians, as scientists seek to influence policy and presidents alternate between accepting their advice and resisting or even ignoring it. First published in 1992, the book has been brought up to date to include the experiences of science advisors to President Clinton. In addition, the texts of eleven crucial documents, from the Einstein-Szilard letter to President Roosevelt (1939) to the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative by President Reagan (1983), have been added as appendixes.

Atomic Fragments

Atomic Fragments
Author: Mary Palevsky
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2000-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520923652

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.

Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud

Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud
Author: Michael Bess
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1993-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780226044217

"Two world wars, concentration camps, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and continued preparations for nuclear war illustrate the modern world's propensity for mass destruction. . . . Yet there have been important signs of resistance to this trend. These have included not only the emergence of mass-based peace and disarmament movements but activist intellectuals grappling with the growing problem posed by mass violence among nation-states. . . . Bess examines the lives and ideas of four of these intellectuals: Leo Szilard of Hungary and (later) the United States, E. P. Thompson of England, Danilo Dolci of Italy, and Louise Weiss of France. . . . Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud is a powerful, important scholarly work, casting new light upon some of the great issues of modern times. Readers will learn much from it."—Lawrence S. Wittner, Peace and Change "Bess seeks to understand the way in which the creation of the atomic bomb has changed the social and political situation of humankind. Are we to be held hostage by military forces or can we transform our situation? He describes the lives of four very different activists, each with different views on what causes conflict and how best to address conflict. . . . Overall, this book offers an interesting perspective on life after the atomic bomb. . . . In asking ourselves what the possibilities of our future are, we can turn to these lives for some guidance. . . . This book is informative, provocative, and encourages one to consider carefully how s/he chooses to live."—Erin McKenna, Utopian Studies "These four lives, researched and skillfully presented by historian Michael Bess, make fascinating stories in themselves. They also serve as useful vehicles for examining major cross-currents of Cold War resistance. . . . From Weiss the cynical pragmatist to Szilard the high-level fixer to hompson the social reformer to Dolce the spiritual street organizer, Michael Bess has woven an illuminating tapestry of human efforts to cope with life under the mushroom cloud."—Samuel H. Day Jr., The Progressive

Winning the Next War

Winning the Next War
Author: Stephen Peter Rosen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501732315

How and when do military innovations take place? Do they proceed differently during times of peace and times of war? In Winning the Next War, Stephen Peter Rosen argues that armies and navies are not forever doomed to "fight the last war." Rather, they are able to respond to shifts in the international strategic situation. He also discusses the changing relationship between the civilian innovator and the military bureaucrat. In peacetime, Rosen finds, innovation has been the product of analysis and the politics of military promotion, in a process that has slowly but successfully built military capabilities critical to American military success. In wartime, by contrast, innovation has been constrained by the fog of war and the urgency of combat needs. Rosen draws his principal evidence from U.S. military policy between 1905 and 1960, though he also discusses the British army's experience with the battle tank during World War I.

Arms Control by Committee

Arms Control by Committee
Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1992-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804765928

This book is essentially a series of case histories of U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control negotiations, as seen from the American side. It describes the processes of governmental decisionmaking for arms control in Washington, D.C., and the techniques for joint U.S.-Soviet decisionmaking at the negotiating table. As general counsel of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and member of U.S. delegations to disarmament conferences for eight years, the author was in a unique position to assess the difficulties of fashioning an arms control treaty that could pass muster within the executive branch of the U.S. government, be approved by U.S. allies, be successfully negotiated with the Soviets, and then win the approval of the U.S. Senate. This process will be even more complex now that the United States will face at least four nuclear powers from the former U.S.S.R. The book has three purposes. The first is to add to the recorded history of the following negotiations: the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the ABM Treaty of 1972 and its companion SALT Interim Agreements, and the 1987 INF Treaty. The author asks in each case, What did the president and his assistants do (or fail to do) to negotiate a successful agreement? The second purpose is to use the case book approach, common in law schools and business schools, as a teaching device for those who wish to learn how the American government made decisions about arms control negotiations, how U.S.-Soviet negotiators reached decisions, and what the results of the decisions have been. The book's third purpose is to generalize about what works and what does not work in the complex world of arms control negotiations, including information on the impact of negotiating committees and comparisons of the process for negotiating arms control treaties with that for achieving arms limits through action and reaction, without written agreement. The concluding chapter looks to the future: What changes will occur in the arms control process given the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union?

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
Author: L. Freedman
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2003-07-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780333652985

First published twenty years ago, Lawrence Freedman's Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, taking the story to contemporary arguments about missile defence.