Return to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1981-1999

Couverture
Oxford University Press, 9 mars 2000 - 304 pages
When the Cold War ended, the world let out a collective sigh of relief as the fear of nuclear confrontation between superpowers appeared to vanish overnight. As we approach the new millennium, however, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to ever more belligerent countries and factions raises alarming new concerns about the threat of nuclear war. In Return to Armageddon, Ronald Powaski assesses the dangers that beset us as we enter an increasingly unstable political world. With the START I and II treaties, completed by George Bush in 1991 and 1993 respectively, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, it seemed as if the nuclear clock had been successfully turned back to a safer hour. But Powaski shows that there is much less reason for optimism than we may like to think. Continued U.S.-Russian cooperation can no longer be assured. To make matters worse, Russia has not ratified the START II Treaty and the U.S. Senate has failed to approve the CTBT. Perhaps even more ominously, the effort to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nonweapon states is threatened by nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan. The nuclear club is growing and its most recent members are increasingly hostile. Indeed, it is becoming ever more difficult to keep track of the expertise and material needed to build nuclear weapons, which almost certainly will find their way into terrorist hands. Accessible, authoritative, and provocative, Return to Armageddon provides both a comprehensive account of the arms control process and a startling reappraisal of the nuclear threat that refuses to go away.

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Table des matières

The Nuclear Arms Race 19391981
3
1 The Reagan Nuclear Buildup
14
2 The Reagan AboutFace
39
3 Bush and START I
83
4 Bush and START II
128
5 Clinton START II and the ABM Treaty
165
6 Clinton and Counterproliferation
205
The Enduring Nuclear Threat
251
Afterword
259
Acronyms and Technical Terms
273
Notes
277
Suggested Readings
297
Index
301
Droits d'auteur

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Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 29 - What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant US retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?
Page 78 - Each party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.
Page 56 - Second, a new treaty signed now would provide that if, after 1991, either side should decide to deploy such a system, that side would be obliged to offer a plan for sharing the benefits of strategic defense and for eliminating offensive ballistic missiles.
Page 194 - It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate) with funding subject to the annual authorization of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for National Missile Defense.
Page 55 - Gorbachev advanced publicly a "plan" calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons by the end of the century.
Page 29 - I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.
Page 33 - V prohibits the development and testing of ABM systems or components that are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based.

À propos de l'auteur (2000)

Ronald Powaski is the author of The Cold War: The U.S. and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 and March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939-1987, both by OUP. He is an adjunct professor of history at Cleveland State University. He lives in Euclid, Ohio.

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