With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rethinking U.S. Nuclear Strategy: differences between Obama and Bush policies
2011
Sesenta y cinco años después de los Estados Unidos detonó la primera arma nuclear, la proliferación sigue siendo un tema de gran interés y preocupación entre los académicos y los responsables políticos. Más naciones han adquirido o están buscando armas nucleares. El temor de una amenaza nuclear y el conflicto plantea las mayores preocupaciones generalmente expresada por los gobiernos y ciudadanos de todo el mundo. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es entender lo que caracteriza a la actual estrategia nuclear de los EE.UU., y la comparación de Bush y las políticas de Obama. Los elementos centrales en discusión aquí están relacionados con la percepción del papel apropiado de las armas nucleares, es decir, el control de armamentos, el desarme, la disuasión y las iniciativas de no proliferación. Por lo tanto, el autor comienza con la contextualización del tema en los debates contemporáneos sobre las armas nucleares que permiten al lector hacer un seguimiento de los principales hechos históricos que lo lleva a la discusión actual de la estrategia nuclear de los EE.UU. Sixty-five years after the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon, proliferation remains a topic of intense interest and concern among both academics and policy makers. More nations have acquired or are seeking nuclear weapons. The fear of a nuclear threat and conflict raises the highest concerns usually expressed by governments and citizens all over the world. The main aim of this paper is to understand what characterizes the current U.S. nuclear strategy, comparing Bush and Obama policies. The core elements under discussion here are related to the perception of the appropriate role of nuclear weapons, i.e. arms control, disarmament, deterrence and nonproliferation initiatives. Therefore, the author begins with the contextualizing of the topic on the contemporary debates on nuclear weapons that allow the reader to track the main historical developments that leads him to the present discussion of the U.S. nuclear strategy.
Rethinking U.S. Nuclear Strategy: diferences between Obama and Bush policies
Sesenta y cinco años después de los Estados Unidos detonó la primera arma nuclear, la proliferación sigue siendo un tema de gran interés y preocupación entre los académicos y los responsables políticos. Más naciones han adquirido o están buscando armas nucleares. El temor de una amenaza nuclear y el conflicto plantea las mayores preocupaciones generalmente expresada por los gobiernos y ciudadanos de todo el mundo. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es entender lo que caracteriza a la actual estrategia nuclear de los EE.UU., y la comparación de Bush y las políticas de Obama. Los elementos centrales en discusión aquí están relacionados con la percepción del papel apropiado de las armas nucleares, es decir, el control de armamentos, el desarme, la disuasión y las iniciativas de no proliferación. Por lo tanto, el autor comienza con la contextualización del tema en los debates contemporáneos sobre las armas nucleares que permiten al lector hacer un seguimiento de los principales hechos históricos que lo lleva a la discusión actual de la estrategia nuclear de los EE.UU.
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 1993
THE CONSTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR REALITY During World War II, the United States was not occupied like Europe, invaded like the Soviet Union, or bombed like Great Britain. Nor was there any plausible suggestion that the home front might be subjected to any of these acts of war. As a result, it has been said that Americans were obliged to fight the war at a distance and "on imagination alone. ''1 Within months of V-J day, civil defense strategists began to make plans to mobilize the American public for World War III. By the late 1940's, these plans included preparations for a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States. Thus Cold War civil defense planning posed the much more daunting problem of fighting an imaginary war. By 1950, the American foreign policy objective of containing what was perceived to be an otherwise irresistible expansion of Soviet power was tied to the strategy of nuclear deterrence. If the Soviets threatened war, the United States would guarantee the peace, if necessary by nuclear retaliation. As students of the early Cold War have stressed for some years, this strategy rested on domestic presuppositions. It was necessary to mobilize the American home front in order to sustain what President Kennedy later called "a long twilight struggle" in support of a new conception of national security. In the nuclear age, the project of securing American national interests would be interminable in principle, unprecedentedly expensive, and uniquely dangerous. The military, economic, and political requirements of Cold War mobilization have received considerable attention. However, it has not been generally appreciated that the policy of containment by means of nuclear deterrence also rested on moral presuppositions. Above all, this strategy was based on the assumption that the 339
Rising tensions, nuclear modernizations: How Washington can turn down the heat
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Statesmen such as William Perry and Mikhail Gorbachev are growing increasingly concerned about global nuclear tensions. Their concern springs in large measure from the nuclear modernizations being conducted by all major nuclear powers. The United States has embarked on a trillion-dollar modernization programmotivated partly by Russia's increasing aggressiveness abroad and by indications that Vladimir Putin might be willing to use nuclear weapons. Donald Trump, meanwhile, makes erratic, inconsistent, and impulsive statements about nuclear weapons, causing many to argue that his sole authority to launch these weapons should be taken away. Nuclear tensions will be dampened somewhat by fiscal pressures in both Washington and Moscow and by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Nonetheless, the United States should reduce nuclear dangers by paring down some aspects of its modernization program; agreeing to extend New START; adopting a no-first-use policy and ending hair-trigger alert for nuclear weapons; better educating Donald Trump about arms control agreements and nuclear risks; and stopping or slowing plans for ballistic missile defense installations in Poland and Romania.
International Politics, 2024
Charting a course through US administrations from the late 1990s to the present day, this article considers the George W. Bush administration's thinking on nuclear deterrence in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11: What was distinctive about the Bush administration's thinking and approach to nuclear deterrence? To what extent, and to what effect have the Bush administration's approaches proved enduring? The article considers the prima facie contradictory nature of the administration's deterrence objectives against the backdrop of a shifting security environment, characterised by the proliferation of WMDs to 'rogue states' and non-state actors, nuclear multipolarity, disruptive emerging technologies, and long-held US commitments to its global allies and partners-ensuring the centrality of nuclear weapons in US national security policy, despite sustained efforts to reduce this reliance.
Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers
International Security, 1997
International concern about nuclear proliferation has rapidly increased since the end of the Cold War. A recent survey found that Americans believe that the nuclear danger facing them is actually worse now than during the Cold War itself.' Apprehensions over proliferation formed the backdrop for two occasions in the post-Cold War period when U.S. presidents have used or threatened to use large-scale military force. In 1990-91, fear of Iraqi nuclear ambitions and the U.S. justification of its stance against Baghdad made the Persian Gulf War seem as much an effort at forcible counterproliferation as a campaign intended to free Kuwait from foreign military occupation. In late 1993, President Clinton signaled U.S. willingness to thwart North Korea's nuclear program by means of war, declaring that Pyongyang "cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb." His defense secretary shortly thereafter termed the president's statement an "ultimatum," adding "we will not let the North Koreans become a nuclear power.. .. nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea is not acceptable."' The Clinton administration's "bottom-up" review of defense policy concluded that the spread of weapons of mass destruction posed the most direct threat to U.S. post-Cold War security interests. Declaring that the primary threat to US. security now stems from nuclear-armed terrorists and pariah states, U.S. Defense Secretary David 1. Karl received his doctorate iii International Relations from the University of SoUthertl California in August 1996.
Asia Policy, 2018
O ver the last year the possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula has risen to new heights, making a discussion of the U.S. nuclear umbrella even more critical. Though the rhetoric from the Trump administration has raised some potential challenges for my argument that the United States is highly unlikely to ever use nuclear weapons to defend Japan and South Korea, I believe this argument will hold. I am grateful that the reviewers have found my book Japan, South Korea, and the United States Nuclear Umbrella: Deterrence After the Cold War to be useful in understanding the role of the nuclear umbrella in Northeast Asian security. Nonetheless, they have raised some important questions regarding nuclear weapons and extended deterrence. Daniel Sneider asks two very important questions about North Korean goals concerning the possession of nuclear weapons. First, are nuclear weapons likely to make North Korea more willing to undertake provocative actions in the belief that it has a nuclear shield to protect against retaliation? Many analysts have resurrected the Cold War concept of a stability-instability paradox whereby Moscow and Washington conducted lower-level actions believing that neither side would escalate to a broader conflict, given that nuclear weapons could be involved. Will nuclear weapons make North Korea more tolerant of risk and likely to pursue increasingly provocative behavior? Though a definitive answer remains uncertain, I would argue that North Korea has been relatively cautious and has not undertaken the kinds of actions predicted by the paradox to alter the political or territorial status quo. Its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests are necessary to build these capabilities and ensure they work. Moreover, although North Korean rhetoric reached new heights in 2017, official statements, including Kim Jong-un's 2018 New Year's speech, terence roehrig
The Evolution of the Us Strategy Toward the Nuclear Nonproliferation After the Cold War
Міжнародні відносини, суспільні комунікації та регіональні студії, 2020
The article analyzes the US strategy in the nonproliferation field during three decades (in 1990s – 2018) and during the presidency of four US presidents (Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump). The author considers the key guidelines of US nonproliferation strategy that are described in four Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR) issued by each post-Cold War presidential administration. These documents describe the US nuclear policy in general, but the author focused on analysis of those their sections that were devoted to dealing with the risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons. The National Security Strategies of 1996 and 2002 were also analyzed in the article to clarify the nonproliferation aspects of US strategy that were not explained well in the published excerpts of the first two Nuclear Posture Reviews of presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush. As George Bush faced with the new challenges that required developing updated nonproliferation strategy like he terro...