Abstract
On 16 July 1945, the nuclear age was heralded by the successful Trinity test explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Robert Oppenheimer later wrote that the sheer force of this new weapon made him think of the Bhagavad Gita verse “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (Hijiya 2000: 123–167). Villains in countless movies seek nuclear weapons for their evil schemes, and only the philosopher’s stone and other imaginary items rival them as sources and symbols of power in popular imagination. During the Cold War, their mere existence seemed to threaten the survival not only of opposing armies, but of civilization itself.
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Notes
- 1.
The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China are recognized as nuclear powers under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Israel is widely suspected of having an undeclared nuclear arsenal. South Africa abolished its nuclear weapons before the end of Apartheid. India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested nuclear devices. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus ‘inherited’ nuclear warheads from the Soviet Union but handed them over to Russia.
- 2.
See, for example Castex (1945: 466).
- 3.
- 4.
For background see the collection of essays in Barnaby (1969).
- 5.
Under article 9 of the NPT, ‘a nuclear weapon state is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967’.
- 6.
For discussion, see Gavin (2004/05: 116–117).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
For example, the A.Q. Khan network procured rotors for uranium centrifuges from a Malaysian company. See Albright and Hinderstein (2005).
- 10.
See for example Payne (1996).
- 11.
For the most prominent statement of this position, see Schultz et al. (2007).
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Frühling, S., O’Neil, A. (2012). Nuclear Weapons and Power in the 21st Century. In: Fels, E., Kremer, JF., Kronenberg, K. (eds) Power in the 21st Century. Global Power Shift. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25082-8_5
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