Abstract
There is remarkably widespread and growing agreement, at the end of the 1990s, on the desirability and feasibility of many nuclear arms limitation measures: on reductions in the nuclear forces of the United States and Russia going well beyond those prescribed in the START II treaty; on dealerting measures that would increase the reaction time of nuclear forces from minutes to days; on a thoroughgoing revision of targeting practices in order to eliminate all consideration of massive attacks; on bringing into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiating a comprehensive cut-off of production of fissile materials for weaponry; and on other measures to reduce the prominence of nuclear weapons in the foreign and military policies of the few countries that possess them and bolster the resolve of the rest to continue to refrain from acquiring them.
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Notes and References
Jonathan Schell, The Abolition, New York: Avon, 1984.
United Nations, ‘The United Nations and Disarmament 1945–1970,’ United Nations, New York, 1970.
Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Report of the Canberra Commission, Department of Foreign Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, 1996.
Jozef Goldblat, ‘Making Nuclear Weapons Illegal,’ in A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World: Desirable? Feasible?, ed. Joseph Rotblat, Jack Steinberger and Bhalchandra Udgaonkar, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993, pp. 153–168.
Committee on International Security and Arms Control (William F. Burns, Study Chair; John P. Holdren, Committee Chair; Jo L. Husbands, Staff Director; and 14 others), The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997.
The definitions relied upon here are from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged), Springfield, MA: Merriam, 1966; and The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (The Unabridged Edition), New York: Random House, 1979.
See, especially, Harrison Brown’s prescient book, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946; Jonathan Schell, The Abolition; A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World …, ed. Rotblat, Steinberger and Udgaonkar; Report of the Canberra Commission: Background Papers, under the same imprint and date as the main report, containing analyses prepared for the Commission by a wide array of consultants;
and Steven Miller’s recent precis ‘Nuclear Weapons: The Abolitionist Upsurge,’ International Institute for Stategic Studies, Strategic Survey 1998–99, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Michael J. Mazarr, ‘Virtual Nuclear Arsenals,’ Survival, 37:3, pp. 7–26.
For an extended discussion, see Jonathan Schell’s new essay on abolition, ‘The Gift of Time,’ The Nation, February 2/9, 1998, pp. 9–60.
Harrison Brown, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?
Amory B. Lovins, Soft Energy Parths: Toward a Durable Peace, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1977. See especially chapter 11, ‘Rebottling the Nuclear Genie.’
Wolf Haefele, ‘Energy from Nuclear Power,’ Scientific American, September 1990, pp. 136–144.
Christoper E. Paine, Thomas B. Cochran, and Robert S. Norris, ‘International Arrangements for the Transition to a Nuclear Weapon Free World,’ in Background Papers, Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 141–155.
Joseph Rotblat, ‘Past Attempts to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,’ in A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World…, ed. Rotblat, Steinberger and Udgaonkar, pp. 17–32; William Lanouette with Bela Szilard, Genius in the Shadows, New York: Scribner’s, 1992; Harrison Brown, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?; United Nations, ‘The United Nations and Disarmament 1945–1970.’
A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World…, ed. Rotblat, Steinberger and Udgaonkar: contrast chapter 8 (James Leonard, Martin Kaplan and Benjamin Sanders, ‘Verification and Enforcement in a NWFW’) and chapter 13 (Francesco Calogero, ‘An Asymptotic Approach to a NWFW’) with chapter 11 (Richard Garwin, ‘Nuclear Weapons for the United Nations’) and chapter 12 (Vitalii Goldanskii and Stanislav Rodionov, ‘An International Nuclear Security Force’).
Joseph Rotblat, ‘Past Attempts to Abolish Nuclear Weapons;’ William Lanouette with Bela Szilard, Genius in the Shadows; Harrison Brown, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which can be found at http://www.qmw.ac.uk/pugwash/archive/manfesto.html; Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash: The First Ten Years, London: Heinemann, 1967.
Richard Perle, testimony before the Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, February 12, 1997, available on the Stimson Center website at http://www.stimson.org/forum/perle.htm
Theodore Taylor, ‘Technological Problems of Verification,’ in A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World …, Rotblat, Steinberger and Udgaonkar eds, pp. 63–82; Christopher E. Paine, Thomas B. Cochran, and Robert S. Norris, ‘Techniques and Procedures for Verifying Nuclear Weapons Elimination,’ Background Papers, Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 167–180.
William Lanouette with Bela Szilard, Genius in the Shadows, pp. 183–184.
Joseph Rotblat, ‘Societal Verification,’ in A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World…, ed. Rotblat, Steinberger and Udgaonkar, pp. 103–118.
See this volume, chapter 15.
See, for example, the argument to this effect in the 1997 testimony of Richard Perle, op. cit.
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, p. 18.
Ibid., pp. 82–83
Ibid., p. 82
Ibid., p. 15.
Report of the Canberra Commission, pp. 37–38.
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, The Future of U.S. Nuclear Wapons Policy, pp. 74–75.
Ibid., p. 88.
Jonathan Schell, The Abolition
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, p. 68.
Ibid., p. 97.
Francesco Calogero, ‘An Asymptotic Approach to a NWFW’
Andrew J. Goodpaster, Chair, Project on Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction, ‘An Evolving U.S. Nuclear Posture,’ Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington D.C., December 1995; Andrew J. Goodpaster, Chair, Project on Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction, ‘An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World,’ Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington D.C., March 1997.
John P. Holdren, ‘Thoughts on Science, Technology, and Human Weil-Being in the Next 50 Years,’ APS News, 7:4, April 1998, p. 12.
Natural Resources Defense Council, ‘Table of Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–1996,’ available on the NRDC website at http://www.nrdc.org/nrdcpro/nudb/datab19.html.
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Holdren, J.P. (1999). Getting to Zero: Too Difficult? Too Dangerous? Too Distracting?. In: Bruce, M., Milne, T. (eds) Ending War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508606_5
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