Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - Nuclear Warfare

We are at a critical juncture in world politics. Nuclear strategy and policy have risen to the top of the global policy agenda, and issues ranging from a nuclear Iran to the global zero movement are generating sharp debate. The historical origins of our contemporary nuclear world are deeply consequential for contemporary policy, but it is crucial that decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than myth and misapprehension. In Nuclear Statecraft, Francis J. Gavin challenges key elements of the widely accepted narrative about the history of the atomic age and the consequences...

Exploring environmental literature from a feminist perspective, this volume presents a diversity of feminist ecocritical approaches to affirm the continuing contributions, relevance, and necessity of a feminist perspective in environmental literature, culture, and science. Feminist ecocriticism has a substantial history, with roots in second- and third-wave feminist literary criticism, women s environmental writing and social change activisms, and eco-cultural critique, and yet both feminist and ecofeminist literary perspectives have been marginalized. The essays in this collection build...

Strategy in the Missile Age first reviews the development of modern military strategy to World War II, giving the reader a reference point for the radical rethinking that follows, as Dr. Brodie considers the problems of the Strategic Air Command, of civil defense, of limited war, of counterforce or pre-emptive strategies, of city-busting, of missile bases in Europe, and so on. The book, unlike so many on modern military affairs, does not present a program or defend a policy, nor is it a brief for any one of the armed services. It is a balanced analysis of the requirements of...

A vast state within a state, the Manhattan Project employed 130,000 people and cost the United States and its allies 2 billion dollars, but its contribution to science as a prestigious investment was invaluable. After the bombs were dropped, states began allocating unprecedented funds for scientific research,...

For decades, the rational actor model served as the preferred guide for U.S. deterrence policy. It has been a convenient and comforting guide because it requires little detailed knowledge of an opponent s unique decision-making process and yet typically provides confident generalizations about how deterrence works. The model tends to postulate common decision-making parameters across the globe to reach generalizations about how deterrence will function and the types of forces that will be "stabilizing" or "destabilizing." Yet a broad spectrum of unique factors can influence an opponent s...

This book is a counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States can and should do more to reduce both the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategies and the number of weapons in its arsenal. The case against nuclear weapons has been made on many grounds--including historical, political, and moral. But, Brad Roberts argues, it has not so far been informed by the experience of the United States since the Cold War in trying to adapt deterrence to a changed world, and to create the conditions that would allow further significant changes to U.S. nuclear policy and posture.

Making the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party's nuclear tests in 1998 its starting point, this book examines how opinion amongst India's 'attentive' public shifted from supporting nuclear abstinence to accepting - and even feeling a need for - a more assertive policy, by examining the complexities of the debate in India on nuclear policy in the 1990s.

The study seeks to account for the shift in opinion by looking at the parallel processes of how nuclear policy became an important part of the public discourse in India, and what it came to symbolise for the country's intelligentsia...

It was a research and engineering feat of unimaginable proportion, and the total project cost for all three sites was $2.1 billion--an unthinkable amount for a country that was coming out of the Great Depression. It is a...

When the U.S. Army drafted Elvis Presley in 1958, it quickly set about transforming the King of Rock and Roll from a rebellious teen idol into a clean-cut GI. Trading in his gold-trimmed jacket for standard-issue fatigues, Elvis became a model soldier in an army facing the unprecedented challenge of building a fighting force for the Atomic Age.

In an era that threatened Soviet-American thermonuclear annihilation, the army declared it could limit atomic warfare to the battlefield. It not only adopted a radically new way of fighting but also revamped its equipment, organization,...

Volume I of The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent provides an authoritative and in-depth examination of the British government's strategic nuclear policy from 1945 to 1964.

Written with full access to the UK documentary record, this volume examines how British governments after 1945 tried to build and then maintain an independent, nationally controlled strategic capability, and the debates this provoked in official circles. Against a background of evolving British ideas about deterrence during the Cold War, it focuses on the strategic, political and...

This book offers a broader theory of nuclear deterrence and examines the way nuclear and conventional deterrence interact with non-military factors in a series of historical case studies.

The existing body of literature largely leans toward the analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence and it is often implicitly assumed that nuclear weapons are so important that, when they are present, other factors need not be studied. This book addresses this omission. It develops a research framework that incorporates the military aspects of deterrence, both nuclear and conventional, together with...