Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> International Relations - Arms Control

After forty years of largely cooperative Sino-U.S. relations, policymakers, politicians, and pundits on both sides of the Pacific see growing tensions between the United States and China. Some go so far as to predict a future of conflict, driven by the inevitable rivalry between an established and a rising power, and urge their leaders to prepare now for a future showdown. Others argue that the deep economic interdependence between the two countries and the many areas of shared interests will lead to more collaborative relations in the coming decades.

In this book, James Steinberg...

International efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons rest upon foundations provided by global treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Over time, however, states have created a number of other mechanisms for organizing international cooperation to promote nonproliferation. Examples range from regional efforts to various worldwide export-control regimes and nuclear security summit meetings initiated by U.S. president Barack Obama. Many of these...

Postwar East Asia has seen astonishing economic dynamism in Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan as well as a transformation of authoritarian regimes into vibrant democracies in South Korea and Taiwan. Neither of these trends has taken hold in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which remains the worst kind of historical anachronism: a hereditary monarchy with the modern trappings of totalitarianism and a centrally mismanaged economy. Insecure both internally and externally, and ruthless in its pursuit of regime survival, the DPRK government has spawned two crises. The first...

Nuclear weapons are the elusive toys of modern warfare and are hankered after by every Middle Eastern government. Although no Middle eastern government has formally admitted that the purpose of its investment in nuclear research is to develop weapons, it is certain that two countries, Israel and Pakistan, have mastered the technology for making nuclear bombs and that others are attempting to manipulate their nuclear hardware to this end. The combination of these nuclear ambitions, the large amounts of money that can be made available for research and the area s political instability make...

For thirteen years, since his resignation from the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission, Mr. Lilienthal has kept silent on the atom, turning his energies and talents to the field of international development. Now the first chairman of the AEC speaks out on the vital question of disarmament, on the role of the atom in modern life, and on the AEC itself. His views are controversial, and will not be popular in many quarters. Mr. Lilienthal thinks that the present disarmament negotiations are premature and dangerous, that our view of the place of the atom in the modern world has been...

If international cooperation was difficult to achieve and to sustain during the Cold War, why then were two rival superpowers able to cooperate in placing limits on their central strategic weapons systems? Extending an empirical approach to game theory--particularly that developed by Robert Axelrod--Steve Weber argues that although nations employ many different types of strategies broadly consistent with game theory's "tit for tat," only strategies based on an ideal type of "enhanced contingent restraint" promoted cooperation in U.S.-Soviet arms control. As a theoretical analysis of the...

This book examines the transformation in US thinking about the role of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) in national security policy since the end of the Cold War.

The evolution of the BMD debate after the Cold War has been complex, complicated and punctuated. As this book shows, the debate and subsequent policy choices would often appear to reflect neither the particular requirements of the international system for US security at any given time, nor indeed the current capabilities of BMD technology.

Ballistic Missile Defence and US National Security Policy traces the...

This volume aims to improve understanding of nuclear security and the prevention of nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear terrorism is perceived as one of the most immediate and extreme threats to global security today. While the international community has made important progress in securing fissile material, there are still important steps to be made with nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear material spread around the globe. The volume addresses this complex phenomenon through an interdisciplinary approach: legal, criminal, technical, diplomatic, cultural, economic, and political....

Epistemic communities represent networks of knowledge-based experts that help articulate cause-and-effect relationships of complex problems, define the self-interests of a state, or formulate specific policies for state decision makers. However, the role of these scientists and knowledgeable professionals in nuclear policy formulation is poorly understood.

Thoroughly documented and making excellent use of source material, Politics and the Bomb provides refreshingly new empirical evidence and theoretical analysis of the importance of scientists and experts behind the...