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| U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Confronting Today's Threats
ISBN: 9780815713678
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Brookings Institution Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Nuclear weapons -- United States; United States -- Military policy; World politics -- 21st century;
A Brookings Institution Press and the Center for International Security and Cooperation publication
What role should nuclear weapons play in today's world? How can the United States promote international security while safeguarding its own interests? U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy informs this debate with an analysis of current nuclear weapons policies and strategies, including those for deterring, preventing, or preempting nuclear attack; preventing further proliferation, to nations and terrorists; modifying weapons designs; and revising the U.S. nuclear posture.
Presidents Bush and Clinton made major changes in U.S. policy after the Cold War, and George W. Bush's administration made further, more radical changes after 9/11. Leaked portions of 2001's Nuclear Posture Review, for example, described more aggressive possible uses for nuclear weapons. This important volume examines the significance of such changes and suggests a way forward for U.S. policy, emphasizing stronger security of nuclear weapons and materials, international compliance with nonproliferation obligations, attention to the demand side of proliferation, and reduced reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign policy.
George Bunn is a consulting professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He helped negotiate the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in the 1960s, has served as Ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Christopher F. Chyba is a professor of astrophysical sciences and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where he directs the Program on Science and Global Security. He is a former codirector of CISAC and has served with the NSC staff and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. William J. Perry is codirector of the Preventive Defense Project at Stanford and Harvard, and was the nineteenth U.S. Secretary of Defense (1994-97). He is coauthor (with Ashton B. Carter) of Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America (Brookings, 1999). |
