The international security studies literature contains many thorough discussions of terrorists’ potential to acquire radiological “dirty bombs,” but it has mostly ignored the potential of states to do likewise.[1] Now, a crack team of nonproliferation experts led by the indefatigable William Potter has filled this gap in the literature with Death Dust, a fascinating comparative…
Tag: nuclear weapons
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-36 on Higuchi, Political Fallout
Toshihiro Higuchi’s Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis has already been the subject of an H-Environment Roundtable Review (Vol. 11, no. 5, 2021). It is a testament to the interdisciplinary character of Higuchi’s book that it is now the subject of an H-Diplo Roundtable Review. The Partial Test…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-25 on Kaplow, Signing Away the Bomb
On 17 October 1958, Irish Foreign Minister Frank Aiken proposed a resolution at the United Nations (UN) that called on that body to explore ways to prevent the “further dissemination of nuclear weapons.”[1] After Aiken’s initial effort did not succeed, Ireland reintroduced variations of the resolution every year until the UN General Assembly, on 4…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-17 on Pelopidas, Repenser Les Choix Nucléaires
This important and well-researched book appears at a time when concern about nuclear weapons, which lapsed after the end of the Cold War, has resurfaced because of the war in Ukraine and anxieties over Iran. The recent film Oppenheimer gives eloquent expression to these fears, with the main character worrying that the development of the…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-11 on Wellerstein, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States
Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data is an extensive and impressive study of the organisational production of nuclear secrecy in the United States. The overarching rationale of Restricted Data is to trace the development of the political, social, and organisational mechanisms which limited the spread of the scientific and technical knowledge of the nuclear technology. The aim…
Roundtable 11-21 on Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy
Nuclear weapons are fundamentally different from other military tools. The technology is familiar and yet still exotic; the ability to split nuclei and fuse them together remains one of the most extraordinary technical milestones of the last century. And the yields of nuclear explosions are orders of magnitude greater than those of conventional weapons, making…
Article Review 138 on “The Sturdy Child vs. the Sword of Damocles: Nuclear Weapons and the Expected Cost of War.”
With the advent of nuclear weapons came the question of how their very existence changed the way we conduct and think about warfare. Nearly seventy five years after their first (and, to date, only) use at the end of World War II, the question remains far from resolved, as nuclear ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ continue to…
Roundtable 11-15 on Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy
Todd Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann’s book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy provides a sustained case against the use of nuclear weapons as a tool for compelling actors to do something they would not otherwise want to do. In their reviews, three eminent scholars, Kyle Beardsley, Dan Reiter and Nina Tannenwald, are united in their praise,…
Article Review 123 on “Conflict and Chaos on the Korean Peninsula: Can China’s Military Help Secure North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons.”
Stability on the Korean Peninsula took a beating in 2017. The year began with Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Address that declared North Korea had “entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of [an] intercontinental ballistic missile”[2] and President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in response, “it won’t happen.”[3] The subsequent twelve months witnessed North…
Forum 21 on “Global Nuclear Order.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 29:1
Nuclear strategy can be a difficult subject to study. In the end, our main preoccupation is understanding why there has not been a thermonuclear war, and what we can do to continue this streak. It is close to impossible to craft definite statements about an event that never happened. We have a strong hunch that…