BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS
June 2012
Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
By David E. Sanger, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
President Obama's administration came to office with the world on fire. Confront and Conceal is the story of how, in his first term, Obama secretly used the most innovative weapons and tools of American power, including our most sophisticated—and still unacknowledged—arsenal of cyberweapons, aimed at Iran's nuclear program.
Confront and Conceal—with an updated epilogue for this paperback edition—provides an unflinching account of these complex years of presidential struggle, in which America's ability to exert control grows ever more elusive.
April 2, 2013
Assessment of the Nuclear Programs of Iran and North Korea: Foreword
By Olli Heinonen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
During the last two decades, there have been successes but also disappointments in fighting against nuclear proliferation. On the positive side, we witnessed the dismantlement of nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Iraq, and Libya.
October 2012
"North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program: Motivations, Strategy, and Doctrine"
By Terence Roehrig, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
Despite continuing efforts to convince North Korea to relinquish its nuclear capability, it appears increasingly unlikely that it will ever do so. Pyongyang might be willing to curtail or freeze certain parts of the program but the likelihood of North Korean denuclearization is quickly fading. With Pyongyang likely to retain some level of nuclear-weapons capability, analysis turns to an assessment of how these weapons might be integrated into its defense posture. Using deterrence theory as the analytical framework, this chapter examines possible avenues for North Korea's nuclear weapons strategy and doctrine.
October 2012
Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon
By Toshi Yoshihara and John R. Holmes
Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age assembles a group of distinguished scholars to grapple with the matter of how the United States, its allies, and its friends must size up the strategies, doctrines, and force structures currently taking shape if they are to design responses that reinforce deterrence amid vastly more complex strategic circumstances.
September 2012
Containing Iran: Strategies for Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge
By Robert Reardon, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
This study assesses current U.S. policy options on the Iranian nuclear question. It suggests that U.S. goals can be met through patient and forward-looking policymaking. Specifically, the United States can begin to lay the groundwork for an effective containment policy while continuing efforts to forestall Iranian weaponization. A successful containment policy will promote long-term positive political change in Iran while avoiding counterproductive provocation.
August 2012
"Assessing the Role of Security Assurances in Dealing with North Korea"
By John S. Park, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
This chapter examines the relationship between security assurances and North Korean nuclear decision-making by focusing on four key areas: key geopolitical shocks that had a major impact on the North Korean regime; main sources of security assurances for North Korea over its history; this volume's hypotheses on security assurances based on how North Korea reacted to geopolitical shocks; and conditions under which security assurances may be most effective in dealing with North Korea in the future.
March 2012
Nuclear Energy and Global Governance: Ensuring Safety, Security and Non-proliferation
By Trevor Findlay, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
This timely book examines comprehensively the drivers of and constraints on a prospective nuclear revival and its likely nature and scope. Of special interest are developing countries which aspire to have nuclear energy and which currently lack the infrastructure, experience, and regulatory structures to successfully manage such a major industrial enterprise. The Fukushima disaster has made such considerations even more pertinent: if a technologically sophisticated country like Japan has difficulties dealing with nuclear safety and security how much harder would it be for a newcomer to the technology.
February 2012
Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat
By Andrew Brown, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
Andrew Brown's biography sets out a life whose work poses deep and important questions about science and society. This compelling account draws on full access to Rotblat's archives and presents the full scope of his life: his childhood overcoming poverty and anti-Semitism, his efforts to become a scientist in Warsaw, his work on Britain's nuclear programme, his lifelong dedication to peaceful causes, and his determination to uphold the ethical application of science. Ultimately, we discover a great man whose profound conscience shaped his life and work, and the legacy he leaves today.
March, 2012
Nuclear Modernization in China
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
This new, groundbreaking study by Reaching Critical Will explores in-depth the nuclear weapon modernization programmes in China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and analyzes the costs of nuclear weapons in the context of the economic crisis, austerity measures, and rising challenges in meeting human and environmental needs.
October 2011
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many observers feared that terrorists and rogue states would obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or knowledge about how to build them from the vast Soviet nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons complex. The United States launched a major effort to prevent former Soviet WMD experts, suddenly without salaries, from peddling their secrets. In Our Own Worst Enemy, Sharon Weiner chronicles the design, implementation, and evolution of four U.S. programs that were central to this nonproliferation policy and assesses their successes and failures.
Winner of the 2012 Louis Brownlow Book Award
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