A perpetual menace : nuclear weapons and international order / William Walker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walker, William, 1946-

Series:

Routledge global security studies

Routledge global security studies.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nuclear arms control.

Nuclear weapons--Government policy.

Nuclear weapons.

Security, International.

World politics--21st century.

World politics.

Physical Description:

xv, 239 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Nuclear weapons and international order

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2012.

Summary:

Written by a leading scholar in the field of nuclear weapons and international relations, this book examines the problem of order arising from the existence of weapons of mass destruction. This central problem of international order has its origins in the nineteenth century, when industrialization and the emergence of new sciences, technologies and administrative capabilities greatly expanded states abilities to inflict injury, ushering in the era of total war. It became acute in the mid-twentieth century, with the invention of the atomic bomb and the pre-eminent role ascribed to nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It became more complex after the end of the Cold War, as power structures shifted, new insecurities emerged, prior ordering strategies were called into question, and as technologies relevant to weapons of mass destruction became more accessible to non-state actors as well as states. William Walker explores how this problem is conceived by influential actors, how they have tried to fashion solutions in the face of many predicaments, and why those solutions have been deemed effective and ineffective, legitimate and illegitimate, in various times and contexts.

Contents:

1 Introduction: the problems of nuclear order and their understanding 1

2 The awakenings, 1939-46 27

3 Sculpting an order out of disorder: nuclear weapons and the Cold War 53

4 Two crises of nuclear order, 1973-86 86

5 The international nuclear order's consolidation, 1986-97 106

6 Into a second nuclear age? Shifting and expanding problems of nuclear order, 1997-2007 124

7 Back to nuclear disarmament, arms control and the NPT's invigoration 158

8 Heading for the rocks? 181.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415421058

0415421055

9780415421065

0415421063

OCLC:

720261359