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The breakup of the Soviet Union left a cold war nuclear legacy consisting of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and a sprawling infrastructure for their production and maintenance. This book examines the fate of this vast nuclear weapon complex and the unprecedented non-proliferation challenges associated with the breakup of a nuclear weapon state. It describes the high-level diplomatic bargaining efforts to consolidate in Russia the nuclear weapons based in newly independent Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and to strengthen central control over these weapons. It surveys the problems associated with dismantling nuclear weapons and the difficulties involved in safely storing and disposing of large stockpiles of fissile material. It reviews the key provisions of the principal nuclear arms control measures and initiatives, including the START I and START II treaties. Finally, the book assesses the contribution of international assistance programmes to the denuclearization process under way in the former Soviet Union.
Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar amendment, authorizing U.S. threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union, in Nov. 1991, after a failed coup in Moscow and the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. The annual program has grown from $400 million to over $1 billion/year across 3 agencies. It has also evolved from an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union, to a more comprehensive threat reduction and non-proliferation effort, to a broader program seeking to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from leaking into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists. This report discusses issues related to U.S. non-proliferation and threat reduction assistance. Illus.
The successor states of the former Soviet Union have enormous stocks of weapons-usable nuclear material and other militarily significant commodities and technologies. Preventing the flow of such items to countries of proliferation concern and to terrorist groups is a major objective of U.S. national security policy. This book reviews the effectiveness of two U.S. programs directed to this objective. These programs have supported the efforts of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan in upgrading the physical protection, control, and accountability of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and strengthening systems to control the export of many types of militarily sensitive items.
The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
Smuggling Armageddon looks at one of the most troubling international concerns of the 1990s and beyond: the illegal trade in nuclear materials that has erupted in the Newly-Independent States (NIS) and Europe since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Rensselaer Lee raises the seldom-asked question of whether such traffic poses a threat of consequence to international security and stability while showing readers a Russia beset with a variety of criminal proliferation channels, increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations, and nuclear stockpiles with breached security. Smuggling Armageddon is sure to provoke controversy and raise the specter of nuclear destruction once again.
Lawrence Freedman One of the major bonuses of the collapse of communism in Europe is that it may never again be necessary to enter into a sterile debate about whether it is better to be "red" or "dead." This appeared as the ultimate question in the great nuclear debate of the early 1980s. When put so starkly the answer appeared obvious better to live and struggle in a totalitarian system than to destroy totalitarian and democratic systems alike. There were a number of points to be made against this. Communist regimes had demonstrated the possibility of being both red and dead while the West had managed successfully to avoid the choice. If we allowed nuclear disarmament to become an overriding priority, this might encourage excessive respect for Soviet interests and a desire to avoid any sort of provocation to Moscow, a point not lost on those in Eastern Europe who were then struggling against repression and could not see why disarmament should be given a higher priority than freedom. Now that the old communist states have liberated themselves and the West no longer risks conspiring in their enslavement, there is a correspondingly re duced danger of mass death. As a result, and with so much else of immediate Lawrence Freedman • Department of War Studies, King's College, University of London, London WC2R 2LS, England. Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America.