nuclear weapons

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• 5/8/2022
  

  Reigniting a Nuclear Arms Race is the Wrong Take-Home from Ukraine

  by David P. Barash

  A simplistic assumption of nuclear deterrence – that having nuclear weapons protects a nation against aggression – has frequently failed in practice. The Ukraine invasion should be a call to rethink deterrence and move toward abolishing nuclear weapons. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  4/24/2022
  

  Has the "Duck and Cover" World Returned

  by Tom Engelhardt

  The generation that came of age during the Cold War may have insight on the return of the nuclear threat, but "duck and cover" won't cut it. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/20/2022
  

  Ukraine's Nuclear Flash Point

  by Michael Klare

  With Russia's invasion of Ukraine backstopped by a nuclear arsenal, the days when nuclear war was unthinkable have clearly passed. 

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• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  4/19/2022
  

  How China's Nuclear Arms Buildup Will Make a Tripolar World, and What it Means for Peace

  by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.

  "There is nothing the United States can do to prevent China from joining it and Russia as the world’s top nuclear powers, but there are things that U.S. strategists and defense planners can do to mitigate the consequences."

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• SOURCE: Scientific American
  4/8/2022
  

  India's Accidental Missile Launch Underscores Real Risks of Nuclear War

  Inherent features of nuclear weapons command and control systems make mistakes inevitable and difficult to reverse; the long history of close calls with accidental nuclear war show the need for disarmament. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/23/2022
  

  Surveying Cold War Historians on the Likelihood of Nuclear War

  Is the relative weakness of today's Russian state compared to the Soviet Union a risk factor for escalation that was missing during the Cold War? 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/18/2022
  

  Nuclear Power Plants Aren't Made to Survive War

  by Kate Brown and Susan Solomon

  "It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/16/2022
  

  A Family History of the Futility of Preparing for Nuclear War

  On the lessons learned from working at the government's network of bomb shelters. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/15/2022
  

  Putin's Nuclear Threats a Reminder of the Urgency of Disarmament

  by Uri Friedman

  Nuclear deterrence depends on factors like the rationality of leaders, the integrity of command protocols, and accuracy of information that are far from guaranteed to work in a crisis. 

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• SOURCE: Hartmann Report
  3/8/2022
  

  Can the World Learn from the Failure of the Budapest Accords?

  by Thom Hartmann

  What does the negotiated removal of nuclear weapons from Ukraine in 1994 teach us about the prospects for peace and disarmament today and tomorrow? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/3/2022
  

  A Science Historian's Decade-Old Nuclear War Simulator is, Unfortunately, Having a Revival

  Alex Wellerstein discusses how his interactive site allows users to see what would happen to a place hit by a nuclear warhead, and why this week many Americans have been "nuking" their own hometowns. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  2/23/2022
  

  WSJ Editorial: Ukraine Surrendered Nuclear Weapons for Hollow Security Promises

  Putin's aggression, and western failures to blunt it, spread the dangerous lesson that nations are safer if they keep (or develop) the most dangerous weapons. 

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• 2/6/2022
  

  Attacking Iran would be a Catastrophic Mistake for Israel

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  Regardless of a success or failure to reach a new agreement with Iran, Israel must not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and must work closely with the US to develop a joint strategy to curb Iran’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and potentially end the conflict with Iran on a more permanent basis.

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• SOURCE: Common Dreams
  1/29/2022
  

  Let's Not Allow the Great Powers to Destroy the World

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Historically, vast military resources have made nations more, not less, eager for military confrontation. The risk is too great today to allow a revival of great power rivalry. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/24/2022
  

  A History of Nuclear False Alarms

  As nuclear readiness is increased in response to North Korean tests and the territorial goals of China and Russia, it's time to revisit times when an accidental nuclear war came close to happening. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/25/2022
  

  Tularosa Downwinders: a 75 Year Wait for Justice

  Residents of New Mexico's Tularosa basin received no advance warning of the 1945 atomic bomb tests nor of the risks to their health. They've been excluded from relief legislation that has benefitted residents near the Nevada test sites and workers in uranium mines. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  1/18/2022
  

  Only Fools Replay Doomsday

  by William Astore

  The author worked at NORAD's headquarters under Cheyenne Mountain at the height of the Cold War and wonders why, having emerged the nominal victors of one round of military escalation toward armageddon, American policymakers seem willing to enter another. 

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  10/29/2021
  

  The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Nuclear Bomb

  by Alex Wellerstein

  Read a detailed account of the moment in the Cold War when the United States and Soviet Union contemplated, then developed and tested, nuclear weapons of horrifying power. 

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• SOURCE: Not Even Past
  10/19/2021
  

  In Memoriam: Robert Divine, 1929-2021

  by H.W. Brands and Mark Atwood Lawrence

  Two University of Texas colleagues pay tribute to the scholarly, teaching, and personal contributions of the late Robert Divine to the field of diplimatic history. 

• 
• 9/19/2021
  

  We are All Becoming Cassandras: Leaders Must Heed the People on Climate, Disarmament, and Pandemic

  by Lawrence Wittner

  In classical myth, Cassandra was a lone prophet whose accurate predictions were ignored. Today, a growing share of humanity are playing the Cassandra role against a political and economic elite standing in the way of solutions to the threats of climate change, pandemic disease and nuclear annihilation.