nuclear weapons

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• SOURCE: The Asia-Pacific Journal
  2/15/2021
  

  Will the Nuclear Powers Ever Be Willing to Forgo Their Nuclear Weapons?

  by Lawrence Wittner

  The collapse of the Soviet Union has paradoxically created a climate where the perceived danger of nuclear weapons has waned, taking energy from a growing movement toward arms control and disarmament. 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  2/18/2021
  

  Apocalypse Averted

  "Newly declassified documents reveal that in November 1983, at the height of Cold War tensions, the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to nuclear war than historians—and even many officials at the time—have known until now."

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• 1/17/2021
  

  The Great Evasion

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Joe Biden should reverse the nation's long dereliction of duty in leading the world toward nuclear disarmament and reducing the threat of nuclear war.

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• SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
  12/16/2020
  

  Virtual Event: Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis 12/21

  The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is typically viewed as marking a first step toward nuclear arms control. But Toshihiro Higuchi argues that it was also one of the first international agreements that addressed a truly global, human-induced environmental problem. He discusses his new book for the Washington History Seminar on Thursday, 12/21 at 4:00 PM EDT.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/30/2020
  

  Iranian American Historian On Assassination Of Iranian Nuclear Scientist

  Abbas Milani of Stanford University discusses the US-Iran relationship and the shocking assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist last week. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/31/2020
  

  George Shultz Speaks Out for Renewing U.S. Leadership Overseas

  The long-serving Secretary of State's new book laments the unwillingness of current leadership to embrace the international cooperation and diplomacy needed to solve the world's largest problems.   

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• 10/18/2020
  

  "The Silent Guns of Two Octobers" Reviewing a New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

  by Sheldon M. Stern

  Longtime JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern offers a review of a new book on the diplomatic resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Decoded
  10/13/2020
  

  The Cuban Missile Crisis: Once More Unto the Breach

  by Sheldon M. Stern

  As the anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis approaches, longtime JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern reviews Theodore Voorhees Jr.'s new book, which argues that Kennedy and Kruschev each assumed personal control of negotiations in a way that rendered threats of war from hawkish subordinates all bark and no bite.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/5/2020
  

  The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out

  "There should, it seems, be a useful lesson to be learned from that frantic afternoon. But what, in God’s name, is it?"

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• SOURCE: Contingent
  10/8/2020
  

  The Desert Keeps Receipts

  by B. Erin Cole

  A meditation on the preservation of the Nevada Test Site in graphic form.

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• SOURCE: National History Center
  10/1/2020
  

  Washington History Seminar 10/2: Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962

  The National History Center, The Woodrow Wilson Center and Politics & Prose Books prouldy host Martin Sherwin on Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962. Friday, October 2, 6:00 PM. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  9/24/2020
  

  This Vanishing Moment and Our Vanishing Future: John Hersey, Hiroshima, and the End of World

  by Nick Turse

  Lesley Blume's new book Fallout describes how John Hersey and his editors punctured official myths about the Hiroshima attacks to write his influential book. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/25/2020
  

  New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

  Although the Soviet Union succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb more than three times more powerful than the largest U.S.-tested weapon, most military leaders in the cold war sought to make the weapons smaller for strategic reasons. Recently declassified Soviet video shows the test. 

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  8/24/2020
  

  A Call for Antiracist Action and Accountability in the US Nuclear Community

  The history of nuclear power and nuclear weapons has historically been entangled with the history of colonialism and global white supremacy. 

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• 8/16/2020
  

  Who Shaped the Story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

  by William Johnston

  Most Americans' knowledge of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reflects how American leaders in 1945 wanted the atomic bombings remembered more than their real history. 

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• 8/9/2020
  

  Honor a Hiroshima Survivor's Legacy: Ban Nuclear Testing and Move to Disarmament

  by William Lambers

  Miyoko Matsubara survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and became an advocate for abolishing nuclear weapons. The United States Senate can honor her and all victims and survivors of nuclear war by ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  Witnessing Nuclear Carnage, Then Devoting Her Life to Peace

  Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima 75 years ago this month, has used the power of her personal story to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  After Atomic Bombings, These Photographers Worked Under Mushroom Clouds

  Photographs commissioned by Japanese newspapers in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were suppressed by American occupation authorities in both countries. A new book offers Americans a new opportunity to grasp the physical and human toll of nuclear weapons. 

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• SOURCE: Stars and Stripes
  8/4/2020
  

  ‘Irresistible Weapon’: Historians Say American History Oversimplifies Atomic Bombings On Japan

  Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., author and blogger on atomic bomb history, said time has smoothed the wrinkles and simplified the facts that are often taught about the first and, so far, only wartime use of atomic weapons.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/5/2020
  

  In The 75 Years Since Hiroshima, Nuclear Testing Killed Untold Thousands

  The Marshall Islands were exposed to the daily equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima-sized explosions between 1946 and 1958, if the impact were spread evenly.