nuclear weapons 
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SOURCE: Retro Report
4/26/2021
Lesson: The Cold War and the Nuclear Weapons Threat
The Cold War may be over, but an arms race continues, even as safeguards once in place have fallen away. Some experts worry that nuclear weapons may pose a greater threat to humanity than ever before.
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4/25/2021
The Fateful Choice: Nuclear Arms Race or Nuclear Weapons-Free World
by Lawrence Wittner
Nuclear-armed nations face a choice: to push ahead with a wasteful course that raises the risk of nuclear war, or to lead toward a world without nuclear weapons.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
4/16/2021
The Book That Stopped an Outbreak of Nuclear War
Serhii Plokhy adds new insight to the Cuban Missile Crisis by examining the domestic political context of the Soviet Union and the political incentives toward nuclear brinksmanship.
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SOURCE: WGBH
3/29/2021
‘Atomic Cover-Up’ Reveals A Previously Unseen Story Of Human Devastation
The new documentary "Atomic Cover-Up" reminds that "people of goodwill can differ over whether we did the right thing in order to bring a terrible war to its conclusion or if, instead, we committed unforgivable crimes against humanity. What none of us can do is look away."
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3/28/2021
Can Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Overcome the Opposition?
by Lawrence Wittner
People who want to end the nightmare of nuclear destruction that has haunted the world since 1945 should consider widening the popular appeal of nuclear weapons abolition by strengthening the UN’s ability to provide international security.
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SOURCE: Greg Mitchell
3/22/2021
“Atomic Cover-Up” Premieres
by Greg Mitchell
Documentarian Greg Mitchell's new movie about the two film crews – one Japanese, one American – who recorded the human toll of the Hiroshima bombing and had their footage suppressed has premiered. Find out how to view it.
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SOURCE: War on the Rocks
3/16/2021
The Mythical War Scare of 1983
by Simon Miles
"Nuclear weapons are not without danger, to be sure. An overinflation of the risk of Able Archer should not be necessary to remind policymakers of that point."
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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.