South Africa's Weapons of Mass Destruction offers an in-depth view of the secret development and voluntary disarmament of South Africa's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons program, Project ...Coast. Helen E. Purkitt and Stephen F. Burgess explore how systems used for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in South Africa were acquired and established beyond the gaze of international and domestic political actors. On the basis of archival evidence from Project Coast and their own extensive interviews with military and political officials, Purkitt and Burgess consider what motivates countries to acquire and build such powerful weaponry and examine when and how decisions are made to dismantle a military arsenal voluntarily. Questions such as how to destroy weapons safely and keep them from reappearing on international markets are considered along with comparative strategies for successful disarmament in other nation-states.
Grappling with the Bomb is a history of Britain’s 1950s program to test the hydrogen bomb, code name Operation Grapple. In 1957–58, nine atmospheric nuclear tests were held at Malden Island and ...Christmas Island—today, part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Nearly 14,000 troops travelled to the central Pacific for the UK nuclear testing program—many are still living with the health and environmental consequences. Based on archival research and interviews with nuclear survivors, Grappling with the Bomb presents i-Kiribati woman Sui Kiritome, British pacifist Harold Steele, businessman James Burns, Fijian sailor Paul Ah Poy, English volunteers Mary and Billie Burgess and many other witnesses to Britain’s nuclear folly.
Concerns about CBRN (chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear) weapons have featured prominently in both political debates and media reporting about the ongoing threat from al Qaeda since 9/11. ...This book provides a chronological account of al Qaeda's efforts to acquire a CBRN weapon capability, and the evolution of the al Qaeda leadership's approach to actually using CBRN weapons, set against the context of the politicisation of the threat of CBRN terrorism in US security debates. Ben Cole explores how the inherently political nature of terrorist CBRN threats has helped to shape al Qaeda's approach to CBRN weapons, and shows how the heightened political sensitivities surrounding the threat have enabled some governments to manipulate it in order to generate domestic and international support for controversial policies, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Abstract Land-based delivery platform technology for artillery weapons is a comprehensive technology to study the adaptability of artillery weapon and land-based delivery platform, and its function ...is to is to provide transportation and loading platform for artillery and realize tactical mobility and battle mobility of artillery. This paper reviews the important technical progress of China’s artillery weapons in land-based delivery platform technology, contrasts and analyses the research progress at home and abroad, and outlooks the development trend and countermeasures in the field of land-based delivery platform technology for China’s artillery weapons.
Prominent research holds that the use of weapons of mass destruction is taboo. But how strong are these norms? Investigating this question among the mass public, we argue that some citizens actually ...support taboo policies in private but are unwilling to express counter-normative opinions openly due to fear of social sanction. These insincere norm-holders are difficult to identify empirically because they are observationally equivalent to sincere norm-holders in direct-question surveys. To overcome this challenge, we use a list design, which allows survey respondents to indirectly express sensitive opinions. The results from three list experiments show that between 10% and 17% of Americans falsify their preferences over chemical weapons use when asked directly. In an extension, we explore our framework in the realm of nuclear weapons and elite behavior. Our findings advance a specific debate on the strength of weapons taboos, while our conceptualization of insincere norm-holders and methodological application have broader implications for how scholars might think about and measure norms in international politics.
As states continue to pursue nuclear weaponry, nuclear testing remains an important political issue in the twenty-first century. This survey examines how and why the U.S. conducted nuclear tests from ...1945 through 1963 and the resulting influence on key questions from normalization and de-normalization up to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Now facing an unprecedented configuration of threats, Israel's leaders must decide whether to continue their nuclear ambiguity policy and work to develop a strategic posture with a refined nuclear ...strategy. This book examines Israel's evolving strategy and explains how it underscores the complexity of strategic interactions in the Middle East.
Sarah Bridger examines the ethical debates that tested the U.S. scientific community during the Cold War, and scientists' contributions to military technologies and strategic policymaking, from the ...dawning atomic age through the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) in the 1980s, which sparked cross-generational opposition among scientists.
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