During World War II and the Cold War, the United States developed a complex of industrial facilities for the research, production, and testing of nuclear weapons. In addition, the United States government supported the development of nuclear energy for commercial applications and conducted research in high-energy physics and other basic sciences, as well as medical diagnostics and treatment. Th...

ipg 4/2006 he us government’s plan to lift the nuclear embargo on India runs counter to global efforts against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The acceptance of India into the circle of recognized nuclear weapon states would prove that universal and generally binding principles no longer form the basis of global non-proliferation efforts but rather that Western countries are increasingly ...

Future arms-control and disarmament treaties could place numerical limits on all categories of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of weapon states, including tactical weapons, non-deployed weapons, and weapons awaiting dismantlement. Verification of such agreements is likely to require new types of inspection equipment — but also new verification protocols. This paper offers a set of definitions a...

Modern China has been linked with the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and missile weapons technology to states of proliferation concern, and its compliance with arms control and disarmament is seen as key to the effectiveness of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation efforts. In this context, the answer to Gerald Segal’s question, “Does China really matter?” is most definitely, ...

Much ink has been spilled about apprehensions in Israel and the West that Iran could develop nuclear weapons, prompting calls in American, Israeli, and now even Arab circles for the application of military force to stop the mullahs. Yet, there is another, more immediate nuclear-related danger to the Jewish state that has received far less attention: the possibility that Israel's adversaries cou...

nuclear tests of May 1998 put to rest years of speculation as to whether the two countries, long suspected of developing covert weapons capabilities, would openly exercise their so-called nuclear option. The dust had hardly settled from the tests, however, when a arestorm of debate erupted over nuclear weapons’ regional security implications. Some observers argued that nuclearization would stab...

Dr. Harald Müller is Director of the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. An earlier draft of this paper was prepared for the Aspen Strategy Group Workshop on the “Challenges of Nuclear and Biological Weapons Proliferation,” Aspen, Colorado, August 10-15, 1996. All nuclear weapons programs that concern us today date back to the time of the East-West conflict. The same applies to chemical and ...

to an apogee of mass murder, with widespread killing of military personnel and civilians; the indiscriminate aerial bombing of cities such as London, Dresden, and Tokyo; and the detonation of single bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These nuclear bombs caused some 200,000 deaths immediately and hundreds of thousands of injuries, many resulting in death in succeeding months and in permanent phy...

In Germany and Turkey they viewed scenes that were particularly distressing. On the runway stood a German (or Turkish) quick-reaction alert airplane loaded with nuclear weapons and with a foreign pilot in the cockpit. The airplane was ready to take off at the earliest warning, and the nuclear weapons were fully operational. The only evidence of U.S. control was a lonely 18-year-old sentry armed...