Showing titles in Arms Control

Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter,” takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pentagon, and the vast chambers of Strategic Command to bring us the untold stories - based on exclusive interviews and previously classified documents - of how America’s presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and just barely avoided nuclear war from the dawn of the atomic age until today.

Not since the last American troops left Vietnam have we faced such a sudden vacuum in our foreign policy—not only of authority, but also of explanations of what happened, and what the future holds. Few analysts are better poised to address this moment than Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, intellectuals and critics whose work spans generations and continents.

The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico’s powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren’t often connected in our heated discussions of gun control - but they should be. In Ioan Grillo’s groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.

In 1983, American Astronomer & Scientist, Carl Sagan commented, referring to the Cold War, which, as a rehash of the 1960s had once again reached a crescendo in the early 1980s after the failed détente of 1970s, "Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger." This is the comprehensive and complete story of Cold War strategic rivalry between the East & West, spanning across Land, Air, Sea and Space realms;and told from ...

Part 2 of the series analyses as to how; after the transition from nuclear to the thermonuclear weapons for mankind, within less than a decade of the onset of the Atomic Age; the focus across superpowers shifted towards miniaturization of nuclear warheads and development of novel and difficult to detect & track strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs), which witnessed the emergence of ICBMs and SLBMs, after nuclear-tipped torpedoes, thereby, further increasing the risks of nuclear warfare & holocaust manifold while simultaneously also reducing the reaction times considerably. The same ...

The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.

The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam.

On July 16, 1945, the 'Trinity' Test effectively brought about the transformation of the ‘American Prometheus’ into the ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ along with an expedited dawn of the nuclear age as the Laws of Physics were successfully reappraised by the Homo Sapiens. However, the initial premise and the hopeful promise of the creation of a ‘Super Weapon’ to end all wars has remained more or less a chimera for humanity even after 7+ decades of its genesis. The dawn of the nuclear age; following Trinity and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; unleashed the Cold War-...

This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts. Drawing from more than 75 in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.

On July 16, 1945, at 05:25 AM, just half-an-hour prior to sunrise, the Second Sun rose in New Mexico’s night sky with the Trinity test which brilliantly lit up the dark sky with light so bright that it forced even a blind girl to literally sit-up from sleep and notice the resulting flash even 100 miles away from the Alamogordo test site. The first nuclear age, thus, witnessed the detonation & testing of nuclear weapons on land, below surface, under water as well as in space; as humanity was still coming to grips with the immense power of the atom which is almost 100 million times more ...

Three decades after Khomeinist thugs raided the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Westerners are puzzled by Iran. As a nation, Iranians still like the United States. As a revolutionary regime, however, Iran is the principal bastion of anti-Americanism. From Ayatollah Khomeini's "historic mission" to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's messianic campaign in the name of the "Hidden Imam," The Persian Night depicts a trajectory that will most likely lead to war.

The Gaza War is often reported in a historical vacuum, but Juan Cole has been following events in Gaza for a quarter of a century. This book collects his public commentary about Gaza since 2006 and through the fall of 2024, for Salon, the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch and The Nation, Truthdig, and Informed Comment. Since for all its virtues, journalism generally does a poor job of providing the historical background and deep context for current events, the author therefore made a choice of pieces that shed light on the background and significance of the hot war that began in October 2023...

War and conflict in Colombia, for almost four decades, have cost the country thousands of lives, communities ravaged by violence, indigenous population and small farmers expelled from their land, and a divided country by rogue politics and impunity. Civil war is the last resort to solving failed policies by using violence and revolutionary means. It inflicts pain and suffering on millions affected by it. The conflict in Colombia was a mere case of “bellum omnium contra omnes.” The state, the paramilitary, the drug cartels, and the left-wing guerrillas – were entangled in one of the ...

When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz said that it was “the poker game with the highest stakes ever played”. It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently available archives of both sides - top-secret archives of the Kremlin, the personal papers of Gorbachev, as well as Reagan's archives.

Many countries face challenges of migration, terrorism, climate change, and the spread of fast-paced technology. Those who are sitting around the table will change the course of history and redefine how we solve critical problems. A Seat at the Table: Women, Diplomacy, and Lessons for the World shares the impact of gender-diversified leadership and why varied voices lead to stronger resolutions and enhanced team dynamics.

What is it like to wrestle with a Dragon or dance with a Lady? This is the challenge all U2 pilots must face when flying the Lockheed U2 Dragon Lady. When first seeing the aircraft, you think this plane looks awkward, unsettling, and out of its league with the other pretty aircraft on the ramp. It resembles an albatross with its hundred and four feet of wing. It has only two wheels like a bicycle, one in the front and one in the back. How can it stay upright on the runway? Some may describe it as an ugly duckling on the ground, but she was a beautiful lady to me. But in the air, the Dragon ...

The United States is more vulnerable than ever to an EMP attack that could shut down the country overnight, resulting in tens of millions of deaths and a 19th-century lifestyle for Americans for the foreseeable future, says a new book, A Nation Forsaken, written by a long-time national security expert. Even worse, the threat doesn't just come from terrorists, but from unpreventable solar activity - and a new peak period is on the way,

In Dangerous Ground, Scott Ritter, one of the world's leading experts on arms control, tells a bold and revisionist account of the inseparable histories of the post-World War II American presidency and nuclear weapons. Unpacking 60 years of nuclear history, Ritter shows that nuclear weapons have become such a fixture that they define present-day America on economic, military, political, and moral grounds.

"Shielding Skies: The Evolution, Efficacy, and Limitations of the Iron Dome Defense System" provides a comprehensive analysis of one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world. This book delves into the evolution of the Iron Dome, from its conception to its current state, exploring the technological advancements and strategic considerations that have shaped its development. It examines the system's effectiveness in intercepting and neutralizing incoming threats, drawing on real-world examples and case studies from various conflict zones. Additionally, the book critically ...

On a tranquil summer night in July 2012, a trio of elderly peace activists infiltrated the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Nicknamed the "Fort Knox of Uranium", Y-12 was reputedly one of the most secure nuclear weapons facilities in the world, a bastion of warhead parts that harbored hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium - enough to power thousands of nuclear bombs. The activists - a house painter, a Vietnam war veteran, and an 82-year-old Catholic nun - penetrated the complex's exterior with alarming ease.