Glory and Terror
Subtitle: The Growing Nuclear Danger
Contributors: Anthony Lewis (Preface)
Publisher: New York Review Books; Distributed by Publishers Group West
Published: July 31, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 44
ISBN-13: 9781590171301
Subjects: Technology; 21st century; International Relations - Treaties; United States; Politics / Current Events; Politics - Current Events; Political Freedom & Security - International Secur; USA; United States - 21st Century; Military Policy; Political Science; Political Science / General; Political Science / Political Freedom & Security / Terrorism; Current Events; History; Military Science; Science/Mathematics; Arms negotiation & control; Central government policies; Nuclear Weapons; International Relations - Arms Control; History: American; Politics and government; Ballistic missile defenses
First sentence: THE UNITED STATES POSSESSES AN ENORMOUS nuclear arsenal, left over from the days of the cold war.
Description: "Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, writes that America "has an unprecedented opportunity to begin to escape from the risk of nuclear annihilation." But, he warns, President Bush is not only letting this opportunity slip away, he is, in some respects, moving in the wrong direction." "Bush's abrogation of the 1972 treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile systems is one example. Another, equally worrying, is the "revival of the idea of developing nuclear weapons for use, rather than solely for deterrence." The proposed development of low-yield, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons for attacking underground bunkers "would be foolishness on a scale that even medieval knights might find implausible," Weinberg writes." "Such a weapon would be "one sort of folly to which war is especially well suited: the lust for glory." The temptation to prize military glamour over sensible strategy has always been with us, as Weinberg shows in examples from the Middle Ages onward, but may have especially dangerous consequences in an age of high-tech arms."--BOOK JACKET.