The Absolute Weapon Revisited; Nuclear Arms and the Emerging International Order

Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000. First Paperback Edition [Edition]. Third printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good/No DJ issued. viii, 312 pages. Notes. Contributors. Index. T. V. Paul is Associate Professor of Political Science, McGill University, and the author of Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers. James J. Wirtz is Associate Professor of Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, and the author of The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure at War. Richard Harknett is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, and the author of numerous articles on security affairs. Contributors include: George Herman Quester, American political science professor. Fellow Center Advanced Study Behavioral Sciences, 1974-1975. Served with United States Air Force, 1958-1961. Member Council Foreign Relations, Institute Strategic Studies, American Political Science Association. Colin S. Gray (December 29, 1943 - February 27, 2020) was a British-American writer on geopolitics and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, where he was the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies. In addition, he was a Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy. Gray was educated at the University of Oxford. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hudson Institute, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. He also served as a defence adviser both to the British and U.S. governments. Gray served from 1982 until 1987 in the Reagan Administration's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. Gray published 30 books on military history and strategic studies, and numerous articles. Soon after nuclear weapons devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bernard Brodie and several colleagues wrote The Absolute Weapon, which predicted that the atomic bomb would revolutionize international politics. In The Absolute Weapon Revisited, a group of noted scholars explores the contemporary role of nuclear weapons in the world after the end of the Cold War. Although superpower rivalry has faded, the complexities of living with nuclear weapons remain. Working from different theoretical perspectives, the contributors offer a set of provocative assessments of nuclear deterrence and the risks of nuclear proliferation and disarmament. Some argue that assured destruction capabilities remain important, while others argue that nuclear deterrence will be increasingly irrelevant. Arms control, crisis stability, and continuity and change in nuclear doctrine as well as new issues such as virtual nuclear states and information warfare, are some of the issues addressed by the contributors to The Absolute Weapon Revisited. The contributors are Zachary Davis, Colin S. Gray, Richard J. Harknett, Ashok Kapur, Robert Manning, William C. Martel, Eric Mlyn, John Mueller, J. V. Paul, George Quester, and James J. Wirtz. This book will be of interest to scholars, policymakers and students interested in issues of nuclear strategy and deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament, international security and peace studies.