Class
Schedule week 1 ~ 2 ~
3 ~ 4 ~ 5
~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8
~ 9 ~ 10
Week
One: Introduction
March 31: What
are nuclear weapons? How did they come into existence? How destructive
are they? What kind of challenge do they pose to the human race?
How has that challenge been interpreted? What responses have been
adopted?
-
The Frisch/Peierls Memoranda
of March 1940, in Robert Serber, The Los
Alamos Primer, (University of California Press, 1992) pp.
79-88.
- Lynn Eden,
“City on Fire,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Jan-Feb 2004, pp. 33-43, at: http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04eden.html
- The Federation
of American Scientists provides basic information about nuclear
weapons. http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/index.html
-
Website devoted to Werner Heisenberg: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg
Week Two: Two Current Crises:
Iraq and North Korea
April 5:
What attempts has Iraq made to build nuclear weapons? Why has the
Iraqi nuclear program been unacceptable to the international community?
What disagreements have existed about the methods of disarming Iraq?
- Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction. The Assessment of the British Government, December
2002 , at: http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/reps/iraq/iraqdossier.pdf
- President
Bush's remarks on 3/17/03, at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html
- Report of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. WMD in Iraq: Evidence
and Implications (January 2004), pp. 1-61, at: http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/home.htm
- David Kay’s
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, January 28, 2004
at: http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/Iraq/kaytestimony.pdf
April 7: What attempts has North Korea made to build nuclear
weapons? Why has the North Korean nuclear program been unacceptable
to the international community? Why is this a crisis? What policy
should the U.S. pursue to try to end this crisis?
- Ashton B.
Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive
Defense (Brookings, 1999) pp. 123-142.
- Michael Armacost,
Daniel Okimoto, Gi-Wook Shin, Addressing the North Korea Nuclear
Challenge, Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2003, at http://iis-db.stanford.edu/viewpub.lhtml?pid=20180&cntr=aparc
- A good deal
of information about the North Korean nuclear program is available
at http://globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/index.html
Week Three: Hiroshima
April 12:
Nuclear weapons have been used only twice as weapons of war. Why
and how did the United States decide to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki?
- McGeorge Bundy,
Danger and Survival, Vintage Books,
1990, pp. 54-97.
- Barton Bernstein,
"The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered," Foreign
Affairs, Jan/Feb 1995, pp. 135-152.
- Michael Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars (Basic Books,
1977) pp. 251-267.
April 14:
There are different ways to approach the history of nuclear weapons.
One important approach is through documentary film. We shall watch
and discuss a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of
Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
- The
Day after Trinity
Week Four: The Failure of International
Control and the Emergence of Deterrence
April 19:
During World War II some of the key individuals in the Manhattan
Project made recommendations designed to head off a postwar nuclear
arms race. After the war negotiations were held under UN auspices
to bring atomic energy under international control.
- Abraham Pais,
Niels Bohr's Times (Oxford U.P.)
1991, pp. 479-508.
- The Franck
Report (www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Franck.shtml)
- The Acheson-Lilienthal
Report, at http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.Acheson-Lilienthal.html
- The
Baruch Plan (http://www.nuclearfiles.org/redocuments/1946/460614-baruch.html)
April 21: The theory of deterrence began to develop in response
to the assumptions underlying the effort at international control
of atomic energy.
- Jacob Viner,
" The Implications of the Atomic Bomb for International Relations,"
in Viner, International Economics
(The Free Press, 1951) pp. 300-309.
- Albert Wohlstetter,
"The Delicate Balance of Terror," Foreign
Affairs, January 1959, pp. 211-234.
- Thomas Schelling,
"The Threat That Leaves Something to Chance," in his Strategy
of Conflict (Oxford U.P., 1963), pp. 187-203.
Week Five: Critiques of Deterrence
April 26:
One of the criticisms of deterrence theory is that it treats the
problem of nuclear war in a very abstract way. Several films have
been made to bring home to people what a nuclear war would be like.
- The
War Game (BBC, 1968)
April 28:
Film is of course not the only medium that tries to convey the reality
of nuclear war.
- Schell, The
Fate of the Earth
Week Six: Nuclear Crises and
Arms Control
May 3: The
Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous of the nuclear crises.
- Bundy, op.cit.,
pp. 390-462.
- Correspondence
between Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro.
May 5: Beginning in the late 1950s the United States and
the Soviet Union adopted measures of crisis management and signed
arms control treaties in the effort to present nuclear war.
- Lawrence Freedman,
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
(Macmillan 1981) pp. 190-207.
- Alexander
George, "U.S.-Soviet Efforts to Cooperate in Crisis Management
and Crisis avoidance," in Alexander George, Philip J. Farley
and Alexander Dallin, eds., U.S.-Soviet
Security Cooperation, (Oxford U.P., 1988) pp. 581-599.
- Philip J.
Farley, "Strategic Arms Control, 1967-87," in Alexander
George et al., op.cit., pp. 215-253.
Week Seven: Defenses and Abolition
May 10:
How feasible are defenses against nuclear weapons? One major debate
took place in the early 1980s - the "Star Wars" debate.
- Fred S. Hoffman,
"The SDI in U.S. Nuclear Strategy," International
Security, Summer 1985 (available through JSTOR)
- Sidney D.
Drell, Philip J. Farley, and David Holloway, "Prerving the
ABM Treaty," International Security
Fall 1984, (available through JSTOR)
May 12: Proposals for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
- George Shultz,
"What Really Happened at Reykjavik," in his Turmoil
and Triumph (Scribner's, 1993) pp. 751-780.
- Schell, The
Abolition
- Canberra Commission
on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (www.dfat.gov.au/cc/cchome.html)
Week Eight: Proliferation and
its Effects
May 17:
Why do states acquire nuclear weapons? What impact does the spread
of nuclear weapons have on international politics and the risk of
war? What efforts have been undertaken to prevent the spread of
nuclear weapons?
- Michael May,
"Nuclear Weapons Supply and Demand," American
Scientist, Nov-Dec 1994, pp. 526-537.
- Kenneth Waltz,
"Nuclear Myths and Political Realities," APSR,
September 1990, pp. 731-745 (available on line through JSTOR)
- Scott D. Sagan,
"The Perils of Proliferation," International
Security, Spring 1994, pp. 66-107 (available on line through
JSTOR)
May 19: What has the impact of nuclear weapons been on relations
between India and Pakistan?
- From
Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report
(Sage Publications, 2000) pp. 183-213.
- Gregory S.
Jones, From Testing to Deploying Nuclear
Forces: The Hard Choices Facing India and Pakistan (Rand
Corporation, 2000)
Week Nine: Reforming the Nonproliferation
Regime
May 24:
The nuclear nonproliferation regime has come under serious challenge
in recent years by states that remain outside the treaty and by
states that have signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but
have conducted clandestine nuclear weapons programs.
- The Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty at www.nuclearfiles.org/docs/1968/680701-npt.html
- Andrew Koch,
“The Nuclear Network – Khanfessions of a proliferators,
Jane’s Defense Weekly, February 25, 2004, at:
http://www4.janes.com
- David Albright
and Corey Hinderstein, “The Centrifuge Connection,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2004, pp.
61-66, at www.thebulletin.org
- Drell and
Goodby, pp. 29-102.
May
26: How might the nuclear nonproliferation regime be strengthened?
Do recent shifts in U.S. national security strategy enhance the
regime?
- Findings
of the Nuclear Posture Review (DoD, January 9, 2002). Excerpts
from the Review may be found at www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm
- The National
Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002),
at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
- National Strategy
to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (December 2002), at http://www.whitehouse.gov/response/index.html
- New Measures
to Counter the Threat of WMD, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040211-4.html
- Mohamad ElBaradei,
“Saving Ourselves from Self-Destruction,” New York
Times, February 12, 2004, at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2004/ebNYT20040212.html
Week Ten: Where Do We Stand Now?
May 31st:
Memorial Day, no class.
June 2:
How have we avoided nuclear war?
- Thomas Schelling,
"A Half Century Without Nuclear War," The
Key Reporter, Spring 2000, pp. 3-5.
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