Customer Reviews

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda

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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ohio State professor John Mueller has his work cut out for him: in the post-9/11 world, with North Korea and Iran working toward developing nuclear weapons, and with al Qaeda's Osama bin laden and Ayman al-Zawahari still hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan somewhere, no doubt plotting against us, Mueller argues in "Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to al-Qaeda" that nuclear weapons are expensive, largely useless, and virtually impossible for terrorists to steal or build.

He develops his analysis in three parts. Part 1 looks at the actual effect of nuclear weapons and, along the way, points out that the casual lumping of chemical and biological weapons with nuclear ones into a category of "weapons of mass destruction" is something of a hysterical overreaction; conventional weapons (bullets, bombs) are far more effective at killing than chemical or biological weapons, and thus it doesn't really make sense to classify the latter with nuclear weapons. He's very persuasive on this point. As for nuclear weapons, they're bad, but Mueller explains why the detonation of one or even two atomic bombs wouldn't destroy the country. In short, we shouldn't overestimate the damage that a nuclear weapon would cause.

In Part 2, he turns his attention to history and suggests that nuclear weapons have played very little role in international politics and diplomacy, apart from wasting colossal resources and talent. He suggests that Japan would have surrendered even without the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, points out that Argentina had no qualms about starting the Falkland Islands war with Britain despite the latter's nuclear arsenal, and argues that anti-proliferation efforts have largely failed (and if anything, pushed rogue nations toward developing nuclear weapons). Since nukes are generally useless and expensive, he finds it not surprising that countries like Canada, Japan, and others -- which could easily have them if they wanted -- haven't bothered with them.

Finally, in Part 3, Mueller suggests that we spend far too much time obsessing about what will happen if/when al Qaeda gets a hold of a nuke, and far little time thinking about how unlikely this is. Getting a nuclear nation to give up a nuke is pretty unrealistic, he argues, because no one is going to want to be identified as the nation that armed terrorists. His argument here depends critically on what he calls "nuclear forensics" -- the ability to identify where a nuclear weapon that has exploded came from. Expecting terrorists to build their own atomic bomb while hiding out in caves is silly, he contends as well.

I found this a VERY comforting book to read, for obvious reasons. It's well-argued and written with a bit of wit (example: "There is something decidedly worse than being a disgruntled Russian scientist, and that is being a dead disgruntled Russian scientist."), so that it's a fast read despite the weight of the ideas. At the same time, while this book *should* be persuasive, it didn't quite close the deal for me. First, I'll admit that it's hard to feel at ease about nuclear terrorism, because even if it's a very small chance, it seems like a really bad outcome; Mueller can argue effectively that it's virtually zero probability, but still, it's not zero. Now, his point is that we shouldn't let near zero probabilities dictate our policies, and that at least is persuasive.

However, Mueller also relies on the nuclear forensics, yet says that this field is still developing. If it doesn't develop enough -- or if nuclear states don't know about it or don't believe it -- or worse yet, simply aren't rational, then there's no guarantee that deterrence will continue to work.

So, the upshot is, this is a very important book to read, as it's swimming against the tides. You'll feel better, even if, like me, you aren't fully persuaded.

Atomic Obsession is a book that produces contradictions. It manages to both make its case and miss its mark at the same time.

The strongest points of the book are the scientific, the evaluation of the actual damage the atomic bomb. In terms of quantitative terms he is right on the money. His evaluation of the kinds of damage an actual terrorist attack would do to the country is also pretty sober and should be required reading for those seized in panic.

His evaluation of the actual difficulties involved for either a rogue nation or a terrorist organization is also pretty good. In particular his 20 tasks that a terrorist has to accomplish in order to deliver the bomb is first rate and I certainly hope our foes ignore his cost benefit analysis on some of these issues.

The book gets weaker when it deals with certain historical and political situations. He tends toward historical revisionism in dealing with Japan and WW II and this points on the fallacy of panic over nuclear war and the soviet threat during the cold war comes chiefly through hindsight, yet he fails to notes the failures in hindsight of those who assured us that the Soviets were strong and here to stay.

His ignorance of the Soviet Unions involvement "Nuclear Freeze" movement is horrifying. Yet his information on Chemical and biological war in history are again must reads, as he soberly takes a look at them in their historical context. He gives both Reagan and Cheney some of their due and he does correctly state that rouge nations will often use the "nuclear" threat to get financial and political advantage, yet he also totally discounts the religious motivation that makes some actors less than rational today.

What I think he really undersells however is the truth that a lot of the reason why these things have failed has been the "obsessive" efforts to prevent them. The attention and the training that this threat, however small, has been given has not only discouraged those who would attempt it but has also led to the capture and neutralization of lesser deadly threats.

In short his book could just as surely be an advice book to our foes against the allure of Nuclear attack as it is warning us of panic and a poor use of resources. As we have more resources the status quo would seem to be better as their resources represent a larger percentage of what they can spare than ours ever will.

To sum up on basic facts he is excellent, on political points and historical revision not so well. The odd thing is I don't think the author was trying to be ideological at all, in fact reading the book it is impossible to think that it was deliberate.

I've never had such a hard time rating a book. The book is so well written and the parts that are correct are SO good that it is a must read, but the parts that are wrong are just so wrong I can't believe the same author wrote them! I think this author should go on the road with his critics debating these issues a lot of good would come of it.

My judgment: There are too many issues with this book to give it more than 3 starts, but it is worth buying due to the important arguments that should not be ignored.

John Mueller writes this book with a fascinating premise---those nuclear weapons we've been concerned about all of these years? Well, you can stop worrying---they aren't as big a danger to the world as you thought.

I likely would not have bought this book as I figured it was a screed against the perceived obsession with war on the right, and perhaps an anti-atomic book. I was pleasantly surprised to find some well reasoned discussion on atomic weapons and their respective place in this world. I have come away from the book not entirely clear on the author's politics, just that he feels both Democrats and Republicans have equally used the atomic fear to funnel more power to themselves (which would likely put him in Ron Paul's camp on foreign policy, but I did not read anything to indicate that).

While I may not agree with its every conclusion, the general premise is a sound one and one that we hear in public policy all the time. Can nuclear weapons kill a lot of people? Yes---but so can airplanes, bombs, bullets, etc. The firebombing of Dresden killed far more than the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The premise is that as a weapon of war, nuclear weaponry takes far more maintenance and money than it is worth as a strategic weapon. A great comparison is made to Hitler's V-weapons, large scary looking rockets that diverted his resources and did not do appreciable damage. The author says that just as Hitler would have been better off building more airplanes and fewer rockets, so would modern militaries find other conventional investment more useful and damaging in war. Did you know that the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima didn't even take out the bridges? Much of the death was caused by flash fires on old dry wooden huts that made the city a tinderbox. Newer buildings suffered broken glass, but not instant "vaporization".

The danger of terrorists setting off a nuke? Why use a nuclear weapon when 19 guys with box-cutters could do so much more damage. The steps to actually setting off a nuclear device are so complex that there are easier ways to kill. And a dirty bomb? Leaving the area in a slow and methodical manner is a lot safer, and dangerous fallout levels are greatly exaggerated by our EPA. Every city has a certain level of background radiation, and a slight rise over normal is considered dangerous, even when that slight rise is LESS than other cities in the world where people live normally. For instance, a city with a normal background radiation of 4mSv rising to 5mSv is considered uninhabitable due to radiation damage, but there are cities that normally sit at 7, and even 15+ mSv with no ill effects.

The author argues persuasively that our mania over controlling nuclear weapons just makes them more desirable. Nuclear weapons mean a country is world leader, hence tin-pot dictators seek them. My own analogy--college kids often drink more beer when under 21 than over 21 (being illicit makes things seem cool). Plus, just because a country has nuclear weapons, doesn't mean they will be used. The same warnings were issued on China going nuclear (bet you forgot China has nukes) that are issued today on Iran. And the charge that with nukes, Saddam would control the middle east? The US has nukes, and we can't even control Baghdad! Israel used its nukes during 1973 as a threat to the US (support our defensive war, or we will have to resort to nukes). North Korea has developed Nukes, but similarly just uses them to blackmail the US for aid.

I do have some qualms with the book. Mostly, I do believe that in his zeal to allay fears over nuclear weapons, he glosses over the genuine threat posed by Iran. The point should be that it is not the weapon we should fear, but Iran itself, nuclear or not. Ditto for Al Qaeda. He tries to say that 9/11 shocked the Arab world and destroyed support for Al Qaeda. I think US predator drones shooting at their leaders likely hurt them far more than a general "loss of support in the Arab world". He basically says Ahmandinejad is a wind bag. This may be true, but those behind him have been planning Iran's rise to power for years. There is also quite a bit of revisionist history---assuming that Japan would have surrendered without the nuclear bomb (when even after Nagasaki, some elements wanted to keep fighting), and assuming that the Soviet Union was destined to fail (many said the Soviets would be here forever). He is correct in his assertion that the Soviets didn't want armed struggle with the US proper---they did operate through subverting society. To that extent, America's singular focus on the nuclear arms race made policy makers miss the more insidious infection of culture with communist ideas.

In summary, I am glad I read the book and feel I gained an appreciation for the fact that the nuclear threat itself is rather overblown. The central thesis that mere possession of nuclear weapons is not easy and not as important as general military power is well proven. The book is an important addition to the world scene, but augment your reading with books such as "The Devil We Know" on Iran, and others the present a more contextual and thorough treatment on WWII and the Cold War.

I have often been puzzled by the tremendous overreaction in the US to the 9/11 attacks. Sure, it was horrible, but the number of people directly affected just wasn't that huge (terrorism is a long way from being a major cause of death in the US). The media carry on about North Korea and Iran getting the Bomb as if it meant the end of the world. I found Mueller's book to be a breath of fresh air. Mueller makes it clear that, as weapons go, nuclear bombs are a waste of time and money. For the cost of a nuclear bomb, a country could purchase a tremendous number of conventional bombs--and those conventional bombs would be perfectly capable of causing more destruction than the nuclear bomb could. On top of that, conventional bombs are a lot easier to clean up after.

I work fairly close to the Pentagon, so the thought of becoming a nuclear casualty has crossed my mind. I had heard in the past that nuclear bombs required no more technical expertise than an ordinary physics graduate student would possess. Mueller makes it clear that isn't true. Nuclear weapons are quite tricky to build; not at all the sort of thing that a group of terrorists without the backing of a wealthy state is likely to be able to do. Yes, the risk of my being killed by a nuclear weapon is not zero and never will be. But it's close to zero.

Highly recommended.

The author writes his book based on his belief and premise that the United States spent an enormous amount of money on stock piling atomic weapons after World War II which he maintains was unnecessary. His main premise is that having such a large arsenal by the US did *not* prevent World War III. He maintains World War III would not have occurred regardless of how large a large stockpile of nuclear armaments the United States possessed. The only problem with the author's argument is that despite his wonderfully written book with excellent references and a fantastic bibliography, he can not actually PROVE that premise is a fact. The fact that the USA possessed these weapons this fact could very well have been a deterent to evil minded countries who had world domination in mind. The Soviet Union wanted to spread communism throughout the world. While they preferred an internal revolution that actually was NOT the case in taking over Central and Eastern Europe. The fact is FDR and Winston Churchill gave over Central and Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union through an agreement at the Yalta Conference. The Soviets did not have to even fight to dominate those countries. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution proved the Soviet Union was capable of crushing a nation and its citizens who rebelled against its domination. Another examples is the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis which had an uncertain outcome as President John F. Kennedy contemplated a confrontation with the Soviet Union. Fortunately no weapons were used but the U.S. had no idea just how far the Soviets would push the issue of aiming missles from Cuba at the United States. The author has done excellent research on this subject but all of it is *after* the results of the confrontation are known. The future was uncertain at the time.

While it is a fact that 65 years after World War II, there has not been World War III which the West had feared would happen after WWII, it does not follow as the author would have us believe, that this would have been the case even if the US did not possess the nuclear arsenal which it had stockpiled. Had the author predicted there would be no World War III in the early 1950s and had he put it in a time capsule, then opened it today with an accurate prediction, perhaps there would be some credibility to his statement. One could then take some of his thoughts seriously. After World War II, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was no way to predict what the Soviet Union would do if it were provoked. Even right now, there are evil minded countries who wish to destroy our way of life and force the West to live by their narrow religious beliefs. The author would even have us believe that atomic terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists is not a likely scenario. Again this certainly is not a proven fact. He concludes his book with this statement " ... when examined, the evidence of al-Qaeda's desire to go atomic and about its progress in accomplishing this exceedingly difficult task is remarkably skimpy, if not completely negligible. The scariest stuff - a decade's worth of loose nuke rumor and chatter and hype - seems to have no substance whatsoever. For the rest, there is perhaps reason for concern or at least interest. But alarm, and certainly hysteria, are scarcily called for." For my part, I don't see alarm or hysteria being the case on the part of the United States or other Western countries but having a reasonable ability to defend oneself against ALL POSSIBILITIES is the BEST DEFENSE.

There is a great deal of interesting material in the book which is the reason I give the book four stars. The author provides a well researched scholarly work but the major problem with this book is the author's conclusions. His conclusions do *not* logically follow the facts he provides which is the reason for deducting one star. There is little correlation between the facts and his conclusions. In fact, he seems to have started with a premise which seem to be "beliefs" and "feelings" which he tries to tie together with historical facts but the two just do not jive. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

For 35 years I've been involved in military nuclear operations/planning and most recently in nuclear non-proliferation activities. While this book makes for interesting reading, the threat remains real. To dismiss or minimize the role nuclear weapons played in all aspects of national power projection among those nations possessing them for the later half of the 20th Century is an attempt to rewrite history. We and the Russians continue to have arsenals of thousands of weapons and if you think for a minute they are or cannot be retargeted within hours towards each other you don't understand nuclear operations. For a balanced view, I recommend Jonathan Schell's "The Seventh Decade", written in 2007.

In Cold War history, one cannot discount the mass influence of nuclear weapons. As inanimate objects used only once in combat, they shaped American foreign policy as well as redesigned military strategy for both the United States and the Soviet Union. They were the crux of most historical events between the two countries as both feared the use of such weapons would lead to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD theory) of each other if not an outright annihilation of the human race itself. These bleak aspects of a nuclear exchange are rarely disputed within the historical community, however, it is the subject of debate in "Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda" ("Obsession") by Ohio State political science professor John Mueller (Author of "Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them").

Mueller challenges the assertion of a nuclear exchange signaling the end of humanity or an outright collapse of the United States and their overall influence in history. As a former graduate student in American history, specializing in US military and diplomatic history, I knew coming into reading Obsession that I was either gonna learn something new or rip the book a six-pack of new ones. After reading Obsession for a week and writing down notes in my trusty notebook I find myself admiring Mueller for his excellent research and political analysis but am going to have a field day with his historical analysis.

In the tradition of historical analysis of a book the first thing I analyzed was Mueller's bibliography, chapter notes, and citations. Indeed, Mueller has done an excellent job gathering both primary sources in the form of interviews and speeches as well as secondary analysis conducted by prominent historians such as John Lewis Gaddis (who is one of my favorite Cold War historians).

However, it would seem as though nearly all of Mueller's research and analysis comes from public sources (interviews, speeches, and articles) and few, if any, from actual government reports whether stuff obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the declassified Soviet archives, or even original interviews with officials or scientists. Unless I missed something, the vast majority of information researched comes from the public domain most prominently open statements to the public and secondary analysis from others, which begs the question, "what is Mueller missing?" Forget the discussion on scholarly research and discipline to conduct original research beyond a Google or JSTOR search, Mueller is missing a lot research material here to make the case on whether or not his thesis on nuclear weapons is plausible. Where are Air Force nuclear weapons test reports? The CDC reports on the effects of radiation? DHS action plans for nuclear attack? Memos of dissenting scientists within the US and Soviet government?

To cite an example of this trend, the first chapter addresses the allegedly overly exaggerated effects of nuclear weapons themselves. Mueller brings up EPA and United Nations reports on both the alleged lethal dose of radiation (EPA) and the actual effects of high levels of radiation (UN) (p. 6-8), but doesn't actually cite the sources. Instead, Mueller cites the reports from secondary sources most notably an article by Peter Zimmerman in Foreign Policy's quarterly journal. The only real citation of a primary source in chapter one is by the Office of Technological Assessment, an alleged neutral scientific analysis group funded by congress until 1995. OK, that sounds like an objective source to me but, are there any others? Correlation of the facts requires triangulation from more than one source beyond journal articles, especially if the fields (foreign policy to particle science) are unrelated.

This trend continues throughout Mueller's book, but does it automatically refute his argument? Absolutely not, but it does bring into question Mueller's method of academic scholarship and discipline since his research appears to be nothing more than public domain and nothing truly original. It suggests his analysis is missing key components.

Moving on to other criticisms, Mueller utilizes some very poor analogies to further his argument. While discussing the social aspect of a terrorist nuclear attack, Mueller states that while 10,000+ deaths from a potential nuclear strike would be tragic, it would hardly unwound the fabric of the US. I agree with this part, actually, but his analogy to explain it is severely flawed. Here is the block quote.

"(The) prediction that the sudden deaths from terrorism of 10,000 Americans would 'do away with our way of life' might be assessed in this regard. As it happens, officials estimated for a while in 2005 that there would be 10,000 deaths from Hurricane Katrina. Although this, of course, was not a terrorist attack, there was no indication s whatsoever that such a disaster, while catastrophic for the hurricane victims themselves, would do away with the way of life of the rest of the nation." (p. 22)

Pending a situation portrayed in films like The Day After Tomorrow, I do not think American citizens living in California, Missouri, or my current state of residence (North Dakota) have to worry about hurricanes. Terrorism is deliberate and malicious while bad weather is a natural force (unless you're a member of the Westboro Baptist Church), to compare the two to further an argument on the social consequences of nuclear terrorism is beyond flawed.

Moving on to the historical significance of nuclear weapons, I think Mueller could have added a few more secondary analysis to his bibliography. It almost seems selective as Mueller, while drawing almost exclusively from secondary sources, seems to have left out some of the most acclaimed analysis from Cold War historians including Water Lafeber, Aleksandr Fursenko ("One Hell of a Gamble"), and even some critical books by John Lewis Gaddis (ie: "Strategies of Containment"). Mueller doesn't even mention Cold War foreign policy giants George Kennan or Paul Nitze and their work from 1945 to the turn of the century. The former three authors framed Cold War history while the latter two policy makers designed America's foreign policy during the Cold War. One would think they deserve a mention or even a paragraph discussing why they were right or wrong in their assumptions on nuclear weapons, which they did have.

Continuing with historical discourse, Mueller makes several historical assertions that can easily be challenged. One example is that the nuclear bomb was not necessary in WWII to end the war. I always found this a silly argument as the Japanese were obviously on their last legs and were on the fast track to be annihilated whether by US firebombs or by Russian invasion, which Mueller asserts is the cause for the Japanese surrender and that the nuclear bomb was little more than "an extension," of that (p. 46). While this is up for historical debate, Mueller spends only two paragraphs 'proving' this notion and the first one is quotes from historians saying, "no, the Japanese did not surrender due to the bomb." The second paragraph discusses Soviet intervention, albeit briefly. To me, this needs to be elaborated on considerably since Hiroshima and Nagasaki are critical to Mueller's overall argument that nuclear weapons have never truly been all that important. Without proving it here, the carpet begins to roll over his argument. He needs to seriously elaborate on this subject beyond one paragraph of historians agreeing and another with an analysis.

I could go on much, much, longer criticizing Mueller's work but lemme end it here by saying that while he makes some good points, I am far from sold. Obsession could be easily over 500 pages that can convince myself and other military historians if he simply took the time to do some original research and spend less time trying to make the book more palatable for The Daily Show. Nuclear weapons, foreign policy, and terrorism are not light subjects and should not be given a casual glance as Mueller seems to do in Obsession. However, I do reserve the right to be proven otherwise so I encourage Mueller to utilize this constructive criticism to go back and make some serious revisions to his work. I think he's on the right track, but I also believe this current edition of Obsession seems little more than a draft albeit with edited grammar and sentence structure.

All in all, a C-.

Good coverage of some of the reasons why many countries that could develop nuclear weapons have NOT done so, though some of his examples such as the Falkland Islands war being started even though Britain had nuclear weapons aren't convincing (Neither the Argentine generals nor anyone else truly believed that Britain was going to threaten the survival of Argentina with nuclear weapons, but that won't always be the case for countries with (legitimate or not) paranoia about their opponents such as Iran or North Korea vs. the United States).

His historical revisionism about World War II atomic bombings in particular is less worthwhile.

You've got to love anybody who challenges the conventional wisdom of the Washington, DC, military-industrial complex. I read this book right after Obama's Nuclear Summit and found it a useful corrective. In Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, John Mueller, a political scientist at OSU, tries to show why everything you think you know about nuclear weapons is, well, absolutely wrong and misguided.

I won't get into the substance of his allegations too much - if you want to get a quick idea, read Mueller's National Interest article at Or: how I learned to stop worrying.(Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda)(Book review): An article from: The National Interest or pages 236-39 in the book. However, to summarize it generally, he takes a "glass half-full" approach toward the use and misuse of nuclear weapons. Much of this consists of refreshing candor about the need for perspective. Mueller chastises policymakers for overstating the potential impact of nukes and instilling irrational fear amongst the public. He also alleges that nukes have failed to impact the course of human history to quite the extent most historians would have us believe.

As much as I respect Mueller for taking the unpopular but level-headed position, I have two criticisms of the book, one substantive and one stylistic. First, much of it becomes pretty repetitive. Mueller makes many good points, but he makes them over and over again. The organization of the book doesn't help either, as the themes seem to blend with each other (Mueller never seems to tire of pointing out Graham Allison's mistaken prophecies).

Unfortunately, for all his repetitions, Mueller just doesn't provide enough evidence to back up all of his claims. Rather, he seems to rush through them rather quickly, barely stopping to present the evidence supporting his views. For example, he claims that the atomic bomb was not necessary to induce the surrender of the Japanese, nor did it lead to deterrence during the Cold War. However, in the case of the Japanese, he goes only into a superficial discussion, barely addressing the meticulous research of scholars like Richard B. Frank in Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Likewise, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, he doesn't consider the (very well-documented) internal deliberations during ExCom (or even memoirs of the participants, such as RFK's Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis), much of which stress the crucial role that nukes played in the Kennedy administration's deliberations. He also doesn't even mention the recent cases of North Korean proliferation to Syria or Burma, which might suggest that some rogue states can and do really want nukes.

Indeed, Atomic Obsession ignores one fundamental point about nukes that makes them extremely different from any other weapon in the world. It's not their destructive power or technology. Rather, it's the fact that a nuclear warhead, combined with an intercontinental ballistic missile, can reign immediate and effective destruction on populations anywhere in the world. During most wars, political leaders and civilians behind the front lines were relatively safe from the immediate effects of battle. Airpower changed that a bit, but still required a basing point for aircraft and were limited by the number of sorties and weather.

By contrast, with nukes (and an ICBM), a country can hit its enemy anywhere, anytime, with enough force to at least destroy a major part of a city. For the "homefront," those civilians and politicians normally not in immediate risk during war, nukes change their calculus drastically, putting them in 24/7 danger. This is especially important for America, which hadn't been directly threatened by war or bombs since the Civil War. Unlike say England during World War II, America has traditionally had the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to protect us (even the Japanese only got to Hawaii). Americans reacted hysterically to the Russian bomb and the ICBM not just because of its destructive power, but also because it was the first time they were actually at risk. I think this represented a huge change in the course of American, if not world history and threat perceptions. In that sense, nuclear weapons became the ultimate "sword of Damocles," hanging over the heads of voters and politicians everyday.

Overall, Mueller makes some smart points, but the book seems more like a long op-ed article rather than academic scholarship.

The author makes a good opening case that nuclear weapons have been an obsession but fails short in a number of areas. Did the "obsession" result in the end of the cold war, as the US out spent the USSR on more and more complex weapons systems? If so, it could be argued the alarmism surrounding nuclear weapons had positive side effects. The premise of the book that Governments have been reluctant to use nuclear weapons is certainly correct - but would this have been the case if one side had decided not to compete or opt to disarm on a unilateral basis?

This is very well written and thought provoking. However, it doesn't quite make it's case.