Caging The Nuclear Genie: An American Challenge For Global Security [Hardcover]

Stansfield Turner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 1997

The Cold War may be over, but you wouldn’t know it from the tens of thousands of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction still held by Russia, the United States, and other world powers. Arguing that the time has come to dispense with incremental approaches to arms control, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former head of the CIA and an experienced senior military commander, proposes a practical yet safe plan that would move the world into a new and secure millennium.Turner carefully analyzes how many nuclear weapons are really needed to maintain our national security, regardless of how many weapons of mass destruction other nations may have. He then offers a dramatic, unilateral American initiative—to place all the world’s nuclear warheads in “strategic escrow” whereby none would be ready for immediate use; to initiate a pledge of “no first use” and call on other nations to do the same; and to build national defenses against nuclear attack when they become cost-effective.The paperback edition of this widely acclaimed work has been updated to consider the implications of such a build down if applied to non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Specifically, Admiral Turner details how a plan for weapons reduction could be carried out for biological and chemical weapons and what tactical and strategic differences exist between de-escalation of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons.The Turner Plan achieves genuine international security and has the potential to achieve wide, bipartisan support. It deserves to be widely studied, debated, and, finally, implemented.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As director of the CIA during the Carter administration and former four-star admiral of the Navy, Stansfield Turner is intimately acquainted with the realities of nuclear weapons from a military, political, and ideological perspective. It is precisely these experiences that persuaded him to boldly call for a severe reduction of such armaments. Though Cold War tensions have thawed, the deadly instruments of deterrence remain in droves, with the combined nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia containing more than 35,000 warheads. These weapons may no longer be aimed at the enemies for which they were originally produced, but the sheer numbers raise concerns of theft, sale, accidents, terrorism, and proliferation.

In offering specific disarmament proposals that are as pragmatic as they are optimistic, Turner writes clearly and convincingly on three main points: a policy of "strategic escrow" in which warheads are stored in secure areas a good distance from their launchers, signed treaties pledging no first use of nuclear weapons, and greater emphasis on safety inspections and nuclear defense. He also stresses the importance of an informed and motivated public in dealing with this long-ignored issue. Though the decisions regarding the numbers of weapons created and their possible deployment were reached in secret meetings at the Pentagon, the results of the decisions affect every person on earth. Turner believes that only sustained public pressure can initiate such policies in a timely manner, and Caging the Nuclear Genie serves as an informed motivator for such action.

From Kirkus Reviews

A thoughtful series of proposals for reducing the excessive inventories of nuclear weapons still held by the US and Russia nearly a decade after the Cold War's end. Drawing on his own experiences as a senior military commander and director of the CIA during the Carter administration, Admiral Turner (Terror and Democracy, 1991) first examines the Strangelovian assumptions employed to justify the sizable stockpiles of warheads still held by the major powers: Moscow controls over 20,000, while Washington has more than 15,000 at its disposal. Although this latter total represents a substantial decline from peak of approximately 32,500 reached in 1967, the author documents the appalling extent to which these costly and dangerous arsenals are still heavily redundant in terms of deterrence. Overkill apart, he notes, bloated reserves increase the risk of proliferation and aggravate the problems posed by the ongoing deterioration of a cash-strapped Russia's military plant. Having estimated just how few nuclear weapons are needed to ensure national security (and conceding that disarmament is an unrealistic possibility any time soon), Turner makes some arresting suggestions. His centerpiece initiative encompasses three principal elements: a strategic escrow program (which, inter alia, would put all warheads in internationally supervised storage at some distance from their launchers); a no-first-strike pledge (confirmed by treaty); and incremental improvements in defense against atomic attack as well as inspection technology. He goes on to urge that elected civilian officials reassert their control over the military on nuclear matters; the author also recommends establishment of a Presidential Council for Nuclear Security and an organized effort to enlist the public's support for sizable cutbacks in America's stores of doomsday ordnance. An informed and informative contribution to a debate of vital importance to all mankind. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 163 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (August 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813333288
• ISBN-13: 978-0813333281
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,318,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but too narrowly focused, February 7, 1999

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[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caging The Nuclear Genie: An American Challenge For Global Security (Hardcover)

This is an extraordinary book coming from the hand of one of the men who once was tasked with carrying out the U.S. SIOP plan. Admiral Turner's analysis and suggestions are timely, especially in the light the slow pace of nuclear arms control and the real threat of nuclear proliferation. The failure of the nuclear superpowers to move more forcefully in reducing their nuclear arsenals lends credence to those new or aspiring nuclear nations to subscribe to the nuclear madness. Admiral Turner raises these issues and the danger of accidental launch and nuclear smuggling in the post Cold War era. However, one can question his advocacy of the wisdom of Ballistic Missile defenses. The abandonment of the ABM treaty could have drastic consequences. However,on balance, Admiral Turner's suggestion that we escrow the nuclear weapons offers intriguing possibilites to break the slow pace of nuclear reduction and elimination.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An overly optimistic view about nukes in the 21st century, January 13, 1999

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[e-mail] (Grand Terrace, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caging The Nuclear Genie: An American Challenge For Global Security (Hardcover)

In this book, Stansfield Turner attempts to outline a clear and immediately applicable nuclear arms control strategy that seeks to drastically reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the global sphere without sacraficing regional and national security interests in the process.

Turner draws heavily upon his experience as both a government official and military leader in formulating an arms control regime tailored to operate in the post-Cold War world. Turner was chosen to be the Director of Central Intelligence by President Carter and has also served as an Admiral in the United States Navy. However, prior to his appointment to the position of DCI, Turner had no political background or experience in the intelligence community. As DCI, Turner chose to rely most heavily upon National Technical Means (NTM's), such as satellites, to gather information. He drastically cut human intelligence initiatives, such as spies and covert operations as a result of his unwavering faith in NTM's. Although it is true that NTM's provide valuable information, they are subject to technical fallibilities and hindered by the fact that satellites are not a stealth means of information collection. Human intelligence is still the most direct source of information. When Carter's presidency ended in 1980, so did Turner's reign as DCI. He has not since served in public office.

While his writing is easy to read, his solutions are often over simplistic or too radical to generate any substantial support from policy makers. Turner's plan mandates that the majority of nuclear weapons be placed in "strategic escrow". In other words, nuclear warheads should be removed from operational strategic launchers and placed in designated storage areas at some distance away from the launchers, thereby making them unavailable for immediate use. Foreign observers will be allowed to view this process, in hopes that they will choose to follow suit. The "strategic escrow" solution carries with it the additional problem of where to store these thousands of dismantled nuclear weapons. Both of Turner's solutions are somewhat problematic. First, he suggests that the warheads be further dismanteled and stored as plutonium and uranium counterparts. This increases the probability of having readily available fissile landing in the wrong hands, which could have disastrous and unpredictable effects. Second, Turner suggests that additional storage space be used in sizable remotely populated areas throughout the world in regions committed to a non-nuclear security regime. Specifically, he suggests Norway, Sweden, and Greenland. It seems rather presumptuous to assume that these non-nuclear states would be willing to allow storage of the worlds quantity of weapons of mass destruction within their sovereign territories. In addition, assessing how strong a commitment against implementing nuclear weapons is a risky endeavor in itself. If the capabilities are there, whether dismantled or not, the temptation for experimentation is there and might be encouraged.

In conclusion, Turner's book outlines a detailed plan to reduce nuclear armaments in the coming century. His ideas and thoughts are meritorious in that they are well organized and systematically ordered for what appears to be immediate implementation. However, careful analysis of his solutions suggest that there are still problems with his remedies that are likely to hinder his vision of achieving a world in which there are virtually no immediately operable nuclear weapons.