The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons [Deckle Edge] [Roughcut]

Richard Rhodes (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 24, 2010

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age.

The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers—Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States—have struggled with new realities. He shows us how the stage was set for a second tragic war when Iraq secretly destroyed its nuclear infrastructure and reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq. We see how the efforts of U.S. weapons labs laid the groundwork for nuclear consolidation in the former Soviet Union, how and why South Africa secretly built and then destroyed a small nuclear arsenal, and how Jimmy Carter’s private diplomacy prevented another Korean War.

We also see how the present day represents a nuclear turning point and what hope exists for our future. Rhodes assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, suggesting what might make it possible.

Powerful and persuasive, The Twilight of the Bombs is an essential work of contemporary history.

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

Merging a scientist's attention to detail with a storyteller's flair for narrative drive and characterization, Rhodes has penned "an apt conclusion to an epic undertaking" (Kansas City Star). Filled with fascinating facts and anecdotes, The Twilight of the Bombs not only provides a fresh perspective on otherwise familiar recent events but also reveals significant, little-known episodes in the struggle for nonproliferation, reading at times "like a Tom Clancy novel" (Christian Science Monitor). The critics unanimously praised Rhodes's engaging style, meticulous research, and clear scientific explanations, but they diverged in their opinions of the optimistic conclusions he draws. While the final chapter on the world's nuclear weapons has yet to be written, Rhodes's four volumes remain unsurpassed in their scope and importance, and The Twilight of the Bombs is a splendid close to the story thus far.

From Booklist

In his fourth title in a series initiated by the definitive The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), Rhodes chronicles most but not all major developments related to nuclear weaponry since the cold war ended. Impassioned by his conviction that the atomic bomb confers an illusory sense of security and poses so dire a hazard to humanity that it must be abolished, Rhodes writes journalistically rather than in the more historical manner that characterized this book’s important and widely read predecessors. He interviews politicians, diplomats, and technicians involved in nuclear disarmament over the past two decades and explains such activities as inspections of sites or negotiations of significant international accords such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and agreements between the U.S. and Russia to safeguard nuclear weapons and fissile material. After an interlude about the South African bomb, Rhodes narrates crises with a nuclear angle that were actually or potentially a peril to people at large, namely the Gulf War of 1990–91, the Pakistan/India test explosions of 1998, the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Yet Rhodes’ discussion of the latter is curiously incomplete, relating nothing (beyond blame-Bush aspersions) about how the so-called Agreed Framework brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1994 fell apart under North Korean prevarication and deception. And conspicuously absent from this book is the dangerous nuclear crisis of the moment: Iran. Regardless of omissions, Rhodes’ formidable nuclear knowledge, readably presented, will convey his moral opposition to nuclear deterrence to a sizable audience. --Gilbert Taylor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Roughcut: 384 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1St Edition edition (August 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307267547
• ISBN-13: 978-0307267542
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #900,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Riding off into the twilight August 29, 2010

By A. Jogalekar TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Roughcut|Amazon Verified Purchase

In this last volume of his breathtaking account of nuclear history, Richard Rhodes describes the post Cold War problems and hopes associated with nuclear weapons. The books bears many of Rhodes's trademarks- it is extremely well-researched and contains sharp portraits of the major players as well as fast-paced accounts of key events that make you feel as if you were there. Rhodes's abilities as a storyteller are still remarkable. This book is relatively slim and does not command the high-octane prose of Rhodes's masterpiece "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" but as usual, Rhodes's authoritative knowledge of nuclear matters provides many revelations and he has a novelist's eye for detail which keeps the reader hooked.

The book can roughly be divided into four parts. The first part concerns the first Gulf War and the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure, the second part describes the race to secure nuclear material in the former Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union, the third part briefly talks about South Africa's nuclear ambitions and and then in more detail about attempts to contain nuclear efforts by North Korea and the last part concerns the run-up to the second Gulf War and some final thoughts on the future of nuclear weapons. One striking omission in the book is Iran, and I think readers would have appreciated Rhodes's insightful thoughts on the Iranian nuclear problem.

The first part examines the troubling evidence in the 1980s that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear capability. Rogue Pakistani scientist A Q Khan had even tried to unsuccessfully sell Iraq a bomb design based on a Chinese weapon. At the same time that the US was providing aid and goodwill to Iraq to support it against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, it was also unearthing evidence in the form of dual-use equipment shipments and intelligence analysis that Iraq was pursuing enriched uranium. Interestingly, the technology that Iraq was using turned out to be electromagnetic separation, a primitive technology that the US did not initially believe would be used; for nations pursuing nuclear capability, separating uranium isotopes by using centrifuges is much more efficient. Yet electromagnetic separation is exactly the kind of technology that a relatively primitive and cash-strapped economy would pursue. This is a good example of how biases can lead to false conclusions in spite of supporting evidence. Later, Rhodes has pulse-racing accounts of searches for enrichment technology in Iraq conducted by the weapons inspectors of the IAEA and the UN. Even after the inspectors discovered evidence of enrichment in the form of equipment used for electromagnetic separation, this was not yet conclusive evidence of weapons building. Probably the most exciting moment was when, deep down in a small room in a basement, the inspectors discovered a report that did provide such evidence in the form of clear and detailed descriptions of materials and design for an implosion bomb.

The second part of the book deals with the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and the spirited and at times desperate race to acquire nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. There are many heroes in this story which stands as a model of bipartisan cooperation against a serious threat. Among these are David Kay, Hans Blix and Bob Gallucci who were nuclear inspectors and disarmament specialists. Probably the most prominent ones are the Democratic and Republican senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar who worked day and night to acquire funds from Congress to secure nuclear material and weapons from the three countries and have them transferred back to Russia. Concomitantly, Secretary of State James Baker hopped from one capital to another, urging the presidents of the new nations to sign the NPT and START using a combination of carrots (in the form of monetary rewards) and sticks (in the form of possible sanctions and threats from Russia). All three nations agreed that they were better off without nuclear weapons, and the result was a transfer of thousands of strategic and tactical weapons back to Russia. A third important and massive effort involved blending down the enriched uranium from Soviet weapons to reactor grade and shipping it back to the US for use in US nuclear reactors; Americans may be amused to know that about 10 percent of their current electricity derived from nuclear energy comes from nuclear weapons that their former foe had targeted against their cities. Curiously, the biggest reformer in this drama was President George H W Bush who orchestrated the largest arms reductions in history (he abolished entire classes of weapons, including missiles with multiple warheads and all ground-based weapons), and he needs to get much more credit for doing this than what has been given to him. Rhodes also describes the sense of wonder that directors of weapons labs in the US felt on meeting their Soviet counterparts for the first time, men and women who until then had been ghost-like figures in secret installations on the other side of the world, slated to possibly remain perpetually anonymous. When the director of Los Alamos Sigfried Hecker first traveled to the Soviet Union and met his counterpart Yuli Khariton, the man who had worked on Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs since the beginning, the latter said, "I have been waiting for this moment all my life". Everybody involved knew that this was a new chapter in history.

In the third part Rhodes first briefly talks about the dismantling of South Africa's nuclear program, which is a fine lesson for nations wanting to eschew nuclear weapons. In case of South Africa, the same reasons- internal strife, border conflicts and international alienation because of the government's apartheid policies- that provoked the country to acquire weapons also encouraged them to give them up. An uglier reason was their fear in the 80s that the weapons might fall into the hands of the black government.

Rhodes then describes in detail the difficult relationship between the US and North Korea in the context of North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Along the way, Rhodes also provides perspective by noting that the US had mercilessly bombed the North during the Korean War; since then the North Koreans have constantly been in a kind of perpetual state of war, surrounded by giant powers like Russia and China. It's also worth keeping in mind that the US had stationed hundreds of nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrent until about 1990. Although these actions by the US do not justify the North's nuclear efforts, they do explain the paranoia and deep sense of insecurity that has fueled North Korea's animosity towards the US. Again, there are heroes in this story, but one singled out by Rhodes is former President Jimmy Carter who went to North Korea of his own volition in 1994 and successfully mediated the Koreans' proposal to stop reprocessing in return for light water reactors; the consequence of this diplomacy was the so-called "Agreed Framework" to regulate North Korea's commercial nuclear program, which unfortunately broke down in 2003 in the face of North Korean non-compliance and disagreements. Since then, North Korea has always had to be kept on a tight leash and there have been several moments of tension between the two countries, but Rhodes's accounts make it clear how diplomacy has averted another Korean War. Rhodes also has succinct discussions of efforts to develop and implement a framework for the CTBT, which was signed by Clinton but unfortunately not ratified by the Senate.

The last part of the book concerns the run-up to the second Gulf War. This story has been told before but Rhodes tells it succinctly and well. Meticulous weapons inspections in Iraq between 1992 and 1998 had unearthed no evidence of a WMD capability, although Iraq had also not furnished clear documentation of the dismantling of its WMD capability. As Rhodes tells it, regime change had already been on the table, especially pushed by neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz but even contemplated by former Vice President Al Gore. But even after 9/11, it does not seem like Bush was thinking of attacking Iraq. However, as the record indicates, something changed in his thinking in the next two months, and invading Iraq became a concrete strategy in his mind. Rhodes thinks that a major reason for this shift in his thinking may have been the anthrax attacks which followed 9/11. It seems that these attacks really rammed the threat of terrorism home; at one point alarms even went off in the White House and Dick Cheney suspected that he himself may have been contaminated. Nonetheless, as is well-known now, Bush and his associates decided to invade Iraq fueled by the tried and tested strategy of threat-inflation and on evidence that was dubious at best. Rhodes clearly establishes the prevarications of the administration's claims about WMDs in Iraq, based on discredited reports about uranium shipments from Niger to Saddam (reports discredited even by the CIA) as well as Chinese imports of supposed aluminum tubes for centrifuges, which turned out to be parts for short-range rockets. At best Iraq was years behind the difficult goal of building a nuclear weapon, a goal which would have needed extensive operations of enrichment and processing which would most likely have been detected. No matter how you cut it, there was no concrete justification for invading Iraq except one based on ideology and belief. Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another terrific book by Richard Rhodes September 22, 2010

By James T. Ranney

Format:Roughcut

I try to keep up with all the literature relating to nuclear weapons, etc., but this book was a revelation. He provides the inside stories, often quoting sources he interviewed directly, re what really went on in the IAEA and UNSCOM inspections (some fairly dramatic stuff), who was who and who did what (e.g., for those who have had the good fortune to meet Hans Blix and Amb. Thomas Graham and Bob Galluci, it is fascinating to see the roles they played. And to read the reactions of the US and Soviet teams of scientists as they visited each others' countries, there are moments of stunning insight provided (e.g., the Soviet top nuclear targeting guy marvels that all the various cities he visits were just spots on a map, and now he cannot conceive wiping them out).
This book is not for the unitiated, however. It assumes a certain level of knowledge (e.g., having read perhaps one of his earlier fabulous books).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary depth September 17, 2011

By Todd Thompson

Format:Paperback

The career of author Richard Rhodes spans over four decades of history as well as subject matter ranging from early articles on dogs and horses for publications such as Harper's and Esquire to a handful of novels since 1973. However, he has made his most important mark in nonfiction (or "verity," a term he prefers), with an impressive bibliography on the subject of nuclear bombs.

The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, published first in 2010 and released this month by Vintage Books in a trade paper edition, is his latest treasure of information and anecdotes that mark the landscape of international politics and nuclear history in the post-Cold War era. It is a book of remarkable depth, unbiased in its presentation, and powerfully logical in its conclusions.

Children of the Cold War will easily recall the heated debates as well as the horrific nightmares dramatically expressed in the political arena, dating back to such television campaign ads as the one by Lyndon Baines Johnson, the "Daisy Girl" ad, in his successful 1964 bid for the White House against Arizona senator, and noted conservative idealogue, Barry Goldwater.

Fear haunted the generation of American children born in that era as they became aware of their vulnerability to nuclear attacks by America's ideological foes. A measure of false comfort was attempted upon children against the hopelessness and fear of a real attack. In public schools, students were required to participate in atomic bomb drills using a "duck and cover" defense, sometimes evoking increased fear, rather than a feeling of security.

Though the public's understanding of the power of nuclear bombs was severely lacking, it was nonetheless only a modest picture of the horror that would be visited upon Americans in the event of a real attack upon the country. Until the 1990s when the Cold War ended, the subject of nuclear arms was debated during political contests, citing mind-numbing facts and figures, to the point of Americans being lulled asleep regarding the potential of mass destruction. It was a state of sleep from which they would not awaken until September 11, 2001, when their vulnerability was exposed, for real this time, in the tragic events in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

One of the dangerous by-products of this era of terrorism is that it causes politicians and their advisors to take their eyes off the ball in the nuclear arena. Rhodes describes this very reality during the George W. Bush administration, consumed by a war on terrorism and an eerily personal vendetta against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, in which careless rhetoric and threats against bomb-holding states such as North Korea were preferred to diplomacy and negotiations with regard to nuclear arms reductions.

Though the Cold War has ended, Rhodes says there are still over 20,000 warheads held between the two nuclear states of Russia and the United States, about 96% of the world's total inventory. Other countries known to be holding nuclear weapons are France, China, Britain, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Another alarming statistic the author presents is that over $50 billion is required annually by the United States simply to maintain its nuclear arsenal. This budget, as Rhodes emphasizes, exceeds all anticipated expenditures on international diplomacy and foreign assistance, which is approximately $39.5 billion. He says, "It is nearly double the budget for general science, space and technology." The costs are more than economic. Maintenance of nuclear weaponry and resources, which experts believe will never be used, are also siphoning off the dollars which could be invested in the expansion of technologies in fields such as medical, agricultural, and environmental.

The Twilight of the Bombs is a highly detailed account of the post-Cold War dilemma, "What do we do now?" It is heavy reading, though eloquent. At points, it is inspiring. The influence of such statesmen as Senator Sam Nunn (Ga.) and President Jimmy Carter cannot be overstated. Rhodes, though unbiased, does not fall short in giving credit where credit is due. It is a book that will be appreciated most by those who are familiar with the nuclear issues and international politics. Though Rhodes' background is that of a writer and journalist, his 30 years of writing on this technical subject gives him nothing less than expert qualifications. His access to primary sources, the specific players, and the politicians gives the book extraordinary depth and credibility.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Article first published as Book Review: The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons by Richard Rhodes on Blogcritics.