Newshour terrorism
How many day-to-day operational weapons (with delivery vehicles) does a nation have? What about "generated weapons" and their delivery vehicles, which can be made operational within a matter of hours or days? How about non-operational weapons in storage, which can be made ready within days or weeks?And one must not overlook physics packages, which can be made into weapons in days, weeks, or months, depending on the availability of other components; or stockpiles of weapons-grade fissile material, which can beincorporated into weapons within months. newshour terrorism Curb weight. At even deeper levels, one must not underestimate the importance of weapon assembly facilities; fissile material production facilities; civilian research and power reactors, which in a pinch can produce weapons-grade plutonium; and even nuclear waste disposal facilities, which might be a source of fissile materials that can be mined. Defining what a virtual arsenal might be in the context of a nation's total nuclear capability is difficult. But it is a piece of cake compared to imagining just how a VNA verification system might work. newshour terrorism Weight management. The consensus of the book's authors is that a VNA regime would not have a prayer unless everyone with a stake in the nuclear game was convinced that international verification would be extraordinarily rigorous, intrusive, flexible, and comprehensive. Anything less than unrelenting, full-court-press verification would result in unpredictable instabilities, in that doubts about the inspection regime would lead to chronic suspicions that the other guys were probably cheating. And, given that possibility, would it not be prudent for your nation to cheat a little, too, just as a hedge?Proponents of VNAs argue that no verification system, no matter how intrusive and comprehensive, could be airtight. newshour terrorism Obesity surgery information. Under a VNA verification regime, it might be possible for a cheater to squirrel away a few weapons, and perhaps even to build a few. But it would not be possible to hide or build an arsenal big enough to make a strategic difference. And even if a nation attempted a "break out," the other virtual nuclear powers would react strongly by making their weapons operational again. Something like an updated law in Newtonian physics, attempts to break out of the VNA system would be self-defeating, because they would inspire roughly equal and opposite reactions from others. In the virtual world, nuclear deterrence would still work. Or maybe it would not. In his essay, Kenneth Waltz, a keen and articulate champion of nuclear deterrence, looks at the way that recent theories of "minimum deterrence" have failed to capture the imagination of policy-makers:"If the leaders of states cannot be persuaded that small numbers [of nuclear weapons] are sufficient for deterrence, then surely they cannot be persuaded to go all the way to having no actual weapons at all. " In fact, he says, a VNA regime would be dangerously "rickety. " Virtual nuclear deterrence would not work; only an assured, ready-to-use second-strike capability truly deters others. In the long run, a VNA regime would make war more likely, not less. Michael Mazarr does not stack the deck in Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World. A single book, he notes, "cannot answer all the questions surrounding a scheme as complicated, as different from current ways of doing business, as virtual arsenals. " Rather, the purpose of the book's essays is not to reach a final judgment; but to "identify the key issues" and to "ask the right questions. "Mazarr achieves those twin goals, and he does it with intellectual grace and admirable fairness. Mike Moore is editor of the Bulletin. The Eleventh Plague: ThePolitics of Biological and Chemical WarfareBy Leonard A. ColeW. H. Freeman, 1997284 pages; $22. 95 Review by Barry KellmanIn our fiercest nightmares, the mushroom cloud has been joined by invisible aerosols: chemical and biological weapons.
Newshour terrorism
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