Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects

Written by a distinguished policy practitioner in the field of nuclear weapons this book reflects an exceptional depth of experience in shaping both national and NATO policy. It discusses the significance of the revolution brought about by nuclear weapons, and then considers the problems, costs, and risks which they entail. -;The book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and forming policy about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State department. Part I of the book seeks to distill, from this exceptional background of practical experience, basicconceptual ways of understanding the revolution brought about by nuclear weapons. It also surveys NATO's progressive development of thinking about nuclear deterrence, and then discusses the deep moral dilemmas posed - for all possible standpoints - by the existence of such weapons. Part IIconsiders the risks and costs of nuclear-weapon possession, including proliferation dangers, and looks at both successful and unsuccessful ideas about how to manage them. Part III illustrates specific issues by reviewing the history and current policies of one long-established possessor, the United Kingdom, and two more recent ones, India and Pakistan. Part IV turns to the future, examines the goal of eventually abolishing all nuclear armouries, and then discusses the practical agenda, shortof such a goal, which governments can usefully tackle in reducing the risks of proliferation and other dangers while not surrendering prematurely the war-prevention benefits which nuclear weapons have brought since 1945.This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. -

About the Author :
Michael Quinlan entered the UK Home Civil Service in 1954. He was Private Secretary to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Air 1956-58, and to the Chief of the Air Staff 1962-65. From 1968 to 1970 he was one of the Directors of Defence Policy in the Ministry of Defence and from 1970 to 1973 Defence Counsellor in the UK Delegation to NATO in Brussels. After a spell in the Cabinet Office he returned to the Ministry of Defence as Deputy Under-Secretary of State from 1977 to 1981. After service as a Deputy Secretary in the Treasury and then as Permanent Secretary in the Department of Employment he returned to the Ministry of Defence as Permanent Under-Secretary of State from 1988 to 1992. From 1992 to 1999 he was Director of the Ditchley Foundation, which runs a wide-ranging and high-level programme of international conferences. In 2007 he co-authored with General Lord Guthrie a short book on the Just War tradition for Bloomsbury.

Review :
"Michael Quinlan, one of the worlds foremost authorities on nuclear weapons, has produced in this book a hugely impressive commentary on all the challenges they pose for us. He explores with striking clarity their history and the moral and military issues and dilemmas these terrible instruments involve. He also navigates between both extremities of the arguments about a practical and possible route towards a world which can do without them."--Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, former UK Secretary of State for Defence and NATO Secretary-General "Michael Quinlan was a key figure in the NATO scene on nuclear-weapon policy and arms control. This cool and lucid distillation from his long experience deserves wide attention, especially from those who bear responsibility for these issues in today's changing and challenging circumstances."--General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush "Michael Quinlan has been thinking about nuclear weapons deeply for a long time-their possible purpose, how to limit them and make their use less likely, how to prevent still more nations or non-state actors from acquiring them. In this most recent study he re-examines these issues, along with the prospects for abolition of nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, he does not provide an answer to how to achieve that end in the face of perceptions of existential threats held by some nations, the ineradicable and widespread knowledge of how to produce nuclear weapons, and the difficulty of assuring complete destruction of existing stockpiles of thousands of nuclear weapons and many hundreds of tons of weapons-grade missile material. But his analyses are careful and detailed, his answers on the more traditional issues are convincing, and on 'nuclear abolition' he raises cogent questions."--The Hon. Harold Brown, former US Secretary of Defense