Book Review: The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia

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In The Media

Book Review: The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia

Since acquiring atomic weapons, India, Pakistan and North Korea have not engaged in major warfare. But nuclear deterrence alone does not buy peace — diplomacy must keep the balance.

By George Perkovich

Published on Apr 2, 2009

Source: Nature

The cold war distorted definitions of 'normal' nuclear behaviour. The giant antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, built gargantuan arsenals poised for launch at a moment's notice. They poked and prodded each other until the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 chastened them to give arms control a chance. Notwithstanding a series of treaties meant to manage their nuclear competition and help shape a global nuclear order — from the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 through to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II 30 years later — Washington DC and Moscow ordered the construction of thousands more nuclear weapons and kept them ready for use, even when no crisis was at hand.

By the mid-1970s, China, Israel and India had nuclear explosives, and Pakistan and South Africa were preparing to join them. These nations treated nuclear weapons differently. They built relatively few, did not deploy them for immediate use and kept them largely out of political view. South Africa disarmed in the early 1990s, and North Korea became nuclear-armed. Of the nine countries that have nuclear weapons today, the United States and Russia are hardly typical.

Read the full article in Nature.

About the Author

George Perkovich

Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, Senior Fellow

George Perkovich is the Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons and a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program. He works primarily on nuclear deterrence, nonproliferation, and disarmament issues.

Recent Work

Paper
How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century
- George Perkovich
Commentary
“A House of Dynamite” Shows Why No Leader Should Have a Nuclear Trigger
- George Perkovich

Nuclear Policy South Asia India Pakistan East Asia South Korea

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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