Another Nuclear Book by Joseph Cirincione (2013.)

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Nuclear Nightmares:  Securing the World Before It Is Too Late, by Joseph Cirincione (2013, Columbia University Press.)

Most of what we know about the consequences of nuclear arms has to do with the end of WWII and the defeat of Japan.  Most everyone agrees the nuclear arms used on Japan were extremely devastating.  What has not been resolved and again not resolved by this text, which incidentally makes a valuable attempt to have any reader of even a paragraph therein to consider this, is the intrinsic value and therefore the merits and / or disadvantages of nuclear arms, their development and maintenance, and then the specter of their use and the resulting physics and other consequences thereby.  The text does remind the reader time and again of the finances of such weapons as cold and calculating, and as cold and calculating as the predilictions, formal and otherwise, of the effects of an armed nuclear exchange on the world populace.  There are other texts that are more stark in their portrayal of this and the risks and even strict utilitarian cataclysm and waste resulting from the blasts and fallout and later events as well, but the book here has the reader in its grip from beginning to end, and for those not necessarily aware of the “hair trigger” dangers of armaments strategy, even more so due to the detailed narrative and prose as to the overall dangers and financial and societal costs of such things.  In reading this text, however, people like me get the idea that nuclear arms are cheap, actually, and they dismiss and eliminate much of the consideration of life and property, etc., no matter for whom, of the subject matter of same, or the ‘whereupon’ such weapons are trained. 

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All readers, and maybe all people, need be made aware of the overall issues examined by this text and that there is hope that one day nuclear weapons will no longer be a danger to anyone:  The text gives a quite captivating presentation of the history of these armaments and the effects they would have if used, and the litany of talks related to them, including the 1972 ABM Treaty, the START talks including the “New START” treaty advocated by both Russian and U.S. administrations.  The text mostly appears in all events to have to do with armaments security and the dangers of things like stray fissile material(s), false alarms and other incidents that are shocking in their impact for the reader, and that represent examples of a most salient problem in the maintenance of nuclear armaments stockpiles today.  That the book is composed and written in straight prose is a relief for the reader whereas the world of rockets, bombs, missiles and so forth might be impacted by acronyms, hard – hitting language, technical and other considerations that might make it difficult for anyone to write of at present.  This book is aimed at the commonweal and succeeds in bringing again a utilitarian message to the reader as to the consequences of further developing and maintaining nuclear weapons stockpiles, and the consequences of this now and for the future.