Why We Don't Need To Resume Nuclear Testing: A Reply to Senator Jon Kyl

By Daryl G. Kimball

Twenty years ago this month, the Berlin Wall came down, hastening the end of the Cold War. Less than three years later, Moscow and Washington agreed to halt nuclear testing. In 1996, after more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions, the world’s nations concluded the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to prevent proliferation and help end the nuclear arms race.

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An Interview With Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher

Interviewed by Daniel Horner and Tom Z. Collina

Ellen Tauscher was sworn in June 27 as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Before that, she represented her northern California district for 13 years in the House, where she served on the Armed Services Committee. From 2007, she chaired the panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Arms Control Today spoke with Tauscher in her office October 21. The interview covered a range of issues in Tauscher’s portfolio, from strategic arms control to plans for an international fuel bank.

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The Role of Nuclear Weapons: Japan, the U.S., and “Sole Purpose”

By Masa Takubo

On September 22, a day before President Barack Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in New York, 13 nongovernmental U.S. security experts released an open letter calling on the two leaders “to support a U.S. policy declaring that the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter, and if necessary respond to, the use of nuclear weapons by other countries.”[1]

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Weighing the Case For a Convention to Limit Cyberwarfare

By David Elliott

Cyberattack is emerging as a new type of nonlethal weapon that can cause substantial harm to society, especially when used in its most advanced version by countries at war. It may be time to consider an international convention to limit the initiation of such use, particularly against targets that are part of critical national infrastructure and are basically civilian.

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Dismissing Doomsday

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda

Reviewed by Gerard DeGroot

Every year, I teach a course on the atom bomb. At the end of each semester, I ask my students to tell me at what point the world came closest to nuclear Armageddon. The answers are usually predictable: the Cuban missile crisis, the Yom Kippur War, the Indo-Pakistani conflict. One year, however, I got a very different response.

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