Evolution of Arms Control From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Richard Dean Burns is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Los Angeles, CA. He is the co-author/co-editor of many books, including the Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (1993), Quest for Missile Defense, 1944-2003 (2004), and Revisiting the End of the Cold War (2008).This is a concise, comprehensive, and scholarly work. Burns (emer., history, California State Univ., Los Angeles) traces arms control efforts back to the Punic Wars, and in some cases beyond. The most common types of efforts have been imposed on the vanquished by the victors. However, the Treaty of Versailles established a multilateral body to enforce its terms, the League of Nations, but it was easily subverted. The problems with arms control agreements are trying to distinguish between offensive and defensive weaponry, state sovereignty, technological change, and verification. One of the more interesting parts of the book deals with chemical weapons. Again, the origins go back to antiquity in attempts to control or outlaw such weapons as Greek fire, the poisoning of wells, and other chemical and biological agents. There have been many diplomatic attempts, all of which the author includes, to outlaw such weapons. But, they are still available and used. More successful have been attempts to control nuclear weapons, perhaps because these attempts have largely been bilateral. This is an excellent reference book and should be acquired by academic libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections.
Choice Reviews
Burns chronicles the progression of arms negotiations, allowing readers to visualize the intricacy of arms control and grasp the difficulties of finding common ground in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Whether the world's diplomatic efforts will be successful remains to be seen. Still, a major contribution. … Highly recommended.
Choice Reviews
Written for anyone interested in arms control and disarmament issues as well as military history, this book reviews the historic means and techniques for arms control such as demilitarization, regulation of arms manufacturing, stabilizing international environments and the outlawing of war. A section also reviews nuclear weaponry before and after the Cold War and the emergence of biological and bacterial delivery systems.
Reference and Research Book News
Richard Dean Burns’s The Evolution of Arms Control is at once a timely and significant contribution to the literature of the subject, written in plain English by one of America’s leading historian of arms control and disarmament. This thoughtful book will provide both generalists and specialists a better understanding of the multidimensionality of the most important issue of our age. All politicians and their advisers should give this work a careful read as they consider how their policies will enhance or inhibit the development of a more stable, secure world.
- Joseph M. Siracusa, Deputy Dean of Global Studies, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University,
With President Obama and former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger calling for ‘A World Without Nuclear Weapons,’ arms control is in the news more than in decades. What will happen? With its well-documented facts and chronologies, Richard Dean Burns’s highly readable history of arms control will help the reader navigate the difficult waters of international diplomacy and gain new insight into where the Obama administration may succeed.
- Hon. Philip E. Coyle III, Senior Advisor, World Security Institute; Former Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Drawing on his knowledge of the comparative history of warfare and arms control across preliterate, ancient, medieval, and modern polities, Richard Dean Burns focuses longitudinally on such perennial arms control issues as negotiation, verification, and compliance. Although he does not, for example, allege that war elephants and nuclear weapons are of equal destructive potential, he does discern instructive similarities between Carthage in 202 BCE and Iraq in 1991 AD.
Arms control and disarmament measures have been pursued and adopted throughout the history and prehistory of human warfare: sometimes as protocols recognizing evolving humanitarian taboos; sometimes as terms imposed by the victors on the vanquished; and sometimes as accords negotiated between rivals fearful of mutual destruction. Arms control measures ramped up in significance and urgency at the dawn of the 20th century by the introduction of rapid-fire weapons, aircraft, chemical agents, and submarines, and again at mid-century with the advent of weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological—with sophisticated delivery systems. As Burns makes clear, the enormous increase in destructive potential brought about by thermonuclear weaponry essentially changed the nature of war and, therefore, of arms control.
Preface
Introduction
Part I. Means and Techniques: A Historical Typology
1. Arms Limitations and/or Reductions
2. Demilitarization, Denuclearization, and Neutralization
3. Regulating Use/Outlawing Weapons and War
4. Customs and the Law of War
6. Stabilizing the International Environment
Part II. Comments on Arms Control Processes: Negotiations, Verification, and Compliance
7. Arms Control Negotiations
8. The Verification Process
9. Compliance and Noncompliance
10. Reflections –On Nuclear Weaponry: The Cold War and After
Appendix (Chronological listing of treaties and agreements)
Notes
Glossary
Essential Resources
Index
This series focuses on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) (nuclear, chemical, radiological, biological) and the consequences or threats deriving from the advent of new and emerging technologies (AI, cyber, autonomous weapons, drones, and a range of others). The series welcomes a variety historical, contemporary, traditional, and non-traditional approaches from emerging scholars, established academics and/or those involved in the IR, foreign policy, and security domains. The series seeks to attain assessments that unpack the concerns and complexities deriving from nuclear weapons and the other WMD variants. Clearly, today, more states in more unstable regions have attained such weapons, terrorists continue to pursue them, and the command and control systems in even the most sophisticated states remain susceptible not only to system and human error but, increasingly, to cyber-attacks. The failure of armed states to disarm, the inability to prevent new states and non-state actors from gaining access to WMDs, and the expansion of nuclear energy plants present a real security danger. All views across the disarmament, non-proliferation, arms control and deterrence spectrum in addressing such concerns are welcome. The series also extends its reach and engagement with the emergence of new technologies in the context of global security, including: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), such as drones; and the advent of Lethally Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) which raise ethical questions about the use (and misuse) of military power. Additionally, other emergent technologies contributing to the complexity of security dynamics including 3D printing, nanotechnology and quantum computing, bioengineering, and digitisation technologies are also explored. The contribution of the volumes in the series are timely and necessary. International Advisory Board:Philip Baxter, Center for Policy Research at the University of Albany, SUNYElisabeth Röhrlich, University of ViennaSarah Kreps, Cornell UniversityReuben Steff, University of WaikatoJulia Macdonald, University of Denver
Series Editors: Aiden Warren and Joseph M. Siracusa