Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801487048 ISBN 13: 9780801487040

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2000

Synopsis

The proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons is now the single most serious security concern for governments around the world. Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz compare how military threats, strategic cultures, and organizations shape the way leaders intend to employ these armaments. They reveal the many frightening ways that emerging military powers and terrorist groups are planning the unthinkable by preparing to use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in future conflicts.

Distinguished specialists consider several states and organizations that have this weaponry: Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel, as well as the Aum Shinrikyo cult. The contributors expose plans for using unconventional weapons, highlighting the revolutionary effects these arsenals might have on international politics and regional disputes.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter R. Lavoy is Director, Counterproliferation Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. Scott D. Sagan is Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. James J. Wirtz is Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School and author of The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, also from Cornell.

Review:

"In the tradition of Thinking about the Unthinkable―Herman Kahn's seminal Cold War consideration of U.S.-Soviet nuclear relations―this insightful book will help practitioners and scholars confront the most important twenty-first century challenge to U.S. security and international order. By examining the ideosyncratic motivations of state and non-state actors to acquire and use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, the authors provide a significantly improved understanding of the complexities of the proliferation problem."

(Dr. James N. Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Requirements, Plans and Counterproliferation)

"This book looks at how 'new proliferators' will use the NBC weapons that they have developed or are trying to acquire, and why.... The authors examine the evidence of this thinking in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and the resulting war plans and command and control systems."

(Future Survey, Vol. 23, No. 5, May 2001)

"This book will interest both specialists in international security and general readers... Planning the Unthinkable is a timely and well-written treatment of issues related to the most frightening weapons today. It provides a wide range of ideas about how to think more rigorously about the unthinkable."

(Patrick James, Iowa State University. International Politics, Vol. 38, September 2001)

"This landmark book asks a question that has preoccupied policymakers and international relations theorists alike: how will emerging proliferators use and control their weapons of mass destruction? The book is theoretically rich and provides the most empirically comprehensive answer yet available in the unclassified literature."

(Peter Feaver, Duke University)

"This is a very useful and long overdue book. Unlike most other treatises,... this volume describes how countries like Iraq, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, as well as terrorist groups (potentially) treat their preferred weapons of mass destruction from the perspective of declaratory, procurement, deployment, and employment doctrine... The book as a whole remains a valuable introduction to how these states view their strategic capabilities and seek to control them in order to achieve certain desired political ends."

(Ashley J. Tellis, RAND. Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2001)

"Another outstanding volume in the 'Cornell Security Affairs' series, this edited work provides the first systematic examination of the integration of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons into the military doctrines and systems of command for emerging powers... These studies provide a necessary correction to the oversimplifications of policymakers and academics. Highly recommended."

(Choice, April 2001, Vol. 38, No. 8)

"Planning the Unthinkable offers numerous case studies, which include fascinating (if chilling) reading on a variety of countries... as well as terrorist groups... The challenge for the United States, these essays conclude grimly, is figuring out how to respond to the use of such weapons when―not if―they are used."

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0801487048
• ISBN 13: 9780801487040
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Lavoy Peter R., Sagan Scott D., Wirtz James J.