Security Without Nuclear Deterrence

'Security Without Nuclear Deterrence' is the latest book by Commander Robert Green, Royal Navy (Retired), a former operator of British nuclear weapons and the first ex-British Navy Commander with nuclear weapon experience to speak out against them. The book is a carefully researched and documented critique which exposes the contradictions and fallacies of nuclear deterrence, and concludes that nuclear weapons undermine rather than enhance security. Positioning nuclear disarmament as a security-building process, Commander Green offers alternative routes to co-operative security without nuclear weapons, based on more humane, lawful and safer strategies to deter aggression. The arguments he raises are critical if there is to be any serious prospect of eliminating nuclear weapons.

Commander Robert Green served for twenty years in the British Royal Navy from 1962-82. As a bombardier-navigator, he flew in Buccaneer nuclear strike aircraft and anti-submarine helicopters. On promotion to Commander in 1978, he worked in the Ministry of Defence before his final appointment as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet during the Falklands War. Commander Green chaired the UK affiliate of the World Court Project (1991-2004), an international citizen campaign which led to the International Court of Justice judgment in 1996 that threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. From 1998-2002 he was Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative. Now Co-Director with his wife, Dr Kate Dewes ONZM, of the Disarmament & Security Centre in New Zealand, he is the author of The Naked Nuclear Emperor: Debunking Nuclear Deterrence, and Fast Track to Zero Nuclear Weapons: The Middle Powers Initiative. His latest book, A Thorn in Their Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder, was published in 2011.