Twilight of the Bombs

No one writes better about nuclear history than Rhodes does, ably combining a scholar's attention to detail with a novelist's devotion to character and pacing. The Washington Post Rhodes explains both the science and the culture of the nuclear age. He does so with the wisdom of the historian and the morality of the ages. The Boston Globe Remarkable . . . Subtle . . . brims with intriguing anecdotes . . . Rhodes speaks . . . with great eloquence. Los Angeles Times Exciting . . . Cool and evenhanded . . . Rhodes owns this territory, and there's a lot of it to cover.-- Bloomberg [Rhodes] writes with remarkable confidence and clarity about these terrible devices. . . He's a rare writer who can explain why the short half-life of tritium gas means that we no longer need to worry about suitcase bombs stolen from the old Soviet Union.-- The New York Times Book Review A triumph of information-gathering, narrative drive and philosophizing . . . Rhodes's reporting about averting calamity in the former Soviet Union will resonate months and probably years from now.-- The Denver Post Rhodes's soaring and swooping eagle eye has noticed features in the political landscape of the last 20 years that most of us have overlooked. Few judgments have the authority and clarity Rhodes can bring to bear as he sorts through the aftermath of the age of the superpowers.-- The Santa Fe New Mexican Moving . . . Rhodes makes a good case for the optimistic interpretation of this historyup to a point.-- San Francisco Chronicle The Twilight of the Bombs is an apt conclusion to an epic undertaking . . . At each step Rhodes offers fresh perspective on the historical record.-- The Kansas City Star Urgent advice from a sage commentator.-- Baton Rouge Advocate Informationen zum Autor Richard Rhodes Klappentext The final volume in Richard Rhodes's prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers--Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States--have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.One "President Bush's Frankenstein" For George H. W. Bush's secretary of state James A. Baker III, the Cold War ended on 3 August 1990. That day at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport Baker and the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, stood side by side and jointly condemned Saddam Hussein's massive and ongoing invasion of Kuwait, a small, wealthy, but largely undefended country southeast of Iraq on the Persian Gulf that produced about 10 percent of Middle Eastern oil. Iraq, the Soviet Union's most important client in the region, was heavily armed with Soviet tanks, missiles, and artillery; Shevardnadze's willingness to condemn Iraqi aggression signaled to Baker the beginning of a real partnership between the United States and the U.S.S.R. During the long Iran-Iraq War that had ended in 1988, two years before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had been the enemy of America's enemy Iran, and thus, if not a friend, at least something of a surrogate. The United States had remained neutral during the first two years of the war, but when an Iranian offensive in spring 1982 succeeded in breaking through the Iraqi line and forcing the Iraqi...

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Richard Rhodes

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The final volume in Richard Rhodes's prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age.

The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers--Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States--have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.

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One

"President Bush's Frankenstein"

For George H. W. Bush's secretary of state James A. Baker III, the Cold War ended on 3 August 1990. That day at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport Baker and the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, stood side by side and jointly condemned Saddam Hussein's massive and ongoing invasion of Kuwait, a small, wealthy, but largely undefended country southeast of Iraq on the Persian Gulf that produced about 10 percent of Middle Eastern oil. Iraq, the Soviet Union's most important client in the region, was heavily armed with Soviet tanks, missiles, and artillery; Shevardnadze's willingness to condemn Iraqi aggression signaled to Baker the beginning of a real partnership between the United States and the U.S.S.R.

During the long Iran-Iraq War that had ended in 1988, two years before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had been the enemy of America's enemy Iran, and thus, if not a friend, at least something of a surrogate. The United States had remained neutral during the first two years of the war, but when an Iranian offensive in spring 1982 succeeded in breaking through the Iraqi line and forcing the Iraqis to retreat, the Reagan administration had begun to favor Iraq. An affidavit sworn by a National Security Council (NSC) staff member, Howard Teicher, who helped develop the new policies, describes the result:

In June 1982...President Reagan decided that the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) to this effect in June 1982....CIA Director [William] Casey personally spearheaded this effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war. Pursuant to the secret NSDD, the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq....The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director [Robert] Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq.

In the same spirit, the State Department removed Iraq that year from its list of states that sponsored terrorism. Two years later, in 1984, Donald Rumsfeld, a corporate executive at that time who was serving as a Reagan special envoy to the Middle East, met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to discuss areas of cooperation, including restoring diplomatic relations after a seventeen-year hiatus. That meeting, on 20 December, produced the video, later to become notorious, of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand. Saddam "was pleased that [the] US wished to see further development in its relations with Iraq, including exchange of ambassadors," a secret State Department summary noted. "Iraq valued this positive appreciation by the US of the need for a high level of relations."

Israel, which had been selling arms to the Iranians, also offered at that time to assist Iraq. ("I do not remember even one discussion about the ethics of the matter," an Israeli defense ministry official told the Israeli j…