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Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present

Online ISBN:
9781469604220
Print ISBN:
9780807833551
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present

Published online:
24 July 2014
Published in print:
15 March 2010
Online ISBN:
9781469604220
Print ISBN:
9780807833551
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

After World War II, an atomic hierarchy emerged in the noncommunist world. Washington was at the top, followed over time by its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and then Israel, with the postcolonial world completely shut out. An Indian diplomat called the system “nuclear apartheid.” Drawing on recently declassified sources from U.S. and international archives, this book offers a study of nuclear apartheid, casting a spotlight on an ideological outlook that nurtured atomic inequality and established the United States—in its own mind—as the most legitimate nuclear power. Beginning with the discovery of fission in 1939 and ending with George W. Bush's nuclear policy and his preoccupation with the “axis of evil,” the book uncovers the deeply ideological underpinnings of U.S. nuclear policy—an ideology based on American exceptionalism, irrational faith in the power of technology, and racial and gender stereotypes. The unintended result of the nuclear exclusion of nations such as North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran is, increasingly, rebellion. The book presents an illuminating look at how an American nuclear policy based on misguided ideological beliefs has unintentionally paved the way for an international “wild west” of nuclear development, dramatically undercutting the goal of nuclear containment and diminishing U.S. influence in the world.

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