{"product_id":"twilight-of-the-bombsisbn-9780307387417","title":"Twilight of the Bombs","description":"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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe 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.“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.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Remarkable . . . Subtle . . . brims with intriguing anecdotes . . . Rhodes speaks . . .  with great eloquence.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Exciting . . . Cool and evenhanded . . . Rhodes owns this territory, and there’s a lot of it to cover.”--\u003ci\u003eBloomberg\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[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.”--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“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.”--\u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“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.”--\u003ci\u003eThe Santa Fe New Mexican\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Moving . . . Rhodes makes a good case for the optimistic interpretation of this history—up to a point.”--\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Twilight of the Bombs\u003c\/i\u003e is an apt conclusion to an epic undertaking . . . At each step Rhodes offers fresh perspective on the historical record.”--\u003ci\u003eThe Kansas City Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Urgent advice from a sage commentator.”--\u003ci\u003eBaton Rouge Advocate\u003c\/i\u003eRichard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-three books, including \u003ci\u003eThe Making of the Atomic Bomb, \u003c\/i\u003ewhich won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and \u003ci\u003eDark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb\u003c\/i\u003e, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in History. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Ford, Guggenheim, MacArthur, and Alfred P. Sloan foundations, among others. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, and a host and correspondent for the public television series Frontline and American Experience. He lectures frequently in the United States and abroad. He lives near Half Moon Bay, California.One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"President Bush's Frankenstein\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring 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:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIsrael, 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 journalist Ronen Bergman  about the sales to Iran. \"All that interested us was to sell, sell, sell  more and more Israeli weapons, and let them kill each other with  them.\") Teicher, the NSC staff person, testified that he attended the  meeting in Jerusalem at which the Israeli foreign minister, Yitzhak  Shamir, briefed Rumsfeld on the offer, as well as the meeting in Baghdad  when Rumsfeld passed the offer along to the Iraqi foreign minister,  Tariq Aziz. Aziz was horrified, Teicher recalled: \"Aziz refused even to  accept the Israelis' letter to Hussein offering assistance, because Aziz  told us that he would be executed on the spot by Hussein if he did so.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDespite  the warming of U.S.-Iraq relations, both the United States and Israel  were aware that Iraq was pursuing a program of nuclear development;  Israel at least was following the Iraqi program with concern. Iraq had  signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nonnuclear state, thus  committing itself not to develop nuclear weapons, but the U.S. and  Israel suspected that it was cheating on its commitment. Iraq allowed  the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear  facilities, as its NPT commitment required. At that time, however, the  treaty terms restricted IAEA inspections to facilities that the parties  to the treaty had officially declared; nor was the IAEA authorized to  conduct surprise inspections or to probe beyond official declarations.  The United States might collect intelligence and bide its time; Israel  was not prepared to depend on Iraq's honesty and goodwill. In 1981,  striking from the air with sixteen 2,000-pound slick bombs selected and  spin- balanced for accuracy, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a  French-built 40-megawatt light-water reactor at Al Tuwaitha, a large  nuclear- research complex eleven miles southeast of Baghdad on the  Tigris River. The reactor had not yet been loaded with fuel. France had  delivered the first of six fuel loads, however-twenty-six pounds (11.8  kilograms) of uranium enriched to 93 percent U235 (highly- enriched  uranium, or HEU), about two-thirds of the amount needed to charge one  first-generation atomic bomb-and that uranium survived the raid  undamaged in a bunker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIraq, which also operated a five-megawatt  Soviet research reactor at the Al Tuwaitha complex fueled with  twenty-two pounds (ten kilograms) of 80-percent enriched uranium, made  no effort to rebuild the larger French reactor, but in consequence of  the Israeli raid it reorganized its entire nuclear program away from  plutonium production by reactor to the clandestine production of HEU by  uranium enrichment.* David Kay, the American expert who would play a  major role in investigating the Iraqi bomb program after the 1991 Gulf  War, writes that \"the deciding factor in this decision was the desire of  the military and security services not to attract any undue attention  to Iraq's developing nuclear program....The argument ran: 'Let Israel  believe it destroyed our nuclear capacity, accept the sympathy being  offered for this aggression, and proceed in secret with the program.' \"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  the 1980s, even while fighting its costly war with Iran, Iraq rebuilt  and extended Tuwaitha. Building after building was added to the complex,  which was divided into four subsections by earthen berms a hundred feet  high that kept IAEA inspectors unaware of the expansion (and protected  the complex from another Israeli bombing attack). It was perfectly  possible for IAEA inspectors to tour one section of the complex while  clandestine activity continued beyond its walls, screened as well by  trees and the careful placement of interior roads. If Iraq chose not to  declare some of the nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha or elsewhere in the  country, there was no IAEA mechanism for discovering that fact. The  building additions were visible to U.S. and Soviet intelligence  satellites, but the clandestine activities that went on inside them were  shielded from overhead surveillance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor were IAEA inspectors necessarily alert to diversions, David Kay comments:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAl  Tuwaitha was visited every six months by IAEA safeguard inspectors who  announced, at the conclusions of such visits, that there was no sign of  diversions of nuclear material. The inspectors gave a general clean bill  of health to the facility; two deputy director generals of the IAEA and  many staff members visited Al Tuwaitha, all of whom indicated that they  saw no suspicious activity....The IAEA inspectors were only allowed to  visit portions of three of the almost one hundred buildings at Al  Tuwaitha....While the restrictions on the movements of these visitors  could have been viewed as a warning sign, they were not recognized as  such by most of the visitors at the time. The safeguard inspectors were  routinely subjected to such restrictions in almost every country they  visited.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaddam Hussein himself had been the president of the  Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission beginning in 1973, when he was the vice  president of Iraq. He gave up the position when he became the Iraqi  president in 1979 but he accelerated the commission's work. Iraq began  buying uranium abroad that year, purchasing more than 11 tons of  unenriched uranium dioxide from Italy under IAEA safeguards. Uranium  dioxide is a form of uranium that can be converted directly into reactor  fuel, though not fuel useable in the type of reactor Iraq was then  building. In 1980 Iraq bought 138 tons of yellowcake-partly refined  uranium ore-from Portugal, notifying the IAEA that it had done so. Niger  supplied another batch of yellowcake, something more than 200 tons, in  February 1981, four months before the Israeli strike on Tuwaitha, and  once again Iraq notified the IAEA. After the air strike, however, Iraq  no longer reported its purchases: 148 tons of yellowcake from Portugal  in 1982 and a total of 32 tons of uranium dioxide from Brazil in 1981  and 1982, without IAEA notification. Iraq also hired a Belgian company  to design and build a plant for producing yellowcake from indigenous  phosphate ore (phosphate rock contains an average of 50 to 200 parts per  million of natural uranium). Construction began in 1982 and was  completed in 1984; the plant delivered its first batch of Iraqi  yellowcake in December 1985, producing a total of 168 tons by 1991.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy  Iraq might be buying large quantities of uranium ore which it had no  known facilities for using-no natural-uranium-fueled reactor and no  machinery for enrichment-is not a question that anyone has publicly  acknowledged asking during this period. Just as, after the Second World  War, the United States had doubted if the Soviet Union possessed the  industrial capabilities to develop a nuclear-materials complex, so also  did U.S. and international experts in the 1980s underestimate Iraq.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  another historical parallel with the early American atomic-bomb  program, Iraq in 1987 designed and tested a radiological weapon-a  \"dirty\" bomb. In 1943, shortly after the secret Manhattan Project  bomb-design laboratory at Los Alamos, in northern New Mexico, opened its  doors, concerned that Nazi Germany might be ahead in the race to build  the atomic bomb, the Italian physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi  had proposed to Los Alamos's director, Robert Oppenheimer, that the  pioneering nuclear reactor Fermi had recently started up at the  University of Chicago might be used to make radioactive material to  poison the German food supply. Responding to Fermi's proposal,  Oppenheimer had commented, \"In this connection I think that we should  not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a  million men, since there is no doubt that the actual number affected  will, because of non-uniform distribution, be much smaller than this.\"  As bomb development advanced, Fermi's project lapsed, although U.S.  experiments with radiological weapons continued after the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIraq  developed its dirty bomb to use against Iranian troop concentrations  and human wave attacks and to contaminate contested building complexes  and territory. \"The fact is that during the Iran\/ Iraq war, it was  masses of people attacking Iraq,\" an Iraqi senior government official  testified later. \"I have to say that these masses, if they do not die,  they would be unhappy. Because they know that by dying, they go to  heaven. So it was masses of people attacking Iraq. Any idea that was  presented to us to find a solution to this problem on the border of  1,200 kilometers was welcomed.\" Zirconium, the metal selected for  irradiation, with a half-life* in its irradiated form of only 75.5 days,  would lose most of its radioactivity in a matter of weeks, allowing  Iraqi forces to secure contaminated areas after radiation levels  declined.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the 1987 Iraqi tests proved to be both incompetent  and ineffective. The bombs tested, twelve feet long and weighing more  than two thousand pounds, were built around three-foot-long, lead- lined  capsules containing the radioactive zirconium powder, to be dispersed  at the appropriate time by high explosives. They \"produced only minimal  levels of radiation,\" writes the proliferation expert Gary Milhollin,  who reviewed the 1987 Iraqi test report when Iraq finally disgorged it a  decade later. For the third and most successful test, the Iraqi Air  Force dropped two bombs from a plane. They generated large radioactive  clouds, but most of the radiation dispersed with the clouds. \"The  maximum level of radiation was only 3 millirem per hour at a distance of  10 meters from the point of impact,\" Milhollin notes. \"According to the  report, this is only equal to the dose allowed to be received  internationally by radiation workers....Such a dose, by definition,  would have little or no health effect over the lifetime of the person  receiving it.\" The bombs would have to be recharged in a nuclear reactor  every week to be even minimally effective, another fatal defect. Iraq  abandoned its radioactive-bomb program after the 1987 tests and  continued to work toward a real nuclear weapon. In 1988 it decided  formally to develop a nuclear arsenal, with the expectation that a first  bomb would be ready by summer 1991.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next clear sign that  Iraq was advancing toward developing nuclear weapons appeared in 1988,  when an Iraqi representative contacted two U.S. companies seeking to  obtain a quantity of a special type of vacuum tube known as a krytron.  In previous years both Israeli and Pakistani agents had been caught  shipping krytrons to their respective countries; now it was Iraq's turn.  Krytrons are extremely fast electronic switches; triggered by an  electric current, they can open in as short a time as five nanoseconds  to pass that current through. In 1988 they were used in high-speed flash  photography and in copying machines, but the rugged krytron the Iraqis  were seeking was designed specifically to trigger the detonators of a  nuclear weapon. Its export required a U.S. government permit, and the  Iraqi request for such a permit was denied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Iraqi procuring  agents regrouped. If they couldn't buy krytrons directly, perhaps they  could buy another necessary and more generic element of a nuclear-weapon  firing set, a device known as a capacitor. Capacitors accumulate and  store electric charge. Attached to a battery, they can accumulate charge  from the battery current up to whatever capacity they've been designed  to hold; when they discharge, they discharge the entire stored charge at  once. An electric fence uses a capacitor to accumulate charge between  discharges, typically five thousand volts or more, which is why a mere  nine-volt electric-fence battery can deliver such a painful shock. A  firing set for a nuclear weapon might thus consist of one or more  batteries, which are connected to an array of capacitors, which are  connected to krytrons, which are connected to exploding-wire detonators,  which are inserted into high-explosive blocks arranged in the form of a  sphere of concentric shells of explosives and other components, at the  center of which is a sphere of HEU or plutonium. This method of  detonating a subcritical mass of fissile material-by squeezing it to a  denser supercritical state with an inwardly moving shock wave generated  by shaped charges of explosives (\"explosive lenses\")-is called  implosion.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300081651941,"sku":"NP9780307387417","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307387417.jpg?v=1730743601","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/twilight-of-the-bombsisbn-9780307387417","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}