The rise and fall of nuclearism
Chapter one outlines the historical context that made faith in nuclear omnipotence conceivable. It shows how the idea of omnipotence derived from religious and scientific trends in the West. Chapter two shows how the idea of omnipotence was beginning to form around the scientific enterprise and was then put on the map by the atomic bomb. Chapter three examines how politicians immediately ascribed a sense of omnipotence to the bomb. Chapter four examines the public reception of the bomb. Chapters five through seven examine the moral panics unleashed by Soviet challenges to the American sense of nuclear omnipotence. They deal, respectively, with the Soviet atomic bomb-Korean war panic, the Sputnik panic, and the Cuban missile crisis. Chapter eight examines the radical reversal that followed the Sputnik and missile crisis panic. Chapter nine considers the ultimate consequence of totalitarian omnipotence: the abiding fear of a Soviet first strike. The conclusion examines the implications of the bomb's confounding power in the new world authorized by the Gorbachev revolution.
- OSTI ID:
- 6155494
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
290600 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Nuclear Energy
350000* -- Arms Control-- (1987-)
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ANIMALS
ARMS CONTROL
ASIA
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
EUROPE
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
MAMMALS
MAN
MILITARY STRATEGY
NATIONAL SECURITY
NORTH AMERICA
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
PERSONNEL
POLITICAL ASPECTS
PRIMATES
PROFESSIONAL PERSONNEL
PROLIFERATION
PSYCHOLOGY
PUBLIC ANXIETY
SCIENTIFIC PERSONNEL
SECURITY
SOCIAL IMPACT
USA
USSR
VERTEBRATES
WARFARE
WEAPONS