Nuclear Weapons and the Environment

During the Cold War, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to wipe out humanity and took the United States and the USSR to the brink of total annihilation as JFK and Nikita Khrushchev looked into the abyss of where a security policy based on Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) had taken them. A policy of Gradual Reduction in Tensions (GRIT), bilateral treaties, and a security deterrence strategy de-escalated tensions between both superpowers. More recently Pakistan and India have escalated their ongoing conflict over the Kashmir as Indian and Chinese troops have clashed at various locations along the Sino-Indian border. And North Korea continues to test missiles for its nuclear warheads as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal flounders due to the lack of US leadership. The risk of a nuclear armageddon is never far away. John Perry has produced an important and stimulating exploration of how the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear accidents in Chernobyl, Ukraine, and in Ōkuma, Japan, pose a grave threat to the environment and to life on planet earth. This excellent book will have a wide audience.

-- Sean Byrne, University of Mani