Obama and the Bomb

Nuclear threats have become more dangerous and more complex in recent years. The number of states possessing nuclear weapons now stands at nine. Roughly 25.000 nuclear warheads still remain in the arsenals of those states. Barack Obama spoke of a world free of nuclear weapons in his April 2009 speech in Prague. For the authors in this book there is no doubt that a new atmosphere has arisen thanks to new policies pursued by the Obama administration and the response it has evoked in the world. A world free of nuclear weapons is clearly not going to happen overnight and will be a long-term process, however. This book places his goal of disarmament into the context of the non-proliferation regime, and discusses how non-proliferation and disarmament are linked. The authors propose certain steps that could be taken to help to curb proliferation and move towards disarmament.

Heinz Gärtner is professor at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP) and lecturer at the University of Vienna. Among others he had visiting professorships and research stays at the Institute for East-West Security Studies (New York), the University of Erlangen (Germany), St. Johns College (Oxford), the University of British Colombia, the World Policy Institute (New York), the University of New Haven and the Stanford University. He published widely on European and International security, arms control and on U.S. foreign policy.

Contents: Heinz Gärtner: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons? – Mohamed ElBaradei: Reviving Nuclear Disarmament – Hans Blix: Can Nuclear Proliferation be Prevented and Disarmament Achieved? – P. Terrence Hopmann: The Debate in the U.S.: Towards Obama’s Vision of a World without Nuclear Weapons – Alexander Kmentt: The CTBT: Has Its Time Come? – Tom Sauer: Lessons Learned by President Obama: President Clinton’s Failed Nuclear Posture Review – Linda Michalech: Continuity or Change: The Nuclear Posture Reviews of George W. Bush and Barack Obama – Marco Roscini: Negative Security Assurances in the Protocols Additional to the Treaties Establishing Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones – Kari Möttölä: Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe - A Case in Indigenous Arms Control? – Hakan Akbulut: Regional Implications of a Nuclear Armed Iran - The Turkish Matrix – Magdalena Skrzypczyk: The Nuclear Hypocrisy – Markus Kornprobst/Charlotte Spencer-Smith: Beyond the Prague Agenda: Reconsidering the Legitimacy of the Non-proliferation Regime – Wolfgang Bednarzek: Nuclear Verification and National Sovereignty – Simon Tauer: Preventing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons to Non-State Actors: UN Security Council Resolution 1540 and the Long Way towards Full Implementation – Markus Woltran: The Proposals for a Multilateral Fuel Bank – Heinz Gärtner: Non-Proliferation, Disarmament and Engagement. Inhaltsverzeichnis