Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age

Book excerpt: "The world is entering a dangerous third nuclear age that will be characterized by competition among several great powers who are expanding and modernizing their nuclear arsenals. The United States is conceptually unprepared to face this potentially unstable new era of nuclear multipolarity. The lessons of negotiating arms control in the first nuclear age during the Cold War have faded from memory, and the nonproliferation and disarmament instruments that were developed under post-Cold War US hegemony in the second nuclear age are ill suited to the future. David A. Cooper proposes relearning, reviving, and adapting classic arms control theory and negotiating practices to steer the world away from dangerous and destabilizing nuclear arms races. He surveys the history of nuclear arms control efforts, revisits what we know about the dynamics of nuclear weapons from strategic theory, and interviews US defense practitioners to glean insights about both the past and the emerging era. This book will be a must-read for scholars, students and practitioners of nuclear arms control"--