Challenging nuclearism explores how a deliberate ‘normalisation’ of nuclear weapons has been constructed, why it has prevailed in international politics for over seventy years and why it is only now being questioned seriously. The book identifies how certain practices have enabled a small group of states to hold vast arsenals of these weapons of mass destruction and how the close control over nuclear decisions by a select group has meant that the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons have been disregarded for decades. The recent UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will not bring about quick disarmament. It has been decried by the nuclear weapon states. But by rejecting nuclearism and providing a clear denunciation of nuclear weapons, it will challenge nuclear states in a way that has until now not been possible. Challenging nuclearism analyses the origins and repercussions of this pivotal moment in nuclear politics.

The radical changes in the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War have made the sheer absurdity of the arms race transparent to virtually all observers. Yet none of the current theories of the arms race provides a coherent and systematic account of how, in the belated words of Time magazine, such a &"pathology&" developed in the first place. Moreover, none of these theories can readily address&—much less explain&—the rapid shifts in attitudes toward nuclear weapons that occurred at the start and at the end of the 1980s. While not denying explanatory value to bureaucratic, technical, political, and economic factors, The Rise and Fall of Nuclearism focuses attention instead on the cultural dimensions of the arms race. It traces the long-term secular changes in Western societies that made the faith in &"nuclearism&" possible to begin with; and it draws on sociological concepts to explain how such a misplaced faith accrued to nuclear weapons and why this faith eventually came undone. The concept of &"moral panic&" is central to the argument. Ungar shows that moral panics were precipitated by authentic surges of fear responding to perceived Soviet challenges to American nuclear supremacy; these panics provided the political leverage for large-scale nuclear buildups and made possible the growth of the military-industrial complex in the United States. Elite efforts to orchestrate panics, however, typically failed or backfired. The key to understanding the episodic nature of the arms race, Ungar argues, lies in the dynamic oscillation between nuclear worship, which viewed the &"bomb&" as the source of salvation, and nuclear dread, which conjured up images of vaporized cities and an end to civilization. In the concluding chapter he discusses what role nuclear fear&—about proliferation, for instance&—may continue to play in the post-Cold War world.

Highlights the threats posed by nuclear weapons and shows a way to denuclearization through the application of international law.

The Path to Zero argues that it is time to re-open the public debate on nuclear weapons. In a series of clear and well-reasoned dialogues, long-time scholars and peace activists Richard Falk and David Krieger probe key questions about our nuclear capability and dig beneath the secrecy that has largely surrounded its existence. Falk and Krieger argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only the beginning. In recent times, nuclear annihilation at the hands of rogue states and terrorists has become an even greater concern than the spectre of nuclear war between superpowers. The Path to Zero argues that whilst none of us has the power to bring about global change alone, together we are immensely powerful - powerful enough to overcome the threats of the Nuclear Age and move us appreciably along 'the path to zero'.