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“For 50 years, the Arms Control Association has educated citizens around the world to help create broad support for U.S.-led arms control and nonproliferation achievements.”

– President Joe Biden
June 2, 2022
Books of Note
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Latest ACA Resources

Striving for Military Stability in Europe: Negotiation, Implementation, and Adaptation of the CFE Treaty
By Jane M. O. Sharp, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, January
2006, 292 pp.

Jane Sharp offers a critical assessment of the role of arms control in promoting security and stability in post-Cold War Europe through the lens of the negotiation, implementation, and adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization states initiated the treaty in 1990. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the subsequent rush of former Soviet republics to join NATO, however, member-states struggled to modify the treaty to reflect the changing environment. These efforts were complicated by Russia’s Cold War-era military leaders, who balked at adapting to the new Europe seeking instead strategic parity with the ever-expanding NATO. Sharp cautions that the diplomatic process cannot run ahead of political relations. She concludes, however, that the lasting legacy of the CFE Treaty will not be the numerical limits imposed on five categories of heavy military equipment, significant as they are, but the high degree of transparency afforded by the annual information exchanges and schedule of inspections.



The Bomb in the Basement : How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World
By Michael Karpin, Simon & Schuster, January 2006, 416 pp.

This history of Israel’s nuclear program, written by a veteran Israeli journalist, appears at an opportune moment as Iran perhaps moves toward a similar option. Peppered with a colorful portrait of the individuals involved, it shows how Israel was able to evade the less than wholehearted attempts of some foreign powers, particularly the United States, to restrict its illicit nuclear activities. Additionally, it lays out in detail how and why Israel found a willing nuclear supplier in France. Karpin details the conscious decision by Israeli officials to brush aside potential U.S. security guarantees from President John F. Kennedy and to retain their nuclear option; how Israel’s blossoming nuclear capability indirectly affected the 1967 Six-Day War; and how Israel depended on politically influential American Jewish donors to raise money for its nuclear program.



Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence
From Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea
By Jeffrey T. Richelson, W.W. Norton & Company, March 2006, 702 pp.

Jeffrey T. Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, draws on interviews and declassified documents to trace the nuclear activities of 15 countries and the efforts of the intelligence community to uncover and understand them. Richelson reveals the powerful role technology plays in assessing nuclear arsenals, especially in the era of Cold War atmospheric testing. He says, however, that the lack of sound human intelligence sources has contributed to some inaccurate assessments. For example, U.S. human intelligence failed to reveal the extent of Iraq’s nuclear and biological weapons programs before the 1991 Persian Gulf War and helped lead the Bush administration to overestimate Iraq’s unconventional weapons efforts before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of that country. His final chapter examines the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the latest tests for the U.S. intelligence community.


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