Eliminating nuclear weapons : the role of missile defense / Tom Sauer.

Includes bibliographical references.

From nuclear deterrence to overkill -- Towards nuclear elimination -- Technological readiness of missile defense -- Strategic stability and financial concerns about missile defense -- Nuclear elimination with or without missile defense? -- Appendix : president Obama's speech on nuclear weapons (Prague, 5 April, 2009).

Leading powers are again taking seriously the eradication of nuclear weapons, yet with states such as India, Pakistan, and possibly North Korea and Iran going nuclear, it is only a matter of time before additional arsenals are deployed. The ultimate fear is that nuclear terrorism, a forbidding combination of technology and ideology, will destabilize the world. As missile defense systems grow in the United States and Europe, the question becomes whether nuclear elimination and missile defense will reinforce or weaken each other. Is missile defense a precondition for nuclear weapons eradication, or does it make it more difficult for the world to reach 2global zero3? Eliminating Nuclear Weapons is the first book to systematically compare and evaluate these two possible trajectories: either making missile defense a mandatory precondition for arriving at a nuclear weapons{u2013}free world or deemphasizing missile defense in favor of other strategies. In this timely and urgent study, Tom Sauer weighs a number of outcomes and recommends steps governments can undertake to mitigate disaster.