1. Many experts predicted that the world would have at least twice the number of nuclear weapons states than now exist. In 1956, for example, Harold Stassen, President Eisenhower s special assistant on disarmament, predicted that twenty states soon would possess nuclear arms. Herbert S. Parmet ,Eisenhower and the American Crusades( New York : Macmillan , 1972 ), 450 – 51 . In 1965 President Kennedy and his advisers predicted fifteen to twenty-five nuclear-armed states by the mid-1970s.New York Times, 23 March 1963. A decade later, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) director, Fred C. Iklé, predicted that in 1985 about thirty-five nations each would be able to produce several dozen nuclear weapons. Statement before the Subcommittee on International Security and Scientific Affairs of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, 5 November 1975. Although numerous countries have had the capability, and others the will to go nuclear, today there are less than a dozen nuclear-armed nations. The various policy components of the U.S.backed nuclear nonproliferation regime merit much of the credit for the relatively slow pace of the global spread of the bomb. As the scientific and industrial capabilities of states improve, international policy will become even more consequential for curbing nuclear proliferation. For a concise description and assessment of the various policy arrangements forming the nonproliferation regime, see Kathleen Bailey,Strengthening Nuclear Nonproliferation(Boulder: Westview, 1993). For a detailed analysis or why some likely candidates have not entered the nuclear club, see Mitchell Reiss,Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
2. Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship
3. Stumbling Into Opacity: The United States, Israel, and the Atom, 1960–63
4. Nuclear Myths and Political Realities