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Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons
The final volume in Richard Rhodes's prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age.
The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers--Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States--have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.
The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers--Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States--have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.
481 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
31 people are currently reading
510 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rhodes
110 books611 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 2, 2013
"Nuclear weapons, never weapons of warfare except in the grandiose imaginations of air-power fantasists, have reverted to their original function: They are terror weapons. Are we terrorists?"
One of the many questions and conclusions in Richard Rhodes's The Twilight of the Bombs. Rhodes is acclaimed for his histories of the nuclear age: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun, and Arsenals of Folly. This 2010 study completes his history of the nuclear age with an account of events which have occurred since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The fact that part of the old Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal might be inherited by 3 newly-independent states was an alarming one. How the nuclear arms in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan were dispositioned is the early thrust of his narrative. He also covers in detail the Iraqi program in the early '90s, which was very real. How that program was inspected by the UN-sponsored IAEA and subsequently ended, as well as the inspections in the runup to the 2003 U. S. invasion, is engaging reading. Rhodes describes the South African development of the weapon and their later decision to destroy their stockpile and all documentation relating to it. He relates as much as I suspect is publicly known about the successful North Korean and stalled Iranian programs.
For this reader the most unsettling perspective is that of what's called nuclear terrorism. Though comprehensive discussions and steps to keep secure all the world's fissile material are constantly ongoing and reviewed, the possibility of an independent political group acquiring a nuclear device has become a fresh nightmare. Experiments have shown that a small terrorist group--numbering even a handful--with the scientific knowledge and a moderate machine shop capability can design and build a device if they can somehow obtain a few pounds of highly enriched uranium.
It's fascinating reading, and some of it's grim. But for me the closer the book got to the present and to Rhodes's conclusions, the more encouraged I became. The nuclear powers are slowly coming to believe that possession of such terrible power is in the end a fiscal drain as well as an ineffective bargaining tool. The problem of nuclear weapons, it's said, is nuclear weapons. The fact that hey have never been used by a nuclear power against an enemy speaks for their uselessness. Nuclear powers elect to accept defeat--witness the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and America in Vietnam--rather than use them. It seems to be universally understood by the community of nations that they simply can't be used. Since the end of the Cold War there has been a vigorous and largely successful campaign to not only reduce the stockpiles of nuclear weapons but to begin, realistically, seeking the elimination of them altogether. Serious talks have taken place with that in mind, though without definitive agreement. Despite the holdouts--India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea--elimination for the first time seems possible because nations have realized that in this age of precision weaponry, when conventional strikes can be delivered into a 3-foot circle over 5000 miles, nukes aren't needed. Equally encouraging, though he doesn't state it directly, such precision makes the huge conventional formations of tanks and infantry units even more obsolete. Organized conflict will be relegated to smaller battalions. It's truly the twilight of the bombs. Rhodes's conclusions are stirring and full of hope.
One of the many questions and conclusions in Richard Rhodes's The Twilight of the Bombs. Rhodes is acclaimed for his histories of the nuclear age: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun, and Arsenals of Folly. This 2010 study completes his history of the nuclear age with an account of events which have occurred since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The fact that part of the old Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal might be inherited by 3 newly-independent states was an alarming one. How the nuclear arms in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan were dispositioned is the early thrust of his narrative. He also covers in detail the Iraqi program in the early '90s, which was very real. How that program was inspected by the UN-sponsored IAEA and subsequently ended, as well as the inspections in the runup to the 2003 U. S. invasion, is engaging reading. Rhodes describes the South African development of the weapon and their later decision to destroy their stockpile and all documentation relating to it. He relates as much as I suspect is publicly known about the successful North Korean and stalled Iranian programs.
For this reader the most unsettling perspective is that of what's called nuclear terrorism. Though comprehensive discussions and steps to keep secure all the world's fissile material are constantly ongoing and reviewed, the possibility of an independent political group acquiring a nuclear device has become a fresh nightmare. Experiments have shown that a small terrorist group--numbering even a handful--with the scientific knowledge and a moderate machine shop capability can design and build a device if they can somehow obtain a few pounds of highly enriched uranium.
It's fascinating reading, and some of it's grim. But for me the closer the book got to the present and to Rhodes's conclusions, the more encouraged I became. The nuclear powers are slowly coming to believe that possession of such terrible power is in the end a fiscal drain as well as an ineffective bargaining tool. The problem of nuclear weapons, it's said, is nuclear weapons. The fact that hey have never been used by a nuclear power against an enemy speaks for their uselessness. Nuclear powers elect to accept defeat--witness the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and America in Vietnam--rather than use them. It seems to be universally understood by the community of nations that they simply can't be used. Since the end of the Cold War there has been a vigorous and largely successful campaign to not only reduce the stockpiles of nuclear weapons but to begin, realistically, seeking the elimination of them altogether. Serious talks have taken place with that in mind, though without definitive agreement. Despite the holdouts--India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea--elimination for the first time seems possible because nations have realized that in this age of precision weaponry, when conventional strikes can be delivered into a 3-foot circle over 5000 miles, nukes aren't needed. Equally encouraging, though he doesn't state it directly, such precision makes the huge conventional formations of tanks and infantry units even more obsolete. Organized conflict will be relegated to smaller battalions. It's truly the twilight of the bombs. Rhodes's conclusions are stirring and full of hope.
May 31, 2012
The end of the Cold War did not end the history of nuclear weapons, the subject of Rhodes's earler books. There were more thrilling stories involving them. Iraq tried to build nuclear weapons; after it lost the 1990-1991 war, the victors tried to disarm it. A cat-and-mouse game between weapons inspectors and Iraqi officials followed. Aerial photographs of Iraqi facilities showed fifteen-foot-wide metal disks. No one knew what they were until a 69-year-old veteran of the Manhattan Project said that these looked like the electromagnet cores of calutrons, a 1940s technology for separating the isotopes of uranium. Another confirmation came from American hostages held at an Iraqi nuclear research facility in 1990; the hostages were asked to turn in their clothes, which contained microscopic particles of uranium so deficient in U-235 that they could only come from a calutron. When inspectors showed up at a military base, an Iraqi colonel did not allow them inside, but let them watch the base from a nearby water tower before he got a clearance from Baghdad; the colonel was later executed for making this mistake. From the water tower, the inspectors saw a long line of tank-transporter trucks leaving the base with the metal disks and tarp-covered boxes. A few inspectors chased the trucks in a jeep and took pictures; the Iraqis fired into the air but did not dare shoot them. Eventually Iraq did destroy its nuclear program but, tragically, did not document its destruction well enough to convince the US government.
The Soviet and Russian system of nuclear command-and-control, the designers of which got the Lenin Prize, is better designed than the American one. In 1976 US Representative Charles Rose said in an interview that shortly before his resignation, President Richard Nixon said to a group of Congressmen, "I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead," (different versions of this quote have appeared in newspapers and books; presumably, several Congressmen recalled it from memory differently). Thankfully, General Secretary Chernenko could not have given such an order himself; he also needed authorization from the Minister of Defense, the Chief of General Staff, and the commander of the branch of service responsible for the missiles or bombs. Thus during the 1991 Soviet coup Soviet nukes were safe. The fun began when the Soviet Union broke up; in addition to Russia, nuclear weapons were left in Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. According to a Kazakh journalist, in December 1991 PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and offered him to be the arbiter of peace in the Middle East, being the leader of the world's first nuclear Muslim country. Fortunately, Nazarbayev declined to aim the missiles where Arafat wanted him to, and gave them to Russia. The Soviet Project 705 nuclear attack submarines were the world's smallest and fastest, powered by a lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor fed by uranium enriched to bomb grade. After the submarines were decommissioned during the Perestroika, a large quantity of their fuel sat forgotten in a warehouse at a metallurgical plant in Kazakhstan. An American engineer was shown the warehouse in 1994; it had over a thousand cans of uranium and berillium all over the floor, dusty shelves and plywood platforms. The Americans flew it all out in a C-5 Galaxy, paying the Kazakh government tens of millions of dollars and giving a large amount of aid to the local government and orphanages.
Nuclear weapons are an old technology. Given plutonium or highly enriched uranium, even a technologically unsophisticated nation such as South Africa can build them. In a 1964 experiment, it took two physics postdocs, who started knowing nothing about nuclear weapons, 2 1/2 years to design something that weapons experts said would produce a Hiroshima-sized explosion. No Al-Qaeda and no Aum Shinrikyo has done so thus far only because none have plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Several people have pointed out that as long as any state has them, its less-than-friendly neighbors will seek them, and so will non-state entities; the logic of nuclear deterrence does not work against an organization employing suicide bombers.
Richard Rhodes started writing about nuclear weapons at age 42; when this book came out, he was 73. His conclusion is that the world won't be safe until nuclear weapons are abolished.
The Soviet and Russian system of nuclear command-and-control, the designers of which got the Lenin Prize, is better designed than the American one. In 1976 US Representative Charles Rose said in an interview that shortly before his resignation, President Richard Nixon said to a group of Congressmen, "I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead," (different versions of this quote have appeared in newspapers and books; presumably, several Congressmen recalled it from memory differently). Thankfully, General Secretary Chernenko could not have given such an order himself; he also needed authorization from the Minister of Defense, the Chief of General Staff, and the commander of the branch of service responsible for the missiles or bombs. Thus during the 1991 Soviet coup Soviet nukes were safe. The fun began when the Soviet Union broke up; in addition to Russia, nuclear weapons were left in Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. According to a Kazakh journalist, in December 1991 PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and offered him to be the arbiter of peace in the Middle East, being the leader of the world's first nuclear Muslim country. Fortunately, Nazarbayev declined to aim the missiles where Arafat wanted him to, and gave them to Russia. The Soviet Project 705 nuclear attack submarines were the world's smallest and fastest, powered by a lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor fed by uranium enriched to bomb grade. After the submarines were decommissioned during the Perestroika, a large quantity of their fuel sat forgotten in a warehouse at a metallurgical plant in Kazakhstan. An American engineer was shown the warehouse in 1994; it had over a thousand cans of uranium and berillium all over the floor, dusty shelves and plywood platforms. The Americans flew it all out in a C-5 Galaxy, paying the Kazakh government tens of millions of dollars and giving a large amount of aid to the local government and orphanages.
Nuclear weapons are an old technology. Given plutonium or highly enriched uranium, even a technologically unsophisticated nation such as South Africa can build them. In a 1964 experiment, it took two physics postdocs, who started knowing nothing about nuclear weapons, 2 1/2 years to design something that weapons experts said would produce a Hiroshima-sized explosion. No Al-Qaeda and no Aum Shinrikyo has done so thus far only because none have plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Several people have pointed out that as long as any state has them, its less-than-friendly neighbors will seek them, and so will non-state entities; the logic of nuclear deterrence does not work against an organization employing suicide bombers.
Richard Rhodes started writing about nuclear weapons at age 42; when this book came out, he was 73. His conclusion is that the world won't be safe until nuclear weapons are abolished.
February 12, 2021
I hope he writes another book soon!
June 5, 2024
If you’ve never read a Richard Rhodes book, do yourself a favor and pick one up. This book was nowhere near as in-depth as the “making of the atomic bomb” was as that tomb was incredibly comprehensive and dealt with many more people and moving parts. Yet, this book is just as important if not more relevant to our current world position.
“Perhaps everything terrible, is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us”
- Rainer Maria Rilke -
“Perhaps everything terrible, is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us”
- Rainer Maria Rilke -
May 14, 2024
Rhodes is the bard of the nuclear age, and revisiting the recent past with him is unsurprisingly illuminating. His ability to synthesize disparate events (without skimping on detail) has helped me anchor my own research in a more dynamic historical ecosystem—and combat the academic impulse to focus too narrowly on bits rather than connections. I love accounts of the recent past because they almost always render the "known" uncanny. Sometimes I wonder if we know far more about distant histories than the immediate pretext for the world in which we live.
Certain aspects of this book (published in 2010) have not aged well, such as the optimistic conclusion linking public health to the potential for public safety, and the conviction that particular pathologies re arms and arming are in decline. But the book does an essential service in systematically laying out the inflection points of the 90s, and really digging into things like the longer history of WMD in Iraq, the Comprehensive Threat Reduction program, and the political maneuvering around the CTBT.
A few takeaways:
-Richard Rhodes loathes Dick Cheney.
-Threats evolve and shift more quickly than arsenals and force postures, which creates interesting, and troubling, lags in the security world.
-The book underscores what the end of the Cold War meant: "the unfettering and simultaneous impoverishment" of one of the two great powers (8). That's almost unfathomable, and profoundly destabilizing! I think the 90s in general are far more interesting than people remember. Maybe we're over-indexing on the lush, complacent consumerism of lived American life, and forgetting the geopolitical turmoil... in truth this was a decade in which so many things in the world were simultaneously moving in unpredictable directions.
-Reading this book made me think about the problems of isolating the Iranian nuclear program from non-contemporary regional dynamics... Might be interesting to juxtapose the Iraqi and Iranian nuclear programs/nuclear decision-making in the 90s and early 2000s. I mean, the Iraqis literally developed a dirty bomb to use against Iranian troops (21)!
-We should probably talk more about Saddam Hussein.
-The Clinton administration (on Rhodes' telling) seems to have suffered from a chronic failure to follow through on its better policies, allowing agreements like the AF or CTBT to languish post signature.
-The neocon views on nuclear issues are both stickier and thinner than many realize. The current revival of interest in missile defense (and deep skepticism of arms control) have obvious precedent.
-I should think more about the Megatons to Megawatts program
-Rhodes hates threat inflation
-Another thing I'd love to think more about/write about is the relationship between verification and history (the role of documents, archives etc), especially in reference to both the South African and Iraqi examples of undocumented unilateral disarmament. There's a lot to be said about the compliance, cooperation, commitments, and documentation.
Some quotes:
-Sig (love him) on the value of lab-to-labs and scientific exchanges post CW/pathologies of resisting cooperation: "I mostly thought we were spending millions for intelligence that we could get for free, as we did during the JVEs. We had a lot to learn and a lot to gain by going over there and meeting these people." (162)
-"The reification of human beings into an enemy fed such democidal arrogance on both sides of the Iron Curtain; opening up the weapons complex, as Bohr had predicted, opened up more than a few hardened hearts." (169)
-Gallucci on the Agreed Framework: "Let's. keep our eye on the ball here: the ball is the nuclear-weapons program, and all I need to be interested in, in this negotiation, if I'm going to do my job, is the extent to which I can stop that program. And if it's not a permanent stop, then I've got to make sure that wea re always better off with any deal we make than without it at whatever point the deal ends. So that we aren't snookered, so they don't get something and get ahead. I can't have long-term confidence in this deal, I just need to be constantly evaluating, putting us in a better position than if we didn't have the deal. It's a very incremental, small-steps-for-little-feet kind of deal." (239)
-"Duelfer added, from a post-Gulf War perspective: 'It emerged that this was, in fact, the case. In the end, we had asked Iraq to prove the nonexistence of something—a task wholly dependent on trustworthiness. The Iraqis did not have WMD. But neither could we ever trust them.' In that discrepancy lay the seeds of the second Gulf War." (298)
-"But as Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and philosopher, was the first to realize, the complement of that utter destructiveness must then be unity in common security, a fundamental transformation in relationships between nations, nondiscrimination in unity not on the dark side but by the light of day." (386)
Certain aspects of this book (published in 2010) have not aged well, such as the optimistic conclusion linking public health to the potential for public safety, and the conviction that particular pathologies re arms and arming are in decline. But the book does an essential service in systematically laying out the inflection points of the 90s, and really digging into things like the longer history of WMD in Iraq, the Comprehensive Threat Reduction program, and the political maneuvering around the CTBT.
A few takeaways:
-Richard Rhodes loathes Dick Cheney.
-Threats evolve and shift more quickly than arsenals and force postures, which creates interesting, and troubling, lags in the security world.
-The book underscores what the end of the Cold War meant: "the unfettering and simultaneous impoverishment" of one of the two great powers (8). That's almost unfathomable, and profoundly destabilizing! I think the 90s in general are far more interesting than people remember. Maybe we're over-indexing on the lush, complacent consumerism of lived American life, and forgetting the geopolitical turmoil... in truth this was a decade in which so many things in the world were simultaneously moving in unpredictable directions.
-Reading this book made me think about the problems of isolating the Iranian nuclear program from non-contemporary regional dynamics... Might be interesting to juxtapose the Iraqi and Iranian nuclear programs/nuclear decision-making in the 90s and early 2000s. I mean, the Iraqis literally developed a dirty bomb to use against Iranian troops (21)!
-We should probably talk more about Saddam Hussein.
-The Clinton administration (on Rhodes' telling) seems to have suffered from a chronic failure to follow through on its better policies, allowing agreements like the AF or CTBT to languish post signature.
-The neocon views on nuclear issues are both stickier and thinner than many realize. The current revival of interest in missile defense (and deep skepticism of arms control) have obvious precedent.
-I should think more about the Megatons to Megawatts program
-Rhodes hates threat inflation
-Another thing I'd love to think more about/write about is the relationship between verification and history (the role of documents, archives etc), especially in reference to both the South African and Iraqi examples of undocumented unilateral disarmament. There's a lot to be said about the compliance, cooperation, commitments, and documentation.
Some quotes:
-Sig (love him) on the value of lab-to-labs and scientific exchanges post CW/pathologies of resisting cooperation: "I mostly thought we were spending millions for intelligence that we could get for free, as we did during the JVEs. We had a lot to learn and a lot to gain by going over there and meeting these people." (162)
-"The reification of human beings into an enemy fed such democidal arrogance on both sides of the Iron Curtain; opening up the weapons complex, as Bohr had predicted, opened up more than a few hardened hearts." (169)
-Gallucci on the Agreed Framework: "Let's. keep our eye on the ball here: the ball is the nuclear-weapons program, and all I need to be interested in, in this negotiation, if I'm going to do my job, is the extent to which I can stop that program. And if it's not a permanent stop, then I've got to make sure that wea re always better off with any deal we make than without it at whatever point the deal ends. So that we aren't snookered, so they don't get something and get ahead. I can't have long-term confidence in this deal, I just need to be constantly evaluating, putting us in a better position than if we didn't have the deal. It's a very incremental, small-steps-for-little-feet kind of deal." (239)
-"Duelfer added, from a post-Gulf War perspective: 'It emerged that this was, in fact, the case. In the end, we had asked Iraq to prove the nonexistence of something—a task wholly dependent on trustworthiness. The Iraqis did not have WMD. But neither could we ever trust them.' In that discrepancy lay the seeds of the second Gulf War." (298)
-"But as Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and philosopher, was the first to realize, the complement of that utter destructiveness must then be unity in common security, a fundamental transformation in relationships between nations, nondiscrimination in unity not on the dark side but by the light of day." (386)
June 21, 2018
A very comprehensive, detailed history of world nuclear weaponry since roughly the end of the cold war, around 1990, it benefits from Rhodes' own involvement in some of the aspects. The information is important, and surprising in many places, but it can be dry. It covers Iraq's very real program in the 1990s (abandoned years before Bush's Iraq war), South Africa's successful program, that was rendered a liability by internal and external events and thus abandoned, North Korea (a lost opportunity in the 1990s), India and Pakistan, and so on. One of the more successful episodes was getting Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to relinquish their Soviet-provided weapons to Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The final part of the book is devoted to the manufacture by "threat inflation" of "reasons" for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the purportedly real motivations, by neocons like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bush, et al, and how they didn't go after the other two countries of Bush's "axis of evil": Iran and North Korea. At the end, Rhodes provides what seems a rather overly-optimistic assessment for the possibility for the total ban on nukes.
November 23, 2024
This is another excellent book. Reading it in September 2024 while roar rages in Ukraine with Russa threating nuclear escalation, as well as while the ongoing war in the middle east between Israel and terror groups supported by Iran bring the book into even sharper focus. Lastly, I am writing this review at the end of November 2024 and listening to the future USA president appoint a scarily inexperienced cabinet - and I really wonder if we are truly not yet in the twilight of the bomb.
I highly recommend these four books to anyone who wants to better understand the world we live in - they are must reads in my opinion.
I highly recommend these four books to anyone who wants to better understand the world we live in - they are must reads in my opinion.
October 12, 2017
The last book in Rhodes' nuclear weapons history. All four books are great, and highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the history, politics and science of nuclear weapons. This one deals with the efforts at disarmament since the cold war, including various treaties, terrorism and the problems with Iraq, North Korea and India and Pakistan. All four books also discuss the moral issues with nuclear weapons.
October 15, 2016
The final book in Rhodes' tetrology on nuclear weapons, Twilight of the bombs covers the timeline from shortly after the Reykjavik accords to 2011. Besides small side-lights, the book covers, in sequence: Iraq circa 1991, North Korea, former Soviet Republics, South Africa/India/Pakistan, then Iraq circa 2003.
The tales of inspections and subterfuge were often thrilling, the negotiations on disarmament were fascinating, and the book only bogged down at the end during the second time through Iraq and the famous WMDs. As I'd always suspected, Dick Cheney is a recurring villain (probably a fair assessment from the perspectives of nuclear disarmament), but, while this allowed me to gloat and glower, it wasn't as satisfying as the rest of the book.
I'm judging this book (and giving it four stars) compared to its peers, but not to its siblings. I wholeheartedly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb (the first of Rhodes' nuclear histories) and almost as enthusiastically recommend the second (Dark Sun). I recommend this book, but not if you're not already interested in the machinations of this era, and am looking forward to reading Arsenals of Folly (the third book in the series).
The tales of inspections and subterfuge were often thrilling, the negotiations on disarmament were fascinating, and the book only bogged down at the end during the second time through Iraq and the famous WMDs. As I'd always suspected, Dick Cheney is a recurring villain (probably a fair assessment from the perspectives of nuclear disarmament), but, while this allowed me to gloat and glower, it wasn't as satisfying as the rest of the book.
I'm judging this book (and giving it four stars) compared to its peers, but not to its siblings. I wholeheartedly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb (the first of Rhodes' nuclear histories) and almost as enthusiastically recommend the second (Dark Sun). I recommend this book, but not if you're not already interested in the machinations of this era, and am looking forward to reading Arsenals of Folly (the third book in the series).
May 21, 2017
I enjoyed the first section of the book. The middle section seemed to repeat a lot of Rhodes' previous work, Arsenals of Folly. The last section provided good information on weapons inspection efforts in Iraq following September 11, 2001, but the content seemed to veer off topic at times.
November 24, 2020
Mostly an Informative history of the mid international nuclear weapons era. Nicely in depth narration , but nothing deeply insightful looking back for those who lived thru era or studied prior. Rhodes is still the king of danger history telling. Thank you.
June 1, 2022
A well-written and well-organized book. Robertson Dean's reading held my attention. The stories about the Soviet Union, South Africa, Korean, and others held a lot of interesting information. The "main" story Iraq turned my stomach. May the world never forgive the US for what it has done.
March 13, 2023
Chilling and thorough book with hopeful ending.
Fuck Dick Cheney and both Bushs.
Fuck Dick Cheney and both Bushs.
August 9, 2014
It's hard to do better than your best. This is the fourth and last book in Rhodes' study on nuclear weapons. Unfortunately nothing will ever compare to his Pulitzer prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which if you have not read, then stop right now and go read it. No seriously, it's that good. It's probably the best history book I've ever read.
Which is what makes this book so disappointing. To be fair, the myriad story lines Rhodes tackles in this book aren't nearly as compelling as the making of the first atomic bomb and the characters aren't as colorful as Oppenheimer, Bohr et al. But Rhodes can't be blamed for that. History is history.
But Rhodes' opinions shine through more in this volume than in his last 3 works combined. And that's not a good thing. His politics are on display for all to see. His characterizations of people are either rich and glowing (if you're pro-disarmament---read: democratic) or downright demonizing if you're not. He could just as easily have written the same book if he had added a fuller account of why people opposed disarmament. Instead I got 3 sentences towards the end of the book and the excuse that they're all "parochial." After hundreds of pages from the other perspective it's not hard to feel like you're being fed a line and that something is being left out. Which is exactly what he demonizes the Bush administration for doing during the second Gulf war. For a writer of this caliber to be so petty is simply disappointing. I felt like I was only getting one side of a story because the author was so obviously invested in getting a certain point across.
And it's a good point! The full understanding of the fabulous work done by diplomats and others over the past 25 years is amazing and awe inspiring. But it is seriously detracted from by the lopsided and heavy handed writing.
Bottom line: If you've read the other three you'll like this one, but not as much a the others. It's still worth a read though.
Which is what makes this book so disappointing. To be fair, the myriad story lines Rhodes tackles in this book aren't nearly as compelling as the making of the first atomic bomb and the characters aren't as colorful as Oppenheimer, Bohr et al. But Rhodes can't be blamed for that. History is history.
But Rhodes' opinions shine through more in this volume than in his last 3 works combined. And that's not a good thing. His politics are on display for all to see. His characterizations of people are either rich and glowing (if you're pro-disarmament---read: democratic) or downright demonizing if you're not. He could just as easily have written the same book if he had added a fuller account of why people opposed disarmament. Instead I got 3 sentences towards the end of the book and the excuse that they're all "parochial." After hundreds of pages from the other perspective it's not hard to feel like you're being fed a line and that something is being left out. Which is exactly what he demonizes the Bush administration for doing during the second Gulf war. For a writer of this caliber to be so petty is simply disappointing. I felt like I was only getting one side of a story because the author was so obviously invested in getting a certain point across.
And it's a good point! The full understanding of the fabulous work done by diplomats and others over the past 25 years is amazing and awe inspiring. But it is seriously detracted from by the lopsided and heavy handed writing.
Bottom line: If you've read the other three you'll like this one, but not as much a the others. It's still worth a read though.
December 30, 2011
And so ends one of the best quadrilogies ever known. The final installation in Rhodes's set of books chronicling the history of nuclear weapons, this book covered (roughly) from the end of the Cold War through to about early 2010--though it really finished up with the debacle following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As with the other three books, Rhodes's clear, engaging prose lays out the extensive research he's conducted in a coherent, easy to understand logic and manner. Especially following the winning of the Pulitzer prize for the seminal The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Rhodes has gotten access to many of the people who were actually involved in the creation of these weapons, and in the political and military situations surrounding them, so much of this book is filled with the first-hand impressions of the people who actually lived these events from the inside. These books are all absolutely incredible, and anyone with any interest in nuclear weapons or the history of the 20th century should give these books a try--there won't be an easier, clearer, more enjoyable read on the topic than these four books.
October 11, 2010
Merging a scientist's attention to detail with a storyteller's flair for narrative drive and characterization, Rhodes has penned "an apt conclusion to an epic undertaking" (Kansas City Star). Filled with fascinating facts and anecdotes, The Twilight of the Bombs not only provides a fresh perspective on otherwise familiar recent events but also reveals significant, little-known episodes in the struggle for nonproliferation, reading at times "like a Tom Clancy novel" (Christian Science Monitor). The critics unanimously praised Rhodes's engaging style, meticulous research, and clear scientific explanations, but they diverged in their opinions of the optimistic conclusions he draws. While the final chapter on the world's nuclear weapons has yet to be written, Rhodes's four volumes remain unsurpassed in their scope and importance, and The Twilight of the Bombs is a splendid close to the story thus far. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
April 12, 2011
The history of atomic weapons in the past three decades as the victorious powers of the Second World War have unsuccessfully attempted to keep other notions from developing them. He then looks at the nations who have developed them and the ones that have deliberately disarmed and either abandoned their development programs, and in one case, South Africa, which destroyed all its weapons. Finally, he makes a case for the destruction of all of them. His case is two fold. They are useless as weapons of war. No nation has used them since the end of the Second World War, because their effects are so horrific. Even in the case of defeat, in Vietnam for the United States, and in Afghanistan for the Soviet Union, nations have refused to use them. They have been found to be useless and expensive to maintain, and therefore they should be destroyed. And because only nations have the resources to create the fissionable elements to arm them, destruction of these elements will keep them out of the hands of terrorists.
January 7, 2013
Not nearly as fascinating as his other works on this topic. It seemed to me that only the last 75 pages truly dealt with the subject, to wit, "Recent challenges, new dangers, and the prospects for a world without nuclear weapons.". This book does provide a very good historical summary of the post Cold War period including extensive material on the War with Iraq and inspections leading up to the war. What is missing is similar details/depth on US policy in regard to North Korea, Iran, China and non-State actors. Additionally missing is the impact of not testing of weapons. The nuclear zero efforts have spawned a number of books which better address the policy issues and security issues that better articulate the challenges and dangers of nuclear weapons.
January 18, 2021
Interesting and important work on nuclear proliferation. One might imagine that the challenges associated with the failed inspections for WMD prior to the second Gulf War would temper the author's enthusiasm for arms control but no. That we need to find a road beyond these insane weapons seems obvious but the historic record offers scant confidence that arms control agreements offer a fertile field. Perhaps the US could declare itself, and then comply with, a nuclear free status while retaining its delivery systems re-tasked with conventional payloads? I certainly don't know but the failure of Kellogg-Briand and Washington Naval Conference warrant review before we take an inherently faith-based approach to eliminating WMD.
May 5, 2012
This is primarily a depressing read, but it is also hopeful (the conclusion that we will manage to get rid of all nukes). This covers the period from about the collapse of the Soviet Union through ~2010. It covers keeping all the Soviet nukes, scientist, and infrastructure under control; the IAEA and UN inspections of Iraq, a bit about North Korea, South Africa, Iran, etc. It is really critical of Bush junior. During the first ~half of the book, I felt that there was too much "non-nuke" detail, but further along I changed my mind and felt it was well-balanced and a compelling part of the "story"/history.
January 17, 2011
Rhodes level of detailed research is--as always--extraordinary and enlightening without delving down to levels of trivia that would be uninteresting to many.
The background on various nuclear weapons projects is very detailed and interesting and builds well on some of his earlier works.
The walk-away conclusions offered here I found less compelling than the rest of the book but the questions posed in this book concerning nuclear disarmament are questions that are well worth discussion and thought.
I can heartily recommend this books on multiple levels.
The background on various nuclear weapons projects is very detailed and interesting and builds well on some of his earlier works.
The walk-away conclusions offered here I found less compelling than the rest of the book but the questions posed in this book concerning nuclear disarmament are questions that are well worth discussion and thought.
I can heartily recommend this books on multiple levels.
November 9, 2011
Some fascinating insights into the WMD inspections in Iraq and lead up to the occupation of Iraq and the also the part the US played in making safe of the Soviet nuclear arsenal after the break-up of the USSR. I didn't realise how Richard Rhodes actually became part of the story he was documenting when weapons inspectors recognised the machinery of the Iraqi nuclear program installation based on descriptions of early US attempts at refining Uranium that he described in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". Worth reading as retrospective on recent history.
January 10, 2024
Rhodes' last book on nuclear weapons and proliferation, and necessarily a little more scattershot than his previous work but still an excellent read.
Iraq leads and finishes the story—both their earlier abandoned efforts at a bomb, and the Bush administration ginning up WMD fears to sell an invasion in 2003—but Rhodes also covers securing the USSR's weapons after breakup, along with weapons programs in South Africa, North Korea, and (tangentially) a few other states. Would be well-supplemented by Hersh's The Samson Option about Israel's weapons program.
Iraq leads and finishes the story—both their earlier abandoned efforts at a bomb, and the Bush administration ginning up WMD fears to sell an invasion in 2003—but Rhodes also covers securing the USSR's weapons after breakup, along with weapons programs in South Africa, North Korea, and (tangentially) a few other states. Would be well-supplemented by Hersh's The Samson Option about Israel's weapons program.
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January 8, 2013An excellent finale of the series. All of Rhode's books about nuclear weapons are excellent, but this one has the most meaning for our present lives. We are living with nuclear weapons that the military doesn't want, are horrendously expensive to maintain ($50B a year), and make us less secure.
The book also details how wrong things went in global negotiations during the Bush administration. Heartbreaking stupidity that caused more proliferation.
The book also details how wrong things went in global negotiations during the Bush administration. Heartbreaking stupidity that caused more proliferation.
April 19, 2013
I recommend actually reading this than listening because there are a lot of acronyms and the story doesn't progress in a linear fashion hopping around in time and country. I really wish I had a timeline to refer to while listening because I kept getting confused. But the discussion and stories about nuclear development in various countries around the world was fascinating. Especially because I am fascinated by North Korea right now.
July 27, 2015
Last of Rhodes' series on nuclear weapons (and the 2nd I've read) is an excellent history of the post-Cold War era and the ever-diminishing role of nuclear weapons in national security. Not so gripping as the author's first book in this series, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," but similarly informative and insightful. Rhodes has a chilling way of pointing up our follies and hypocrisies. I hope he is correct to predict the immanent demise of these indiscriminately destructive weapons.
February 14, 2011
There was a lot of information I didn't know before I read it. It was interesting on one level. But I wasn't captivated by the stories in it like I am with the stuff I've read by Ron Suskind and Sebastian Junger. But I guess it's good to know. It was worth reading.
June 6, 2013
must read for nuclear literacy.
Rhodes makes it clear that the continued presence of nuclear weapons, the continued confrontation with North Korea, and the $3 trillion cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the legacy of conservative Republicans.
Rhodes makes it clear that the continued presence of nuclear weapons, the continued confrontation with North Korea, and the $3 trillion cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the legacy of conservative Republicans.
June 22, 2011
Great narrative of the early UNSCOM/IAEA efforts in Iraq. Reads almost like a thriller.
The politics and public policy part sort of bogs down the rest, but that's the way the history was.
The politics and public policy part sort of bogs down the rest, but that's the way the history was.
November 10, 2017
Great book to complete one of the best series of books about our nuclear weapons.
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