Most world leaders agree that nuclear terrorism represents the gravest international security challenge today. Many scholars and practitioners, however, argue that the United States remains ill-prepared to cope with this serious and real threat. What role should the U.S. play in confronting and combating this danger? Is nuclear terrorism preventable? What steps have the U.S. already taken to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and what future steps should the U.S. government take? Esteemed scholars, scientists and policymakers address these crucial questions from all sides – strategic, tactical, ideological, and technical. This special volume of The ANNALS clarifies and assesses that threat of a nuclear terrorist attack and examines possible solutions for preventing such a catastrophic event.
Librarian Note: Also writes under the name Graham Allison.
Graham Tillett Allison, Jr. (born 23 March 1940) is an American political scientist and professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is renowned for his contribution in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the bureaucratic analysis of decision making, especially during times of crisis. His book Remaking Foreign Policy: The Organizational Connection, co-written with Peter Szanton, was published in 1976 and had some influence on the foreign policy of the administration of President Jimmy Carter which took office in early 1977. Since the 1970s, Allison has also been a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy, with a special interest in nuclear weapons and terrorism.
Allison is best known as a political scientist for his book Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), in which he developed two new theoretical paradigms — an organizational process model and a bureaucratic politics model — to compete with the then-prevalent approach of understanding foreign policy decision making using a rational actor model. Essence of Decision swiftly revolutionized the study of decision making in political science and beyond.