Over twenty years after the Cold War ended, some 23,000 nuclear weapons remain. The nuclear weapon states cite nuclear deterrence doctrine as the final, indispensable justification for maintaining their nuclear arsenals. This drives the spread of nuclear weapons to paranoid regimes and extremists who are least likely to be deterred. The fallacies of nuclear deterrence must therefore be exposed and alternatives offered if there is to be any serious prospect of eliminating nuclear weapons.

A former operator of British nuclear weapons, Commander Green has drawn together a concise, carefully researched and documented account of the history, practicalities and dangerous contradictions at the heart of nuclear deterrence. He offers more credible, effective and responsible alternative strategies to deter aggression and achieve real security.

‘One of the best informed and most searching critiques of the central strategic doctrine of the nuclear age – nuclear deterrence – that I know of.’
Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth, Yale University