Atomic Obsession de John Mueller

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda

John Mueller

Following 9/11, Americans were swept up in a near hysteria-level fear of terrorists, especially of Islamic extremists working domestically. The government and media reports stoked fears that people living in the US have the desire and means to wreak extreme havoc and destruction. Early reports estimated slightly more than 300 al Qaeda operatives living in the United States. It wasn't long before this number became 2,000 or 5,000 domestic terrorists. As these estimates snowballed, so did spending on federal counterterrorism organizations and measures, spending which now totals over a trillion dollars. The federal government launched more covert operations in the name of fighting terrorist adversaries than they did in the entirety of the forty-five year Cold War. For each apprehension of a credible terrorist suspect, the US government created or re-organized two counterterrorism organizations. The scale of these efforts has been enormous, yet somehow they have not been proven to make Americans feels safe from what they perceive to be a massive terrorist threat. But how well-founded is this fear? Is the threat of terrorism in the United States as vast as it seems and are counterterrorism efforts effective and appropriately-scaled?
It has not, statistically speaking, been efficient or successful. Only one alarm in 10,000 has proven to be a legitimate threat-the rest are what the authors refer to as "ghosts." These ghosts are enormous drains on resources and contribute to a countrywide paranoia that has resulted in widespread support and minimal critical questioning of massive expenditures and infringements on civil liberties, including invasions of privacy and questionably legal imprisonments. In Chasing Ghosts, John Mueller and Mark Stewart argue that the "ghost chase" occupying American fears, law enforcement, and federal spending persists because the public believes that there exists in the US a dire and significant threat of terrorism. The authors seek to analyze to what degree this is a true and to what degree the threat posed by terrorists in the US defends the extraordinary costs currently put towards their investigation.
The chance that an American will be killed by a terrorist domestically in any given year is about one in four million (under present conditions). Yet despite this statistically low risk and the extraordinary amount of resources put towards combatting threats, Americans do not profess to feel any safer from terrorists. Until the true threat of domestic terrorism is analyzed and understood, the country cannot begin to confront whether our pursuit of ghosts is worth the cost.

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	Preț	Express
Paperback (1)	179^.24 lei 41-52 zile
Oxford University Press – 26 apr 2012	179^.24 lei 41-52 zile
Hardback (1)	172^.07 lei 41-52 zile
Oxford University Press – 11 noi 2009	172^.07 lei 41-52 zile

Preț

Express

Paperback (1)

179^.24 lei 41-52 zile

Oxford University Press – 26 apr 2012

179^.24 lei 41-52 zile

Hardback (1)

172^.07 lei 41-52 zile

Oxford University Press – 11 noi 2009

172^.07 lei 41-52 zile

Descriere

Ever since the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the prospect of nuclear annihilation has haunted the modern world. And since September 11, 2001, the view that nuclear terrorism is the most serious threat to the security of the United States or, for that matter, of the world has been virtually universal. But as John Mueller reveals in this eye-opening, compellingly argued, and very reassuring book, our obsession with nuclear weapons is unsupported by history, scientific fact, or logic. Examining the entire atomic era, Mueller boldly contends that nuclear weapons have had little impact on history. Although they have inspired overwrought policies and distorted spending priorities, things generally would have turned out much the same if they had never been invented. For the most part theyhave proved to be militarily useless, and a key reason so few countries have taken them up is that they are a spectacular waste of money and scientific talent. Equally important, Atomic Obsession reveals why current anxieties about terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons are essentially baseless: thereare a host of practical and organizational difficulties that make their likelihood of success almost vanishingly small. Mueller, one of America's most distinguished yet provocative international relations scholars, goes even further, maintaining that our efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons have produced more suffering and violence than the bombs themselves, and that proliferation of the weapons, while not necessarily desirable, is unlikely to be a major danger or to accelerate. This controversial volume debunks the received wisdom endorsed both by America's military-industrial complex and by its opponents for more than half a century. Demolishing half-truths and false assumptions, this is an important argument that deserves a wide public hearing.

Notă biografică

John Mueller is the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University. He is the author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them and The Remnants of War, winner of the Joseph P. Lepgold Prize for the best book on international relations in 2004, awarded by Georgetown University. Visit his webpage at:polisci.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller