Fred Charles Iklé
Essay
Jan/Feb
1996
Nuclear weapons were used for the first and only time in World War II, and the world has grown accustomed to their nonuse. But the overwhelming deterrent forces that worked during the Cold War will not provide protection against the new threats: terrorism and catastrophic accident. The arsenals and mindsets of the past half-century present a formidable barrier to change, but the United States must lead the way in preventing nuclear weapons from becoming acceptable.
Essay
Summer
1990
Analyzes (1) how Japan's security interests ought now to be defined outwards, in consequence of the changes in the USSR (2) the need for a 'global security dimension' in which Japan's long-range economic power can be expressed (3) how Japan can contribute to global nuclear security by supporting a strategic defensive order.
Essay
Spring
1985
Our policies for preventing nuclear war, mercifully, have never been tested to the point of failure. This cannot be said of our policies that have sought to reverse, or at least to halt, the expansion of nuclear arsenals threatening our annihilation. For more than two decades now, the United States, using both diplomacy and self-restraint, has tried--and failed--to halt the nuclear arms competition with the Soviet Union.
Essay
Jan
1973
We all turn away, however, from the thought that nuclear war may be as inescapable as death, and may end our lives and our society within this generation or the next. We plan and work every day for the twenty-first century-as parents educating our children, as young workers saving for retirement, as a nation that seeks to preserve its physical environment, its political traditions, its cultural heritage. For this larger horizon- encompassing for the younger generation simply the common expectation of a healthy life-we do in fact assume "nuclear immortality." We believe, or we act as if we believe, that thanks to a certain international order, the existing arsenals of nuclear weapons with their almost incomprehensible destructiveness will never be used.
