<i>Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy, and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex</i> (review)

A rational strategy for the employment of nuclear weapons is a contradiction in terms. The enormity of the destruction, either executed or threatened, severs the nexus of proportionality between means and ends which used to characterize the threat and use of force. This does not mean, however, that all nuclear strategies are equally irrational. The nuclear policy of the Reagan administration—which is essentially the same as that of the Carter administration and which has its roots in developments initiated by even earlier administrations—is particularly ill-formed. As I will demonstrate, the basic reason for this is that the strategy rests on a profound underestimation of the impact of nuclear weapons on military strategy and attempts to understand the current situation with intellectual tools appropriate only in the pre-nuclear era.American strategy for the past several years—the “countervailing strategy”—has been based on the assumption that what is crucial is the ability of American and allied military forces to deny the Soviets military advantage from any aggression they might contemplate. The U.S. must be prepared to meet and block any level of Soviet force. The strategy is then one of counterforce—blocking and seeking to destroy Soviet military power. The goal is deterrence. Although it is concerned with how the U.S. would fight many different kinds of wars, both nuclear and non-nuclear, it is not correct to claim that the strategy seeks to engage in wars rather than deter them.

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Environmental Restoration Strategic Plan. Remediating the nuclear weapons complex

10.2172/90179 ◽

1995 ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Strategic Plan ◽

Environmental Restoration ◽

Nuclear Weapons Complex

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Framing the Bomb in the West

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex ◽

10.1525/california/9780520291508.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Susan Courtney

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Air Force ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

American Exceptionalism ◽

Test Site ◽

Nevada Test Site ◽

Nuclear Weapons Testing ◽

Screen Space ◽

The Military ◽

The U.S

Focused on the period of atmospheric (above-ground) nuclear weapons testing in the continental United States, from 1945 to 1963, this chapter, written by Susan Courtney, does two things. First, it describes some of the basic conditions and infrastructure that shaped the proliferation of films of nuclear weapons tests, including the U.S. government’s secret military film studio dedicated to this work in the hills above Los Angeles, known as Lookout Mountain Air Force Station or Lookout Mountain Laboratory. Second, it turns to the representational legacy that resulted, which was by no means limited to films made by or for the military. More specifically, it considers how footage of atomic tests in New Mexico and at the Nevada Test Site helped to shape the filmic record of nuclear weapons—and popular cultural memory—by framing the bomb in the desert West, arguably the screen space of American exceptionalism.

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