Abstract
In 2001 George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton, who had defeated his father, as President of the United States. Like his father the new President Bush suddenly found his world transformed within months of taking office, although this time not in a good way. The transformation came on 11 September 2001 as a result of an extraordinary, audacious and painful attack on the Pentagon and the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, symbols of American military and economic power.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Hal Brands and David Palkki, ‘Saddam, Israel, and the bomb: nuclear alarmism justified’, International Security, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2011, pp. 133–66.
- 2.
See Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict: 1990–91 (London: Faber, 1993).
- 3.
Colin Powell with Joseph Perisco. My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 452, 486.
- 4.
Statement by Richard Cheney, in Frontline, “The Gulf War, Parts 1 and II,” 9 and 10 January 1996. Available at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/cheney/1.html.
- 5.
Statement by Robert Gates in ibid.
- 6.
James Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1995), p. 359.
- 7.
Scott Sagan, ‘The Commitment Trap: Why the United States Should Not Use Nuclear Threats to Deter Biological and Chemical Weapons Attacks’, International Security 24.4 (Spring 2000), pp. 85–115; William Arkin, ‘Calculated Ambiguity: Nuclear Weapons and the Gulf War’. Washington Quarterly 19.4 (Autumn 1996); Norman Cigar, ‘Iraq’s Strategic Mindset and the Gulf War: Blueprint for Defeat’, Journal of Strategic Studies 15.1 (March 1992), pp. 1–29. Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollak, and Matthew Waxman, ‘Coercing Saddam Hussein: Lessons from the Past’, Survival 40.3 (Fall 1998); Barry R. Posen, ‘U.S. Security Policy in a Nuclear-Armed World, Or: What If Iraq Had Had Nuclear Weapons?’, Security Studies 6.3 (Spring 1997), pp. 1–31; Janice Gross Stein, ‘Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf, 1990–91: A Failed or Impossible Task?,’ International Security 17.2 (1992), pp. 147–79.
- 8.
The thesis that this did have an impact on Bush’s calculations is not convincing. It is not required to explain the conclusion of the ground war. Avigdor Haselkorn, The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
- 9.
Avner Golov, ‘Deterrence in the Gulf War’, The Nonproliferation Review, Vol 20, No. 3, 2013, pp. 453–72; Scott D. Sagan, PASCC Final Report: Deterring Rogue Regimes: Rethinking Deterrence Theory and Practice (Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, July 8, 2013); Hal Brands and David Palkki, ‘Saddam, Israel and the Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified?’ International Security, Vol. 36, No. 1, Summer 2011, pp. 133–66; Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, with Addendums (Duelfer Report); Hal Brands, ‘Saddam and Israel: What Do the New Iraqi Records Reveal?’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vo. 22, No. 3, 2011, pp. 500–20.
- 10.
See Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict: 1990–91 (London: Faber, 1993); Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E Trainor. The Generals’ War (Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1995).
- 11.
Robert Litwak, Rogue States and Us Foreign Policy (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000); Raymond Tanter, Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999).
- 12.
By the end of the 1990s there was a substantial literature on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. See Gavin Cameron, Nuclear Terrorism: A Threat Assessment for the 21st Century (London: Macmillan, 1999); Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer. America’s Achilles Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); Peter R Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J Wirtz, eds. Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Jan Lodal, The Price of Dominance: The New Weapons of Mass Destruction and Their Challenge to American Leadership. (New York: Council on Foreign Relation, 2001).
- 13.
Robert Litwak, ‘The New Calculus of Pre-emption,’ Survival, no. 4, Winter 2002.
- 14.
Mason Willrich and Theodore B. Taylor, Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1974).
- 15.
John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), p. 52. On this issue see Stevenson, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable, pp. 173–86.
- 16.
John Aristotle Phillips and David Michaelis, Mushroom: The Story of the A-Bomb Kid (New York William Morrow, 1978). See also Howard Morland, ‘The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, and Why We’re Telling it’, The Progressive, 43: 11 (November 1973), pp. 14–23.
- 17.
Thomas Schelling, ‘Who Will Have the Bomb?’, International Security, 1:1 (Summer 1976), pp. 77–91.
- 18.
Brian M. Jenkins, Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 1975); see also Ehud Sprinzak, “Rational Fanatics.” Foreign Policy (September/October 2000).
- 19.
Bruce Hoffman, ‘American and the New Terrorism: An Exchange’, Survival 42. (Summer 2000), pp. 163–4.
- 20.
US Commission on National Security/21st Century. New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century. Washington DC, 1999, p. 48.
- 21.
Richard K. Betts, “The New Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Foreign Affairs 77.1 (January/February 1998), p. 41. The al Qaeda cell that organised the 11 September attacks appear to have explored the possibility of using crop-spraying aircraft to release biological weapons and decided that the outcome was too uncertain.
- 22.
President George W Bush, State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20111011053416/http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/4540.
- 23.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington DC: September 2002).
- 24.
Richard Butler, Saddam Defiant: The Threat of Mass Destruction and the Crisis of Global Security (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2000).
- 25.
Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War’, International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1, Summer 2004, p. 10.
- 26.
President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat, Remarks by the President on Iraq, Cincinnati Museum Center, Ohio, October 7, 2002.
- 27.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002; US Department of Defense, National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, December 2002.
- 28.
The most convincing presentation of this argument was found in Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). The Nuclear War on Terror. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_40
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_40
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57349-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57350-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)