Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from July 1998

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from July 1998

Chilling words.(Editorial)
July 1, 1998... AS OUR COVERLINE--INDIA BOMBS THE BAN"--SUGGESTS, THIS ISSUE focuses on India more than on Pakistan. On matters nuclear, India has always been the pacesetter; Pakistan has been reactive. The irony is that India was, at first, the pacesetter in...

Senate emasculates treaty.(arms control and nonproliferation treaty)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... MAY WAS NOT A GOOD MONTH FOR ARMS CONTROL. India and Pakistan not only blasted their way into the nuclear club, the United States stripped the new poison gas ban of crucial components of its verification regime. While headlines blared the news...

An idea whose time has come - and gone?(food irradiation)
July 1, 1998... For more than half a century, irradiation's promoters have talked up the benefits of nuking various items of food. They like to say that zapping the food supply--a process that kills pests in grains and microbes in meat--is the greatest idea...

All in the (Russian) mind?(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... From time to time, the Bulletin gets letters from people claiming to need help because the FBI is controlling their minds through radio waves. Some say their troubles started when they were secretly operated on; others claim that agents inhabit...

Good neighbors.(relations between Hungary and Romania)
July 1, 1998... It was a lazy Thursday afternoon in October and the autumnal sun basked the city of Cluj with a final radiant outburst, warming piles of fallen leaves in the park and the vile open sewer that was once the River Somes. In a few more days the...

Ukraine, 12 years after.(the legacy of nuclear disaster at Chernobyl)
July 1, 1998... The legacy of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl (Chornobyl)--which marked its twelfth anniversary on April 26, 1998--continues to hang like an albatross around the Ukrainian nuclear scene. Lacking the financial resources to shut down the plant...

De - politicizing demining.
July 1, 1998... When I arrived in Southern Africa in 1996 To conduct research on the on-the-scene problems involved in mine clearance, I believed that everyone in the demining field worked more or less on the same team. But that was not, and is not, the...

The shots heard 'round the world.(India conducted three nuclear tests on May 11 and two on May 13)(Cover Story)
July 1, 1998... INDIA CONDUCTED THREE NUCLEAR TESTS ON MAY 11 AND TWO ON MAY 13. INDIA'S UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR tests on May 11 and 13 caught the world by surprise. Although intelligence agencies had monitored the Pokhran test site for years, they missed the...

Pakistan: the other shoe drops.(response to India's nuclear tests)
July 1, 1998... Pakistan responded to India's five nuclear tests with tests of its own on May 28 and 30, 1998. Adding to the suspense, Pakistan had said on May 27 that it feared an Indian air attack on its nuclear installations. After the tests, Prime Minister...

The paper trail.(seismographic verifications of India's nuclear tests)
July 1, 1998... Seismograph all over the world jumped on May 11, but not on the 13th. INDIA'S NUCLEAR TESTS CAUGHT THE international community off guard. This has caused some commentators to question how well the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could be...

The Hindu bomb.
July 1, 1998... THE BJP NEEDED TO SILENCE ITS CRITICS. OPERATION SHAKTI--THE SERIES OF NUCLEAR TESTS IN THE RAJASTHAN DESERT--SEEMED THE PERFECT SOLUTION. INDIA NOW HAS A "HINDU BOMB," OR so we are led to believe by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya...

Pakistan joins the club.(includes related article on the country's decision to conduct nuclear tests)
July 1, 1998... After almost three decades of a preparation, Pakistan can now I claim that it has the nuclear weapons to protect itself from India. But its moment of so-called greatness is blighted by international condemnation and sanctions, and the fact...

Test ban prospects shaken.(US Senate responds to India's nuclear tests)
July 1, 1998... In the wake of India's nuclear tests, Jesse Helms said the test ban treaty was "scarcely more than a sham." India's announcement that it conducted five nuclear tests in mid-May caused a series of secondary explosions in Washington, D.C. The...

From Russia, a muted reaction.(response to India's nuclear testing)(Cover Story)
July 1, 1998... On the day after India's nuclear weapons tests, Russian President Boris Yeltsin delivered a major foreign policy address at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. Departing from his prepared text, he remarked briefly that India had failed...

Subcontinental missiles.(includes related article on funding of India's military research and development)
July 1, 1998... India and Pakistan aren't just testing warheads--they're developing the missiles to deliver them. While India's five sensational, nuclear tests may have validated its ability to build a variety of nuclear weapons from missile warheads to...

A very political bomb.(India's testing of nuclear weapons)
July 1, 1998... For the BJP, nuclear weapons are essential to a powerful, awe-inspiring, and militarist "Hindu India." By conducting nuclear tests and launching a weapons-development program, India has taken the same ignominious path as the Big Five, and...

A legacy lost.
July 1, 1998... India throws away the Gandhian tradition--a rarer and finer claim to superpower status. On May 11, Buddha's birthday, the new coalition government in New Delhi, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), put the finishing touch to more than...

God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism.
July 1, 1998... God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism By Martin Dillon Routledge, 1998 244 pages; $17.50 The most common misconception about the conflict in Northern Ireland is that it is a religious struggle. An understandable error--the principal...

Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970.
July 1, 1998... Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1954-1970 By Lawrence S. Witnner Stanford University Press, 1997 630 pages; $65.00 Resisting the Bomb is an important addition to the literature about the disarmament...

Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World.
July 1, 1998... Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World Edited by Michael J. Mazarr St. Martin's Press, 1997 404 pages; $59.95 One of the great intellectual puzzles of the last part of the twentieth century has been, "How do you put the, nuclear-weapons genie...

The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare.
July 1, 1998... The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare By Leonard A. Cole W H. Freeman, 1997 284 page; $22.95 In our fiercest nightmares, the mushroom cloud has been joined by invisible aerosols: chemical and biological weapons....

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century.
July 1, 1998... Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century By G. Pascal Zachary Free Press, 1997 5.12 pages; $32.50 Scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor, Vannevar Bush stands as one of this century's most influential and...

US nuclear stockpile, July 1998.(includes chart of warhead weapons and their status)
July 1, 1998... There has been little change in the size and composition of the U.S nuclear stockpile since our estimate last year (Bulletin, July/August 1997). The B61 Mod 11 earth penetrator bomb was fully deployed at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, with the B-2...

Misplaced priorities.(editorial on India and Pakistan's nuclear tests)(Editorial)(Column)
July 1, 1998... Remember Life "before India and Pakistan"? The arms control community was in a deep funk over everybody's lack of interest, treaties languished, and Gen. Lee Butler lectured on disarmament to no avail. Planetary bigwigs petitioned and opined,...