The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now

Schell's thoroughly researched and clearly voiced call to action is a must read for anyone concerned about nuclear danger.This book highlights the instability and inherint risk to the nuclear status quo, and poses as series of pragmatic possibilities for moving away from the brink of annihilation. Schell speaks with leading nuclear experts from the US, Russia and Europe--scientists who created the weapons, generals who prepared to use them, politicans who built policies around them, and scholars who have studied these issues for years--and lets them express their thoughts and concerns on the currnet nuclear situation. And it soon becomes clear that those who know the most about these weapons are those who recognize best the folly of relying upon them indefinitely.In simple and accessible prose, Schell analizes a number of complex issues, introducing the readers to a number of crucial concepts such as "horizontal disarmament" and pushing the reader to imagine what a world without nuclear weapons might look like (not an easy question). He moves beyond idealism and wishful thinking, and directs the debate towards what can and must be done.Few books contain such a wealth of valuable, primary source information in such a concise form. Fewer still contain such original, thoughtful and timely insight. A must read for both the expert and the novice.

Schell's thoroughly researched and clearly voiced call to action is a must read for anyone concerned about nuclear danger.This book highlights the instability and inherint risk to the nuclear status quo, and poses as series of pragmatic possibilities for moving away from the brink of annihilation. Schell speaks with leading nuclear experts from the US, Russia and Europe--scientists who created the weapons, generals who prepared to use them, politicans who built policies around them, and scholars who have studied these issues for years--and lets them express their thoughts and concerns on the currnet nuclear situation. And it soon becomes clear that those who know the most about these weapons are those who recognize best the folly of relying upon them indefinitely.In very accessible prose, Schell analizes a number of complex issues, introducing the readers to a number of crucial concepts such as "horizontal disarmament" and pushing the reader to imagine what a world without nuclear weapons might look like (not an easy question). He moves beyond idealism and wishful thinking, and directs the debate towards what can and must be done.Few books contain such a wealth of valuable, primary source information in such a concise form. Fewer still contain such original, thoughtful and timely insight. A must read for both the expert and the novice.

The great contribution of Schell's book is to describe a practicable road to the abolition of nuclear weapons. For many years a writer for "The New Yorker," Schell unravels the complicated technical issues of nuclear weaponry and missile delivery systems in comprehensible English, describing an alternative vision of how international relations without nuclear weapons might look. Framing the discussion as a debate between what he calls the abolitionists and the possessionists, Schell does not restrict himself to abstract theoretical questions of strategic doctrine, but rather devotes most of the book to an analysis of the nitty-gritty technical details of how we could reduce nuclear weapons to zero in the real world. Some of the key problems that he addresses are: what does "zero" nuclear weapons actually mean as a practical matter? how can we defend against cheating or so-called "break out"? and how can we deal with the problem that we cannot undo our knowledge about how to make nuclear weapons.

"The Gift of Time" presents an excellent and well written summary of the views of leading world thinkers and political activists on the dangers posed by nuclear weapons from Rotblat to McNamara and Gorbachev to Cranston among others. To properly evaluate this work it must be place in the perspective of Schell's trilogy on this subject starting with "The Fate of the Earth"(1981)and "The Abolition" (1983) The most ambitious of these was "The Fate of the Earth" which went beyond the mere identification of the problem to an impassioned plea that its solution called for nothing less than reinventing world politics. It received brilliant reviews from "The New York Times and other journals and was mocked by the likes of "The Wall Street Journal"Perhaps because of the disparaging nature of the latter review "The Abolition (1983) was more conservative and incremental. While "The Fate of The Earth" never mentioned the twerm "world government" thereviewers of the Earth in both TIME and NEWSWEEK characterized it as in effect calling for some form of world government. "The Abolition" on the other hand made over 40 references to "world government" only to distance itself from the con= cept calling it neither necessary or desirable to achieve the end of reducing the nuclear danger. "The Gift of Time" refers to world government only in its interview with Alan Cranston who was national President of the World Federalists from1949 to the early 50's. Cranston, however, suggests that while he still favors world law and the sharing of sovereignty he regards the actual term world government as politically unviable. Similarly Rotblat who has recently expressed unequivocal support for the concept of "world government" in other documents in his interview with Schell only goes as far as to state that "the long-term objective must not be just nuclear dis- armament but a world without war". Schell, how- ever does not press Rotblat for the implications of this statement as he did in the case of the other known sympathize for some form of world federation Alan Cranston. In short my chief criti- cism of Schell's otherwise excellent treatment of the nuclear dilemma in "The Gift of Time" is his timidity in raising the question of the possible need of structures required for the enforcement of disarmament whether nuclear or otherwise. 1949 to the early 50's