How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III

by Ron Rosenbaum

Overview

In this startling book, now in paperback, the bestselling author of Explaining Hitler warns that a nuclear World War III is not only the most massive and imminent threat to existence as we know it, but also one of the most ignored.

While Russian aggression grows and North Korean nuclear ambitions increase unabated, tensions continue to escalate between India and Pakistan and in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iran remains committed to developing its nuclear program despite international sanctions.

No other writer has assembled the extraordinary array of sources and experiences that Ron Rosenbaum calls on to inform his examination of nuclear war. While working from both historical and contemporary perspectives to explore the people and events that could shape the form of a third world war, he suggests humans have never before been so close to annihilation. In this book, Rosenbaum examines both the paranoia and very real set of possibilities that informs our view of nuclear war and asks whether we can “undream” the nightmare.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416594222
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/21/2012
Edition description:	Simon & Schuster
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ron Rosenbaum is the bestselling author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars and has written or edited six other books. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. He writes a column for Slate and lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

1 "We Came So Close" 1

2 Major Hering's Forbidden Question 31

3 The Forbidden Question at the Qwest Center 44

4 The Number 71

5 Bruce Blair: The Doomsday Discovery and the Real Danger 88

6 Colonel Yarynich's "100 Nuclear Wars," and the Apocalypse Equation 111

7 "The Ashes Are Still Warm": The Second Holocaust, Israel, and the Morality of Nuclear Retaliation 132

8 Iran: The "Enigmatic Box" and the NIE 166

9 Endgame 209

Notes 261

Index 287

Acknowledgments 301

Editorial Reviews

The virtues of How the End Begins are numerous and impressive . . . this is a deep meditation on the role, meaning, and possible consequences of nuclear weapons in our time.”
—Michael Anton, The Weekly Standard

"Is there a scenario in which nuclear retaliation would be moral? Rosenbaum’s answer is a definitive no. Any reader of this upsetting book will be convinced that he’s right."
—Nathaniel Rich, The Daily Beast

From the Publisher

…How the End Begins raises fundamental questions more acutely than dozens of other recent books on the nuclear problem. There is much to learn from it.
—The New York Times Book Review

Richard Rhodes

This book is a wide-angle and quite dire meditation on our nuclear present; Mr. Rosenbaum is convincingly fearful about where humanity stands…[How the End Begins] is bracing and never dull.
—The New York Times

Dwight Garner

Rosenbaum (Explaining Hitler) argues that the world is in an especially precarious position with the very real danger of nuclear war. He recounts close calls in recent history from many familiar players: India vs. Pakistan, Russia vs. the United States, Israel vs. Iran and terrorist groups, and North Korea's current provocations. He also covers other newer nuclear weapons holders, such as China and Taiwan, and devotes entire chapters to potential issues relating to such human variables as the possibility that someone in the chain of command may question the order to push the button to start a nuclear war. He also considers the importance of numbers: Does the number who could potentially be killed factor into the decision making for nuclear war? What if the decision makers don't think clearly or if they jump the gun? VERDICT Painstakingly researched, with 25 pages of notes, Rosenbaum's book shows that he has clearly done his homework. Predicting outcomes entails speculation, so whether Rosenbaum is correct in his argument remains to be seen. Pointing out how many hot spots there are in the world is eye-opening to the general reader and is particularly timely as more nations become nuclear strongholds.—Krista Bush, Shelton Public Schs., CT

Library Journal

A veteran author and Slate columnist raises troubling questions about the persistent threat of nuclear war.

How is it that with the end of the Cold War we lost our dread of living in a world with nuclear weapons? We'd do well, argues Rosenbaum (The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups, 2006, etc.), to recover that feeling and act on it, because the possibilities for a catastrophic exchange have actually heightened in this second nuclear age. Whether "by calculated preemption, a regional war going global, accident, misperception, inadequate command and control, suicidal martyrdom, or [a] madman's hubris," we risk touching off, from a number of predictable flashpoints, a nuclear World War III. The author examines these contingencies, providing especially solid insight on the flaws in the command and control systems of Russia and America, the historical memory that makes Israel more likely to unleash nuclear weapons and the frightening details surrounding the under-reported 2007 Israeli raid on a Syrian reactor. However, Rosenbaum's chief merit is his willingness to confront the morality of nuclear retaliation. He crystallizes the dilemma by reviving a question raised almost 40 years ago by Maj. Harold I. Hering, a crewman in training: "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?" For his impertinence, Hering lost his career. Nevertheless, his question lingers. As Rosenbaum discovers from interviews with military figures, statesmen, nuclear scientists and strategists, statistical mavens, law professors and others, few are prepared to answer it. There remains a powerful nuclear establishment confident the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction worked, that the taboo against employing these singularly destructive weapons remains in place. The author's review of several nuclear close calls suggests we've only been lucky. Although pessimistic about our chances for turning back the atomic clock—his own plan calls for reviving Adm. Arleigh Burke's submarine-based deterrence strategy, destroying land-based missiles and removing the hair-trigger from any remaining arsenal—he insists we must try, or we face a certain cataclysm.

A tenaciously reported, passionately argued warning.

Kirkus Reviews