Obama and the Bomb ─ The Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear threats have become more dangerous and more complex in recent years. The number of states possessing nuclear weapons now stands at nine. Roughly 25.000 nuclear warheads still remain in the arsenals of those states. Barack Obama spoke of a world free of nuclear weapons in his April 2009 speech in Prague. For the authors in this book there is no doubt that a new atmosphere has arisen thanks to new policies pursued by the Obama administration and the response it has evoked in the world. A world free of nuclear weapons is clearly not going to happen overnight and will be a long-term process, however. This book places his goal of disarmament into the context of the non-proliferation regime, and discusses how non-proliferation and disarmament are linked. The authors propose certain steps that could be taken to help to curb proliferation and move towards disarmament.

Heinz Gartner is professor at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP) and lecturer at the University of Vienna. Among others he had visiting professorships and research stays at the Institute for East-West Security Studies (New York), the University of Erlangen (Germany), St. Johns College (Oxford), the University of British Colombia, the World Policy Institute (New York), the University of New Haven and the Stanford University. He published widely on European and International security, arms control and on U.S. foreign policy.