Politics of Peace and Nuclear Weapons

As a reminder for what to read for research on the politics of peace and nuclear weapons, I've added a a couple books to my reading list. The first is Dan Zak's Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age. The book opens with the story of three activists - a nun, Vietnam vet, and housepainter - breaking  into a nuclear security complex in Oak Ridge, TN as a launching point for investigating America's history, horror, and fascination with nuclear weapons. Richard Rhodes who penned a four volume set on nuclear history, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb provided a good review in the WaPo.  Rhodes highlights an important passage from the book detailing the hypocrisy of non-proliferation from the nuclear five. Excerpted from the review:

 The most important single idea in “Almighty” emerges in the assertion of an exasperated South African ambassador to the United Nations, Abdul Samad Minty: “If for security reasons the [five original nuclear powers] feel that they must be armed with nuclear weapons, what about other countries in similar situations? Do we think that the global situation is such that no other country would ever aspire to nuclear weapons . . . when the five tell us that it is absolutely correct to possess nuclear weapons for their security?”

The second book I learned about at a book launch event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for Brad Roberts's  The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century. As the title suggests, Roberts cautions against our haste in promulgating (unilateral) nuclear disarmament. Existing international realities (particularly in relation to China and Russia) make it very difficult for the U.S. to give up its nuclear weapons. Roberts told me after the event that there's a fairly wide consensus among U.S. policymakers on nuclear policy - which I assume to believe that maintaining a limited supply of nukes is still in our national interest. How do policymakers and the activists highlighted by Zak come to different logical conclusions about nuclear policy and the utility of nuclear weapons.