The button The new nuclear arms race and presidential power from Truman to Trump

Part history, part policy recommendation, this coauthored text results from a remarkable collaboration between a former defense secretary and an anti-nuclear weapons activist. That the book exists at all is a remarkable achievement. Authors Perry (Stanford Univ.) and Collina (Ploughshares Fund) explain how the US president came to have sole authority over "the button." They also make two provocative but compelling policy proposals: to abandon ICBMs as weapons that do more to create instability than deterrence, and to declare a no-first-use policy for the US. The arguments presented here are well reasoned and backed by solid evidence, and the backgrounds of the authors add credibility. The book is not perfect. As one example, it describes the Stuxnet worm as the first cyber attack to cause physical damage--a claim that is at best contested and at worst dead wrong. More significantly, the authors should have paid more attention to the survivability of C3I (command, control, communications, and intelligence) systems, as much of their argument is premised on the idea that the US could credibly respond to a nuclear attack without relying on a launch-on-warning system. That said, this book takes its place as a vital part of the discussion on what to do with the American nuclear arsenal. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. --Thomas C. Ellington, Wesleyan College

Perry (My Journey at the Nuclear Brink), who served as secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, and global security analyst Collina expose the lack of checks and balances to prevent U.S. presidents from triggering nuclear war in this well-documented call for reform. Cataloguing seven decades of domestic policy developments and international power struggles over nuclear arms, including General MacArthur's tug-of-war with President Truman over nuclear authorization during the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly known as Star Wars), Perry and Collina argue that presidential monopoly on "the button" has reached a new level of danger under President Trump, whom they regard as a uniquely unstable leader. Their policy suggestions include an end to sole presidential nuclear authority, a prohibition on the first use of nuclear weapons by the U.S., and sustained diplomatic engagement with Iran and North Korea. Perry's insider perspective on disarmament negotiations between the U.S. and Russia and the vulnerability of the U.S. arsenal to cyberattacks illuminates, but generalists will find themselves overwhelmed with policy minutiae. Still, this authoritative account reveals the true extent of the nuclear threat. (June)