Campbell Kurt M., Einhorn Robert J., Reiss Mitchell B. (eds.) The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices

Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. — 367 p.This volume’s examination of the nuclear calculations involved in eight cases—Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—contains insights into ways that the United States and the international community can create a buffer against a cascading spread of nuclear weapons and technology. By focusing on states whose military capabilities cannot compete with those of the United States, Russia, and China and who have been, in many cases, vocal nonproliferation advocates for decades, the findings and recommendations provide a prevention strategy that is at once forward looking and immediately relevant. In doing so, this project not only buttresses a major objective of Carnegie’s International Peace and Security program, but also reflects Einstein’s abiding and deceptively simple and related hope, notwithstanding his pessimism, that “the discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches.Foreword
Acknowledgements
Nuclear Past and Present
The Nuclear Tipping Point: Prospects for a World of Many Nuclear Weapons States
Reconsidering a Nuclear Future: Why Countries Might Cross over to the Other Side
Will the Abstainers Reconsider? Focusing on Individual Cases
Case studies
Egypt: Frustrated but Still on a Non-Nuclear Course
Syria: Can the Myth Be Maintained without Nukes?
Saudi Arabia: The Calculations of Uncertainty
Turkey: Nuclear Choices amongst Dangerous Neighbors
Germany: The Model Case, A Historical Imperative
Japan: Thinking the Unthinkable
South Korea: The Tyranny of Geography and the Vexations of History
Taiwan's Hsin Chu Program: Deterrence, Abandonment, and Honor
Prospects for a Nuclear Future
Avoiding the Tipping Point: Concluding Observations
About the Authors