Five Minutes to Midnight: Why the Nuclear Threat is Growing Faster Than Ever

Senator Harkin (D., Iowa), writing with his staff assistant Thomas, asserts that despite glasnost , perestroika and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, President Bush's national security team is actively pursuing the development of nuclear war-fighting systems, and that defense secretary Dick Cheney and the Pentagon ``continue to act as though the Soviets might strike any day.'' A much more likely route to nuclear war, the authors point out, is through client-state or Third World nuclear proliferation. They argue eloquently for the diversion of military funding to the urgent task of averting environmental, energy and economic crises, as well as to educational, health and social problems that pose more imminent danger to our safety. The authors advocate a deterrence-only nuclear policy and a major reduction and restructuring of our conventional forces. The time has come, they warn, when all nations must recognize that there is no security for one unless there is security for all. (Nov.)