Topic Explorer

The Topic Explorer uses the same search and topic filters for all of the different resources on this site. It is meant to allow easy cross-examination of different issues.

Topics

1940s (29) 1950s (32) 1960s (43) 1970s (21) 1980s (17) 1990s (8) 2000s (5) 2010s (24) Bush, George W. (1) Carter, James (6) Chain of command (15) Civilian-military divide (22) Clinton, William J. (2) Congress (21) Congressional Research Service (4) Constitutionality (6) Custody (22) Cybersecurity (3) Directives (6) Doctrine (20) Early warning systems (17) Eisenhower, Dwight D. (20) Ford, Gerald R. (2) France (12) India (11) Israel (7) Johnson, Lyndon B. (11) Kennedy, John F. (24) Law of war (9) Missiles (6) NATO (21) News Media (18) Nixon, Richard M. (11) Non-Use (8) North Korea (10) Nuclear accidents (17) Nuclear football (17) Nuclear launch procedure (32) Nuclear safety (34) Nuclear war plans (31) Obama, Barack (8) Oral history (1) Overseas deployment (19) Pakistan (17) People's Republic of China (15) Permissive Action Links (23) Predelegation (17) Presidential nuclear control (57) RAND Corporation (4) Reagan, Ronald (8) Remedies (5) Russian Federation (16) South Africa (1) Soviet Union (23) Succession (3) Truman, Harry S. (21) Trump, Donald J. (18) Two-man rule (9) United Kingdom (19) United States of America (126) US Air Force (21) US Atomic Energy Commission (15) US Department of Defense (28) US Department of Energy (5) US Joint Chiefs of Staff (17) US National Security Council (7) US Secretary of Defense (11) US Strategic Air Command (15) US Strategic Command (15) World War II (8)

Primers

Presidential unilateral nuclear use authority under Truman: In the United States, the authority to use nuclear weapons is vested in the President of the United States.

Documents

Date ▲	Title	File
1946-08-01	US Atomic Energy Act of 1946	PDF
1952-09-10	NSC, "Agreed Concepts Regarding Atomic Weapons"	PDF
1961-07-16	Atomic Stockpiles Memorandum	PDF
1964-12-01	DDRS, Briefing to the Gilpatric Committee by William J. Howard	PDF
1975	NSA, Categories of DOE designed PAL systems	PDF
1975-06	IDA, "The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945-1972"	PDF
1978-02	OASOD, "History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons, July 1945 through September 1977"	PDF

Bibliographies

Born, Hans, Bates Gill, and Heiner Hänggi (eds). Governing the Bomb: Civilian Control and Democratic Accountability of Nuclear Weapons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Burr, William. "Consultation is Presidential Business": Secret Understandings on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1950-1974. Electronic Briefing Book No. 159. Washington, D.C.: National Security Archive, 2005. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/.

Carter, Ashton B., Charles A. Zraket, and John D. Steinbruner. Managing Nuclear Operations. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1987.

Curry, Dan. Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control & Survivability. Documentary. Sandia National Laboratories, 2010.

Ellsberg, Daniel. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.

Feaver, Peter D. "Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations." International Security 17, no. 3 (Winter 1992/93): 160-187.

Feaver, Peter D. Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Hewlett Richard G., and Francis Duncan. Atomic Shield: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume II, 1947-1952. Washington, DC: United States Atomic Energy Commission, 1969.

Kohn, Richard H. and Joseph P. Harahan. "U.S. Strategic Air Power, 1948-1962: Excerpts from an Interview with Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J. Catton." International Security 12, no. 4 (Spring, 1988): 78-95.

Kristensen, Hans M. & Robert S. Norris. "A history of US nuclear weapons in South Korea." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 6 (2017): 349-357.

Mecklin, John. "Duke’s Peter Feaver on the president and US nuclear command and control." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. November 30, 2017. https://thebulletin.org/2017/11/dukes-peter-feaver-on-the-president-and-us-nuclear-command-and-control/.

Narang, Vipin. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Narang, Vipin and Ankit Panda. "Command and Control in North Korea: What a Nuclear Launch Might Look Like." War on the Rocks. September 15, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/09/command-and-control-in-north-korea-what-a-nuclear-launch-might-look-like/.

Woolf, Amy F. and James D. Werner. The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites. CRS Report No. R45306. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2018. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R45306.pdf.