This summer, long-time US peace campaigner/researcher Joe Gerson is visiting the UK for a speaker tour to launch his brilliant new book Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.
Living history
Joe Gerson documents operational planning for the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean war, the Vietnam war (early French phase as well as the later US debacle), and later.
Empire and the Bomb records the use of US nuclear threats during the Suez crisis (1956), the Lebanon and Iraq crisis (1958), the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars, and against Libya in 1996.
These threats were systematic, and grew out of consistent US nuclear doctrine -- to use nuclear weapons as tools of influence and instruments of domination, not merely to protect the US homeland from annihilation.
New directions
There are hidden realities of nuclear doctrine, nuclear threats and nuclear planning which no concerned citizen can safely ignore. This is a valuable addition to the literature on US nuclear threats. A British counterpart is badly overdue.
Until then, we're privileged to be able to hear American Friends Service Committee Director of Programmes Joe Gerson revealing what has been hidden.