The Urgency of Banning Nukes: Conversation with William B. Quandt

This was the sixth conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.

In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to William B. Quandt, an American scholar, author and professor emeritus in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia.  Dr Quandt previously served as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and as a member on the National Security Council in the Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter administrations.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 5:25 When did Israel start its work on its own nuclear weapons?
• 8:11 Which outside parties helped Israel build its nuclear arsenal?
• 8:59 What do we know about Israeli nuclear tests?
• 10:08 What means does Israel have to deliver a nuclear strike?
• 10:46 What were the revelations that Mordecai Vanunu made in 1986?
• 13:40 Did these revelations make any difference in how the US or other parties treated Israel?
• 16:16 What can you tell us about the eras of the Eisenhower and JFK presidencies and the attitudes of both of those to Israel's emerging nuclear weapons program?
• 20:15 What happened with the inspections that happened under Johnson?
• 27:48 What were the attitudes and policies that Nixon and his ever wily national security advisor, Mr. Hen, Dr. Hen Kissinger about the attitudes and policies that they adopted toward Israel's nuclear weapons program?
• 43:05 What's your bottom line on weather and how this famed thing called nuclear deterrents actually operated during the 1973 war?
• 47:07 What were the broader effects that Israel's nuclear arsenal has had on American policy making?
• 49:54 Within the USG, which branches have been more concerned by Israel's nuclear weapons state status?
• 51:54 What effect has Israel's blatant disregard of the NPT had on the global non-proliferation effort?
• 57:39 What can we do to strengthen the campaign to bring Israel's nuclear arsenal under a full effective monitoring and for Israel to join the TPNW's nuclear disarmament process?