Essential References (Nuclear)
There are any number of websites accessible today on nuclear matters – technical, strategy, war fighting. For those of us who started our research/studies some few decades ago, it seems like an embarrassment of riches. We had to do the hard work – parsing reams of Congressional testimony, track down obscure references and deal with arcane and in some cases, overly zealous classification schemes. As a graduate student at the Naval Post-grad School, YHS was deeply enmeshed in trying to discern the entrails of the genesis of US and Soviet theater nuclear strategy in the early 1980s – uncovering nuggets like Project VISTA (a 1951 CALTECH sponsored study that led to the decision to design/build/deploy tactical nukes in Europe), Operation Carte Blanche and the effect it had on the European anti-nuclear movement (Kampf dem Atomtod) and tracing the decision-making process for deploying SS-20s were personal (albeit small but hard-won) victories.
All this is prelude to highlighting an exceptional on line resource that has recently become available through the National Security Archive Project, an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University — the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and also serves as a repository of government records on a wide range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States. The latest offering from the NSA Project is the Nuclear Vault. Available at the Nuclear Vault, one will find a wealth of original source, declassified material from WW2 through the near present on a variety of nuclear matters, concentrated principally on strategy, policy and decision-making. Some examples of what may be found:
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Counter-proliferation and how the US actively worked to prevent Taiwan from developing and acquiring nuclear weapons (just released)
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The Special Collection: Key Documents on Nuclear Policy Issues, 1945-1990
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A variety of "briefing books" that provide on line access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and more. Updated frequently, the Electronic Briefing Books represent just a small sample of the documents in our published and unpublished collections.
There is plenty more in just the Vault alone to provide literally days of intense browsing/reading. Perhaps having to do it the old school way makes YHS appreciate the site all the more — still, wouldn’t have complained were it (and others) available in 1983…
