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THE CRIMINALITY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Francis A. Boyle

Foreword by Philip Berrigan

0-932863-33-7 • $14.95 • 216 pp.
     
    REVIEWS

    “[An} enormously valuable book. Any supporter of nuclear weapons would find it very
    difficult to refute its arguments.”                         
     —Frank Jackson            
         Vice-Chair, World Disarmament Campaign UK and Editor, World Disarm!
                                                                                                  
     “Boyle’s damning post-9 / 11 legal analysis of U.S. nuclear war policy and the so-
    called  “war on terrorism” is the best single book for nuclear resisters to study if they
    intend to defend their own direct action under international law.”  
                                            —The Nuclear Resister Sept. 2002
                                                                                                
    “Boyle’s stirring little book traces the fault lines that may divide our society as U.S.
    troops and weapons are deployed illegally: those who support the legal system versus
    those who blindly issue and obey orders at their own peril.”
                   —The Federal Lawyer, March/April 2003
             a publication of the Federal Bar Association, Washington, DC
PUBLISHED IN MALAYSIA by
CRESCENT NEWS
Selangor, Malaysia

In German in Switzerland in 2009  by
Verlag Zeit-Fragen
Philip Berrigan began nonviolent resistance to U.S. wars in 1966, breaking laws legalizing
the Vietnam war. He  spent 11 of the last 35 years serving prison sentences related to his
peace activism.  He participated in six Plowshares witnesses,  and published eight books
on nonviolent issues and war and peace.  He lectured on modern war and peace,
nuclearism and interventionary war in most of the American States, and across Canada
and Western Europe.  Along with Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize  six times

    AUTHOR


    As a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate of international law,
    Francis A. Boyle is uniquely qualified to address the issue of nuclear deterrence.
    Twenty years of anti-nuclear advocacy have earned him what may be the world's
    best track record for anti-nuclear acquittals. Recently, his testimony persuaded a
    Scottish Judge in the UK to direct a verdict against the UK Trident 2. Through his
    exacting international legal analysis, prolific writings and tireless advocacy, he has
    succeeded in establishing the illegality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence,
    reflected in the recent World Court Advisory Opinion of 1996.

    Francis A. Boyle's long, distinguished and multi-faceted career has included:
    responsibility for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the
    American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention;
    lecturing on nuclear weapons and international law to the U.S. military at West Point
    and to Soviet and foreign lawyers through two lecture tours sponsored by the
    Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and the Association of Soviet Lawyers; and
    representing the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the International Court
    of Justice (1993-94), where he won two World Court Orders against the rump
    Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide.

    Boyle has also served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-
    1992); as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization on the Creation of
    the State of Palestine (1987-89) and to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East
    Peace Negotiations (1991-93), and as a Consultant to the American Friends Service
    Committee.

    Professor Boyle teaches International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign,
    and is author, inter alia, of Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law,The
    Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World
    Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898-1921, and The
    Bosnian People Charge Genocide. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as
    well as a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.


    SYNOPSIS

    The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence provides the intellectual tools needed to
    understand and respond to the growing dangers posed by the possession and
    threatened use of nuclear weapons. It demonstrates how both the use and
    threatened use of nuclear weapons is illegal under international law and accordingly,
    criminal.

    This book offers a succinct and detailed guide to understanding US policy from first
    use in Hiroshima/Nagasaki through the SALT I, SALT II, ABM and START efforts at
    arms control, to Star Wars, National Missile Defense and beyond. Boyle clarifies the
    relevant international law, from the Hague Conventions through the Nuremberg
    Principles to the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion. He also draws attention to U.S.
    contraventions of its own domestic guidelines for the pursuit of war established in the
    1956 U.S. Army Field Manual on The Law of Land Warfare.

    As its War on Terrorism hurtles into uncharted watersin North Korea and elsewhere,
    challenging accepted norms of international law and setting a pattern for peremptory
    state behavior, could the US or some other nuclear state cross the nuclear threshold?
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