Disarming proposals: controlling nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by Andy Butfoy [Book review]

Review of Andrew Butfoy, Disarming Proposals: Controlling Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons. Apart from the centrality of terrorism and the 2003 Iraq War (not to mention the question of North Korea), disarmament is of great interest to the wider community as well as practitioners of strategic studies and international relations. Butfoy provides a survey of the three types of weapons, nuclear, biological and chemical, enumerating the basic differences between them. The easy availability of biological compounds such as anthrax is balanced against the difficulty in successfully disseminating them as weapons, and the author makes his concerns with misinformation on this issue evident. Indeed, the vagaries of United States policy towards WMD are covered in their own chapter in which the conditions of American exceptionalism are outlined. His assessment gives the United States a mixed score card, with much criticism but some clear praise