Preface

Barack Obama assuming American presidency in January 2009 gave a new impetus to nuclear disarmament not only in the United States but also throughout globally. The fervour in favour of nuclear disarmament assumed extra strength because his predecessor, George W. Bush had nothing but pure contempt for the policy of nuclear disarmament. In his administration Bush spoke, advocated and pushed for usable nuclear weapons like bunker buster bomb, capable of destroying deeply buried targets rather than 200 kilotonne nuclear weapons.

In this backdrop VPM’s Centre for International Studies (VPM’s CIS) held a three-day international seminar from 20 to 22 December 2010. We were fortunate that MEA under an action-oriented Joint Secretary, Dr. S. K. Behera, IFS saw that minimum required funding was provided to the VPM’s CIS. We also had good fortune in Israeli Consul General in Mumbai Ms. Orna Sagiv enabling us to get an eminent Israeli Professor from The Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv to participate in the seminar. We are indebted to Chairman, Shri N. B. H. Kulkarni for using his long standing Israeli connections.

We are extremely grateful to Professor Manas Chatterji, Binghamton University, New York, USA and general editor of series on Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development who agreed to publish these papers under his series brought out by Emerald Group Publishing Limited, UK. We are grateful to authorities of Emerald Publishing House, UK, as well. My grateful thanks go to Shri R. Mohan, life member of the VPM for editing some of the chapters. My thanks are also due to our academic assistant, Anita Gujran for her assistance in organising the chapters and initially editing them. My sincere thanks to all my academic colleagues who contributed their revised and updated papers to this volume.

P. M. Kamath

Volume Editor