The Unfinished 20th Century

5 Pages 1140 Words

The Unfinished Twentieth Century's synopsis of the treaties and conventions through which the development of nuclear arsenals has been channeled and contained is elegant, concise, and very informative. Certainly, the subject of this book, written by Jonathan Schell, is a timely one: the slow but sure leakage of nuclear weapons technology out of the exclusive club of nations which once contained it, into the rest of a restless world tired of being shut out in the cold. Schell's chilling analysis of the strategic predicament entailed by the post-Cold War situation is also apt, as is his characterization of the nuclear options now facing a world where technical knowledge flows along increasingly unpredictable lines. Sadly, The Unfinished Twentieth Century presents these basic insights on the diereses of the still-current nuclear threat powerfully and uninhibitedly. Using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a key, and Hannah Arendt’s Reflections On the Nature of Evil as a point of departure, Jonathan Schell suggests that the essential story of the twentieth century was the gigantic development of humankind’s capacity for self-destruction — with the rise in many forms of “policies of extermination.” Schell examines the legacy this leaves for the new millennium: the crisis of nuclear arms control that has arisen with the unraveling of the ABM treaty, the stalemate of the START talks, the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia, and, perhaps, East Asia and the Middle-East. He suggests that the world now faces a stark choice between denuclearization, the abolition of all nuclear weapons, and full nuclearization, as the necessary technology and materials seep around the world. And as they do, history is being written.
History, though, as it is crafted by humanity, does not quite follow the same principles of demarcation as when one century turns into another. Schell, identifies the 20th century as an unfinished perio...