Chapter Eight: Nuclear Zero and Beyond

Abstract

Rarely in the atomic age have hopes for genuine progress towards disarmament been raised as high as they are now. Governments, prompted by the renewed momentum of non-proliferation and disarmament initiatives, have put nuclear policy at the top of the international agenda.

But how can countries move from warm words to meaningful action? By what means could the world be weaned from its addiction to nuclear weapons and who should undertake the task of supervising this process? This Adelphi examines practical steps for achieving progress toward disarmament, assessing the challenges and opportunities associated with achieving a world without nuclear weapons. It places the current debate over abolition in the context of urgent non-proliferation priorities, such as the need to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of extremist regimes and terrorists. It distils lessons from states that have already given up nuclear programmes and from the end of the Cold War to suggest ways of countering the efforts of Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. For the longer term, it offers policy recommendations for moving towards a reduced global reliance on nuclear weapons.

Notes

Kissinger, ‘Strategy and the Atlantic Alliance’, Survival, vol. 24, no. 5, September 1982, p. 197.

Council on Foreign Relations, US Nuclear Weapons Policy, Independent Task Force Report No. 62 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), p. 45.

James E. Goodby and Sidney D. Drell, A World Without Nuclear Weapons: End-State Issues (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 23.

David Holloway, ‘Further Reductions in Nuclear Forces’, in George P. Shultz et al. (eds), Reykjavik Revisited, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Press, 2008).

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 2.

Ibid., p. 2.

See Sagan, ‘Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 165.

Perkovich, ’The Next Big Steps Required to Move Toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 11.

Michael Mazarr (ed), Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), p. 4.

Stansfield Turner, Caging the Genies: A Workable Solution for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), p. 82.

Ibid., p. 85.

Mazarr (ed), Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World, pp. 371–72.

Ibid., p. 14.

Ibid., p. 6.

Väyrynen, ‘Controversies Over Missile Defense in Europe’, Working Papers 2009, No. 59 (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2009).

Schell, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), p. 190.

Ibid., pp. 193–5.

This quote and all Reagan and Gorbachev quotes from the Reykjavík summit in this and the following paragraph are drawn from the recounting of the official transcript in Schell, The Seventh Decade, pp. 190–96.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 14.

Jonathan Schell, The Abolition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 153.

Schell, ‘The Abolition of Nuclear Arms: An Idea Whose Time Has Come’, paper delivered as part of the International Security Studies Brady- Johnson Grand Strategy Lecture Series, Yale University, 25 March 2009.

Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’, International Security, vol. 27, no. 3, Winter 2002–03, p. 72.

Ibid., p. 75.

Goodby and Drell, A World Without Nuclear Weapons: End-State Issues, p. 6.

Ibid., p. 13.

Ibid., p. 27.

Schell, The Abolition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 139.

Väyrynen (ed), The Waning of Major War: Theories and Debates (London: Routledge, 2006).

Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 1–2.

See Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community at the North Atlantic Level (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954); Emanuel Adler and Patrick Morgan (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).