Chapter Four: Lessons from the End of the Cold War

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

Stephanie Cooke, In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).

Müller, ‘Challenges Faced by the NPT’, p. 16.

Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, sixth edition (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 439.

See ‘Common Security: A Program of Disarmament’, report of the International Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, under the chairmanship of Olof Palme (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982). The concept of common security and the work of the Commission have been explored in Raimo Väyrynen (ed.), Common Security (London: Taylor & Francis, 1985); and in Cortright, ‘Making the Case for Disarmament: An Analysis of the Palme and Canberra Commissions’, in Unto Vesa (ed), Global Commissions Assessed (Helsinki: Finnish Edita Publishing Ltd., 2005), pp. 59–78.

Morgenthau, Politics, p. 107.

Ibid. p. 439.

Müller, ‘Challenges Faced by the NPT’, p. 2.

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

Alexander Wendt, ‘The Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2, spring 1992, pp. 420–2.

Ibid. See also Deborah Welch Larson, ‘Crisis Prevention and the Austrian State Treaty’, International Organization, vol. 41, no. 1, winter 1987, pp. 27–60.

Charles E. Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962).

Because the reductions were unilateral actions, they were not verifiable, and it is thus difficult to ascertain the total number of weapons withdrawn from service. The estimate of 17,000 is drawn from Nuclear Threat Initiative, ‘Presidential Nuclear Initiatives: An Alternative Paradigm for Arms Control’, issue brief, March 2004, http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_41a.html.

Comments by Brent Scowcroft, Notre Dame International Security Program, Hesburgh Center for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, April 27 2009.

John Borawski, ‘Accord at Stockholm’, Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, vol. 42, no. 6, December 1986, p. 34, available at http://www.thebulletin.org.

‘Gorbachev Hails the Stockholm Pact’, New York Times, 25 September 1986, p. A6.

Wolgang Zellner, ‘Can This Treaty be Saved? Breaking the Stalemate on Conventional Forces in Europe’, Arms Control Today, vol. 39, no. 7, September 2009, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_09/Zellner.

The phrase ‘whole and free’ is from a speech given by President George H.W. Bush in Germany in May 1989. For an analysis see William Forrest Harlow, ‘And the Wall Came Tumbling Down: Bush's Rhetoric of Silence during German Reunification’, in Martin J. Medhurst (ed.), The Rhetorical Presidency of George H.W. Bush, (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), p. 40.