FEATURES: Keeping nukes away from bad actors Nuclear weapons are unique in their terrifying destructive potential. Their energy release is a million times larger than that of previous explosives. Mass destruction is inevitable if they are used in conflicts. One primitive atomic bomb destroyed — literally wiped out — the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War ii, causing more than 200,000 casualties. That bomb was little more than a trigger of a modern thermonuclear — or so-called hydrogen — bomb that releases 100 times or more destructive energy. There are several tens of thousands of them in the world today. Through the decades of the Cold War, the prospect of a nuclear holocaust was all too real. The U.S. and the former Soviet Union stood toe-to-toe with their fingers on the triggers, ready to launch, by accident or misunderstanding if not deliberately, many thousands of nuclear warheads to annihilate one another. During his presidency, Dwight Eisenhower remarked that war with nuclear weapons can come close to “destruction of the enemy and suicide.” The fate of civilization as we know it lay in the balance. Although that specter of doom has passed, a grave new danger has emerged. It is the danger of nuclear weapons and the material that fuels them falling into very dangerous hands, whether they be those of state leaders or terrorists, or simply suicidal fanatics unrestrained by the norms of civilized behavior. The top priority for U.S. nuclear-weapons policy must be to keep that from happening. It is easy to recognize and to state this priority — but it is a most difficult challenge to figure out how to prevent such proliferation. On the diplomatic front, which is the most challenging, we must strengthen and sustain an international nonproliferation consensus that today appears to be fragile and weakening. At the same time, on the technical front, so long as we retain a nuclear deterrent, we must work to ensure its security, reliability, and effectiveness against newly emerging threats.
A Cold War success During the darkest days of the Cold War, we were successful in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons to no more than a handful of nations. A norm of nonpossession of these weapons was established, as was a norm of their nonuse in military combat that has extended over 60 turbulent years. This record belies a view frequently expressed by those who disparage the value of international cooperation and arms-control treaties and who consider continuing negotiating efforts against nuclear proliferation to be futile. Today only eight nations are confirmed nuclear-weapon states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, and Israel, a nondeclared nuclear-weapon state (see Figure 1). The evidence is unclear in the case of North Korea, though its government has the fuel for nuclear bombs and wishes the world to worry that it has them. Iran has been aggressively building a nuclear infrastructure. This number of eight nuclear weapons states is much smaller than was anticipated in the early 1960s; President Kennedy predicted 16 by the end of that decade. And the number hasn’t grown over the past two decades. This is all the more impressive when one recalls the many nations that flirted with the idea of going nuclear — and those that, in fact, started down the path to nuclear weapons and turned back. These include Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, and Sweden; and South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, which gave them up. But we are reminded daily by events in North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan — with its precarious arsenal and the extensive nuclear-supplier network created by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan — that the nuclear-restraint regime is facing tough challenges.
figure 1
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt), which entered into force in 1970, has been a bulwark for worldwide efforts to counter the spread of nuclear technology and weapons to other nations for 35 years. These are its basic provisions:
The partners to the treaty are also committed to good-faith negotiating efforts toward an eventual goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. At present the npt has almost universal support: 188 nations, all but four in the world, have signed on to it. The only outliers are India and Pakistan, which became nuclear after the treaty entered into force in 1970; Israel, which has never explicitly admitted to being a nuclear power; and North Korea, which withdrew in 2003. And Iran is threatening. In the face of the new challenge of the spread of technology to rogue nations and terrorists, it is natural to question whether the npt still meets our security needs. The United States and our allies, including the other nuclear weapon states, recognize a need for new restraints and modifications to make the treaty effective in keeping the worst weapons out of the worst hands. On the other hand, many nonnuclear states expressed serious reservations about extending the treaty into the indefinite future, when it faced its final scheduled review in 1995 at the United Nations. They objected to its discriminatory features and, as a quid pro quo for their continuing to renounce nuclear weapons, called on the nuclear powers to make serious and timely progress in reducing their excessively large arsenals and reducing their reliance on nuclear weapons. They also called on them to continue to adhere to the moratorium on all underground nuclear explosive tests that had been initiated in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush and to continue to work toward a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (ctbt) that would formalize a test ban and extend it without a limit of time. Without a doubt, the leadership and example of the U.S. will be decisive in efforts to sustain and strengthen the nonproliferation regime. This is an important factor for Washington to weigh in our nuclear policy decisions and actions. The U.S. and Russian commitment to the npt, and to fulfilling their obligations under it, was explicitly affirmed by Presidents Bush and Putin in their Joint Declaration at the Moscow summit in May 2002. However, those words and promises have yet to be turned into the solid actions needed to convince the world that the U.S. and Russia, possessors of more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, are serious and determined partners in the campaign against proliferation.
Theft or purchase Cooperation among all nations — nonnuclear as well as nuclear — will be crucial in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The most direct way for states or terrorist entities to acquire nuclear weapons is through theft or illegal purchase, and the danger is real. The best means of denying a nuclear capability to terrorists is to provide maximum protection for existing stockpiles of weapons and nuclear materials and to reduce their size. This calls for the geographic extension and aggressive application of effective cooperative threat reduction measures, first developed in the 1990s under the Nunn–Lugar legislation for the former Soviet Union, and an expedited implementation of the nuclear force reductions negotiated by Presidents Bush and Putin in Moscow in 2002. Of particular concern in this regard is the large quantity of nuclear materials and warheads stored in the former Soviet Union in far less than ideal security circumstances. Russia’s stockpiles are the largest in the world, containing many hundreds of tons of dangerous nuclear material as a legacy of the Cold War. This is enough fuel for more than 50,000 nuclear warheads, in addition to the approximately 20,000 warheads that already exist in Russia. The material is spread over many dozens of sites in structures and bunkers, the majority of which are poorly guarded and protected. This constitutes a very rich treasure for would-be proliferators, and especially for terrorist organizations, emphasizing the importance of cooperative measures to secure them from theft or sale. If they are unable to steal or illegally purchase nuclear weapons, the biggest hurdle for states or terrorist entities that seek to achieve a nuclear capability is getting their hands on uranium ore. This is the raw material from which to make the fuel for nuclear weapons, either by enriching the ore, which naturally occurs with only 0.7 percent of the fissioning isotope of uranium, u(235), to 90-plus percent u(235) for bomb fuel or by making it into fuel rods for a nuclear reactor producing plutonium, which does not occur in nature. Controlling access to this material will require cooperative procedures for export controls and interdiction of illegal shipments. For those nations that possess uranium deposits within their borders, the challenge to deny them a nuclear capability is quite stark: It is to keep them from acquiring or constructing the industrial infrastructure to enrich uranium or to manufacture plutonium. A nation with access to uranium ore that possesses such an operating facility is a potential and, in fact, a latent nuclear weapon state. This is the prospect looming today in Iran. A blueprint meeting this challenge is contained in the May 2002 Bush–Putin Declaration of Moscow. It calls on all nations to cooperate to prevent such infrastructures from being developed by strictly enforcing export controls, interdicting illegal transfers, prosecuting violators, and tightening border controls. In addition to working to broaden the coalition of nations that are cooperating on implementing these powers, as called for in the Proliferation Security Initiative that has been proposed by the Bush administration, the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) will have to be expanded. Currently the iaea has the authority for inspecting only the declared peaceful nuclear activities of the signatory nations to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its authority will have to be expanded to include on-site challenge inspections of undeclared and suspect activities as well. Such inspection rights are included in the Additional Protocol to the npt that has been negotiated with the iaea by many, but not all, nations. So far, 107 nonnuclear weapon states have signed, and 73 have ratified, the Additional Protocol. Effective enforcement will also require the United Nations Security Council to give appropriate enforcement powers in cases where nations refuse to admit or give access to inspectors. As described above, a broad menu of intrusive procedures will be required to monitor compliance and to identify any and all serious efforts by a would-be nuclear power to build nuclear weapons covertly. Negotiating to bring them into force with clear inspection protocols presents a major intelligence and diplomatic challenge. But the nuclear powers must also recognize and deal with the concerns and basic motivations that drive some countries to seek to become nuclear powers. This requires offering appropriate incentives to npt signatories, in the form of compensating security guarantees and economic aid, to balance the restrictions and intrusive procedures being proposed to prevent nuclear proliferation. A targeted diplomatic approach, including cooperation as well as confrontation, will be required to deal with these concerns rather than each proliferant being viewed simply as a nuisance at best and a dangerous enemy at worst. There is one more guarantee that will be of great importance. It is a guarantee of secure sources of energy, nuclear or otherwise, to npt signatories that accept the restrictions of the Proliferation Security Initiative. This guarantee is included in constructive and important proposals that have been made in considerable detail by Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the iaea. These proposals include creating multinational, regional facilities that would guarantee to provide the nuclear fuel to reactors engaged in research for peaceful purposes and for electrical power while at the same time prohibiting construction of such facilities by individual nations. In effect, there would be an internationally guaranteed supply of the fuel, remaining under international control, which would replace national control of materials that could be diverted to weapons use at some future date. This proposal is currently under discussion.
U.S. nukes It is not necessary to look abroad for challenges to the present nonproliferation regime. There is also an apparent challenge originating in Washington as a result of American initiatives for new nuclear weapons that signal potential changes in our own policy. The Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (December 31, 2001), issued by the Department of Defense, highlighted a need for new earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to defeat emerging threats of hardened underground targets of military interest being built in many countries. This recommendation raises two important questions: What will be the effect of developing new nuclear weapons on the nonproliferation regime and U.S. security? And, on technical grounds, what is the military utility of such weapons? Consider first the technical issues. The effectiveness of warheads for destroying hardened underground targets is enhanced if their designs are sufficiently rugged so that, when delivered by aircraft or missile, they can be rammed into the ground intact and penetrate some ten or so feet into the earth without damage before detonating. Such warheads will deliver a shock to destroy an underground bunker that is considerably stronger — by a factor of ten to 20 — relative to the shock from the same warhead if it is exploded at or above the earth’s surface, in which case much more of its blast energy would be spent in the atmosphere. Many hardened underground targets are at relatively shallow depths of a hundred or so feet, particularly large industrial targets for manufacturing weapons or producing fissile material (u and Pu) to fuel nuclear weapons. Others of very high value are more likely to be built at depths of 1,000 feet and hardened to withstand the order of 1,000 atmospheres over-pressure. Doing the very best possible, taking into account experimental data and known limits on material strengths, the yield of a warhead would have to be significantly larger than 100 kilotons for the shock from its blast to reach down to 1,000 feet with enough strength to destroy such targets. Very low-yield warheads allegedly offer a possibility of attacking underground military targets, particularly those containing biological or chemical warfare agents, at shallow depths and are purported to be “more useable” since they would cause reduced collateral damage. It is unavoidable, however, that any such warhead that has penetrated into the earth as deeply as it can before detonating will still create a huge cloud of radioactive debris and a very large crater. The blast of even a very “low-yield” one-kiloton earth penetrator detonated at the maximum depth to which it can penetrate intact in hard rock will eject more than one million cubic feet of radioactive debris from a crater about the size of ground zero at the World Trade Center — bigger than a football field. A nuclear weapon with a yield capable of destroying a hard target 1,000 feet underground — well over 100 kilotons — will dig a very much larger crater and create a substantially larger amount of radioactive debris. That would certainly not be a low-yield weapon. The primitive atom bomb that pulverized Hiroshima had a yield of only 13 kilotons. The United States already has many high-yield weapons in its arsenal for attacking hardened, deeply buried targets. The main problem is being able to identify and locate such targets accurately. The technical realities of nuclear weapons and their value in destroying biological and chemical weapons must also not be exaggerated. The effective range of nuclear weapons in neutralizing the deadly effects of biological pathogens and chemical gases is severely limited by the fact that the blast effects of nuclear weapons, when detonated in earth, extend beyond the range of high temperatures and radiation they create and that are required for destroying such agents. Therefore, they would be more likely to spread these agents widely than to destroy them completely. On quantitative technical grounds, one is led to conclude that low-yield penetrators are of marginal military value, useful only for relatively shallow targets. The collateral damage they cause may be reduced due to their lower yield, but it will still be very substantial. President Eisenhower’s warning of “destruction and suicide” as the potential outcome of nuclear war suggests the dangers and risks if one crosses the nuclear threshold, especially for limited military missions. Improvements in intelligence can lead to valuable payoffs in the ability of the military to destroy hardened underground targets. What is needed is the ability to locate, identify, and characterize such targets with accuracy and to define, identify, and seal off their vulnerable parts — such as air ducts and tunnel entrances for equipment, resources, and personnel. These vulnerabilities can be exploited with specialized delivery systems and conventional munitions with multiple detonations for enhanced earth penetration. What is the likely impact on U.S. security of a new initiative for new low-yield weapons? First, it is generally agreed that already tested weapons are available for most bunker-busting missions. In view of that, a decision by the world’s only superpower to develop and deploy such presumably “more usable,” low-yield nuclear weapons as bunker busters would send a clear and negative signal about the nonproliferation regime to the nonnuclear states. If the United States, the strongest nation in the world, concludes that it cannot protect its vital interests without relying on nuclear weapons in limited war-fighting situations, it would be a clear signal to other nations that nuclear weapons are valuable, if not necessary, for their security purposes too. It would be counter to repeated urging by the nonnuclear weapon states, when they agreed to the npt extension at the un in 1995, for the nuclear-weapon states to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to continue the moratorium on underground explosive tests of nuclear weapons, leading to a ctbt, and for further reductions in nuclear forces. The United States could thereby be dealing a fatal blow to the nonproliferation regime in order to provide itself with a capability of questionable military value. The 188 signatories to the npt are calling on the nuclear-weapon states to decrease rather than increase the discriminatory nature of the nonproliferation regime by developing new warheads for new missions while they themselves renounce any such armaments. For fiscal year 2006, Congress zeroed out funds supporting the development of new so-called bunker busters, or robust nuclear earth penetrators. This followed their action in fiscal 2005 to remove spending for the development of new concepts for low-yield weapons designed to attack shallow hardened underground targets. Members did, however, fund an important new program for fiscal 2006 called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or rrw. Its stated purpose is to adapt nuclear infrastructure and weapons so that the U.S. will be able to maintain long-term high confidence in its arsenal more efficiently and economically without requiring the resumption of nuclear testing. The specific direction given to the activities under this program, as stated in the House-Senate conference report on the authorizing legislation, forbids the development of new weapons for new military missions. It reads: “The conferees reiterate the direction provided in fiscal year 2005 that any weapon design work done under the rrw program must stay within the military requirements of the existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear tests.” That is very important. It would be a mistake if rrw were to turn into an effort to develop new warhead designs by altering the nature of the high explosives or the amount of nuclear fuel in the primary without explosive testing, as some have suggested. Would a responsible leader — president, general, or admiral — seriously consider relying on an untested new design to protect our national security? It takes an extraordinary flight of imagination to place higher confidence in a new design without a test pedigree than in our stockpile with a half-century of more than 1,000 tests in its making. It seems inconceivable that the nonproliferation regime would, or could, survive if the newly established Reliable Replacement Warhead program were to become a design program for new U.S. weapons, as some advocate, rather than focusing on increasing long-term confidence in our current arsenal within experimentally established parameters.
The case for the Test Ban Treaty A genuinely important action by the United States against nuclear proliferation would be to affirm our continuing support for the moratorium on testing, in effect since 1992, and to work toward bringing into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. All U.S. allies in nato, including Great Britain, Germany, and France, have signed and ratified the ctbt, as have Japan and Russia. Israel has signed the ctbt and is participating energetically in the work of setting up a verification system. Others, including China, have indicated they will work to bring the treaty into force once the United States has ratified it. Currently 33 of the 44 states that have built nuclear reactors — the so-called nuclear-capable states that must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force — have done so. In all, 129 states have ratified and 176 have signed. Forty-five years ago, in May 1961, shortly after he completed his eight years in the White House, President Eisenhower remarked that not achieving a nuclear test ban “would have to be classed as the greatest disappointment of any administration — of any decade — of any time and of any party.” This is an appropriate time for the U.S. to reconsider the issue of ratifying the ctbt. A serious debate between the White House and the Senate to clarify the underlying issues, both the concerns and opportunities, was not adequately joined in 1999 when the ctbt first came before the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification. To join the debate on the ctbt, the Bush administration will have to change its position, announced in 2001, that it had no intention to seek ratification of the ctbt. Why is the United States reluctant to reopen the question of ratifying the ctbt? Opponents of the ctbt have raised two questions: How can the U.S. be sure that many years ahead, we will not need to resume underground explosive yield testing in order to rebuild the stockpile? And how can compliance by other ctbt signatories be monitored to standards consistent with U.S. national security? The answer to the first question is that total certainty can never be achieved. But I am confident that the United States can be assured of the reliability of our nuclear forces under the ctbt. I say this because we are successfully pursuing a strong technical and scientific program at the national weapons laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia) that is providing a deeper understanding of their performance and is maintaining and refurbishing them as appropriate. This is a rigorous and a well-supported and executed program relying on extensive surveillance, forensics, diagnostics, extensive simulations with new computers, and experiments with advanced facilities. It is, in fact, enhancing U.S. confidence in the arsenal — and in the ability to hear any warning bells of unanticipated problems that may develop in the future. No leader at the weapons laboratories at present identifies a need for nuclear testing. Issues that arise due to aging of the stockpile weapons have been identified and are being resolved by appropriate measures including refurbishment of parts when and where a need is found. Concerning the question of compliance, there is broad, if not unanimous, agreement, based on detailed technical analyses, that the United States would be able to monitor compliance with a ctbt to standards consistent with its national security. With or without the ctbt, the U.S. will want all the information we can get on clandestine testing activities by other countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons. The ctbt would make such clandestine efforts more difficult and more risky for those nations by strengthening the global verification system and adding on-site inspection rights when the treaty enters into force.
What if? We must face the fact that, despite our best efforts, we may fail to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on the most dangerous material. They may do so by theft, by illegal purchase, or simply by refusing to cooperate with our anti-proliferation efforts and building the infrastructure to enrich uranium and make nuclear weapons. What is the appropriate U.S. response in such circumstances? This is not an idle theoretical question. This issue is very much on the agenda, and was explicitly raised in the most recent official U.S. National Security Strategy document in March. It states that, against emerging threats of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the United States must be prepared to take “anticipatory action to defend ourselves even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack”; that is, we will take preventive military action before the existence of an established threat. While we cannot rule out the use of force under any circumstance, we have to recognize that the use of force brings its own serious risks and raises tough new questions. Under what circumstances can and should we apply military force? Against whom? Which targets? When and how? Preventive military action requires exquisite intelligence to evaluate the danger accurately and to identify the critical targets correctly. Current difficulties and debates about U.S. policy in the Middle East, however one may view the choice that the U.S. made to initiate war against Iraq, are clear evidence of the risks of taking such actions. Most decisions to initiate preventive action have to be made even though there may be big uncertainties, as well as gaps and wrong information on essential facts. This is almost inevitable. It is the very nature of intelligence information. These circumstances may result in divided support and challenges to the legitimacy of the mission, both at home and abroad, if not its outright failure. That is all the more reason to exhaust all possible avenues of diplomacy before relying on force only as a last resort. To be sure, it is a very tall order and a frustrating ordeal to engage in patient, multinational diplomacy with rogue nations that are bent on joining the nuclear club. It is even more daunting to get at the roots of what generates fanatical destructive behavior in terrorists. Changing such behavior patterns takes a lot of time and determined effort. In the short term, it is necessary to pursue practical measures that can be effective in keeping evil despots and suicidal terrorists from being able to threaten us with nuclear weapons. We have several examples from recent history that illustrate the three conditions that almost certainly will have to be satisfied simultaneously if preventive military action, or even its threat, is to be effective: 1) There is very little likelihood of successful retaliation by the potential proliferant against the homelands of the attacking powers; 2) the proliferant is viewed by large parts of the international community as a threat to its neighbors; 3) peaceful means of blocking nuclear weapons programs have failed or seem unlikely to work. To support this judgment, we can recall cases where not all three conditions existed, and military force or the threat of force was not credible and was not brought into play. They include the Soviet Union in the 1950s, as it tested and began to deploy nuclear weapons, and China when it began to move toward a nuclear weapons capability in the 1960s. There were influential voices in the United States that spoke out for preventive war against the Soviet Union in the 1950s, fearing that a Soviet nuclear arsenal would prove devastating for America’s position in the world and for the American homeland itself. Fortunately President Eisenhower knew better. A similar discussion took place at high levels of the American and Soviet governments during the Kennedy administration when China was seen to be nearing a nuclear weapons capability. The discussion led nowhere, another example of the disutility of military force under the circumstances then existing. In both these cases patient diplomacy proved its superior mettle. What about today’s most worrisome cases, North Korea and Iran? North Korea is already close to posing an actual nuclear threat, if indeed it doesn’t already exist, and our military options are tightly constrained by the existence of their million-man army with many, many thousands of artillery tubes almost on the outskirts of Seoul. In targeting diplomacy for halting and reversing North Korea’s nuclear programs, the U.S. and our allies in the region will undoubtedly have to negotiate a nonuse of force commitment in the context of a freeze and dismantlement of all North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. The Clinton administration’s Agreed Framework of 1994 froze North Korea’s nuclear reactor and reprocessing activities in return for promises of power for civilian needs and of limited economic aid. We now would insist on the return of iaea inspectors with the authority to inspect not only the reactors and the plutonium they have already produced, but also the elements of a gas centrifuge facility for enriching uranium components which North Korea has recently been acquiring in violation of the Agreed Framework. We would also insist on setting a firm schedule for removing the plutonium, including all spent fuel rods, from North Korea and dismantling its nuclear weapons facilities and program. It would be a serious mistake to allow the process to stop there. The North Korean leadership is primarily interested in survival and seems to be aware that economic changes will be necessary for that to happen. Our diplomacy must help support efforts on their part to make such changes and convince them that it will be safe for them to pursue them. A broad program of economic cooperation and security guarantees should ultimately include North Korea’s neighbors — South Korea above all. Since North Korea poses a threat to its neighbors, guarantees must be a two-way street. Are the U.S. Congress and the American public ready for this? With presidential leadership, perhaps so, especially since the alternative very likely will be not only a nuclear-armed North Korea but also, as a consequence, the entry of Japan and South Korea — and maybe even Taiwan — into the ranks of nuclear-weapon states. This would affect China, which would affect India, which would affect Pakistan. An Asian arms race rivaling the Cold War’s U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms race could be the result. The situation sounds grim, but recall Libya’s decision to abandon its nuclear program after much pressure and difficulties from abroad. Finally, we have to ask: Is it possible for the United States and its friends to agree on criteria for diplomatic initiatives to head off other crises like the one we now face in North Korea and the one looming with Iran? And if the diplomatic initiatives fail in North Korea and Iran, and perhaps elsewhere in the future, will we be able to agree on criteria appropriate for imposing sanctions and, perhaps, eventually for initiating forceful actions against those who insist on moving ahead toward acquiring nuclear capabilities and are behaving aggressively? The experience at the United Nations leading up to the invasion of Iraq shows how difficult that challenge will be. A serious effort to come to such agreements will have to start by restoring and strengthening the international consensus against nuclear proliferation, and defining clear responsibilities and authority for action by the un Security Council. It will be essential for the United States to change a perception that the use of elective, or preventive, force has become a dominant strain in American thinking about international challenges such as nuclear proliferation. The lesson that the United States and our allies and friends have learned since the dawn of the nuclear era in 1945 is that deterrence waged with patient and firm diplomacy will be key to keeping the worst weapons out of the most dangerous hands. This will require that we resort to a continuum of means keyed on patient, determined diplomacy, supported by coercion if or when required, to face the challenge to us, and indeed to civilization, posed by these terrible weapons. The Bush administration needs to be encouraged to continue building on the recent evidence of multilateralism in our diplomatic approach to this challenge.
Specifics The nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle. It would be a noble thing to strive for a world of such human perfection that the complete elimination of nuclear weapons would no longer be a distant dream. I fear that such a day is far beyond the horizon of the most ambitious plans of the world’s visionaries. For the present, the United States must engage diplomatically and give the strongest support for specific actions that can serve as effective instruments in the effort against proliferation. These include, to summarize:
We should work to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force rather than developing new, putatively more useable, nuclear weapons. At the very least we should continue U.S. adherence to the moratorium. The urgency for such a commitment to deal with the nuclear threat — a danger with no precedent in human history — has been expressed powerfully and dramatically by Father Bryan Hehir, former dean of Harvard Divinity School, in his keynote address on “Ethical Considerations of Living in the Nuclear Age” at a Stanford University conference in 1987:
This is our challenge. |
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