Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear disarmament is firmly back on the international agenda. But almost all current thinking on the subject is focused on the process of reducing the number of weapons from thousands to hundreds. This rigorous analysis examines the challenges that exist to abolishing nuclear weapons completely, and suggests what can be done now to start overcoming them. The paper argues that the difficulties of 'getting to zero' must not preclude many steps being taken in that direction. It thus begins by examining steps that nuclear-armed states could take in cooperation with others to move towards a world in which the task of prohibiting nuclear weapons could be realistically envisaged. The remainder of the paper focuses on the more distant prospect of prohibiting nuclear weapons, beginning with the challenge of verifying the transition from low numbers to zero. It moves on to examine how the civilian nuclear industry could be managed in a nuclear-weapons-free world so as to prevent rearmament. The paper then considers what political-security conditions would be required to make a nuclear-weapons ban enforceable and explores how enforcement might work in practice. Finally, it addresses the latent capability to produce nuclear weapons that would inevitably exist after abolition, and asks whether this is a barrier to disarmament, or whether it can be managed to meet the security needs of a world newly free of the bomb.

In the more than sixty years since the advent of nuclear weapons, there has been little meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament. Some countries have nuclear weapons, while other states are forbidden to acquire them, a status quo that lacks rational basis and cannot be sustained. In this remarkable collection, scholars and policy analysts argue that humankind has a choice: either allow nuclear weapons to continue to proliferate throughout the world or move toward their complete elimination.The vast majority of people on the planet would surely opt to abolish nuclear weapons. But decisions about nuclear weapons are not made by the public, but by small groups of political elites. Consequently, in a world with nuclear weapons, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a small number of individuals, whose perceptions, communications, and judgment determine whether there is to be a future.The contributors to this volume provide historical perspective on nuclear weapons policy; explore the role of international law in furthering the prospects of nuclear weapons abolition; consider the obstacles to abolition; present a path to achieving a nuclear weapons-free world; and look beyond abolition to consider issues of post-abolition sovereignty and general and complete disarmament. The goal of a nuclear weapons-free world can be awakened by an engaged citizenry bringing pressure from below in demanding action from political leaders. This book contributes to this awakening and engagement.

In the more than sixty years since the advent of nuclear weapons, there has been little meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament. Some countries have nuclear weapons, while other states are forbidden to acquire them, a status quo that lacks rational basis and cannot be sustained. In this remarkable collection, scholars and policy analysts argue that humankind has a choice: either allow nuclear weapons to continue to proliferate throughout the world or move toward their complete elimination.The vast majority of people on the planet would surely opt to abolish nuclear weapons. But decisions about nuclear weapons are not made by the public, but by small groups of political elites. Consequently, in a world with nuclear weapons, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a small number of individuals, whose perceptions, communications, and judgment determine whether there is to be a future.The contributors to this volume provide historical perspective on nuclear weapons policy; explore the role of international law in furthering the prospects of nuclear weapons abolition; consider the obstacles to abolition; present a path to achieving a nuclear weapons-free world; and look beyond abolition to consider issues of post-abolition sovereignty and general and complete disarmament. The goal of a nuclear weapons-free world can be awakened by an engaged citizenry bringing pressure from below in demanding action from political leaders. This book contributes to this awakening and engagement.

The groundbreaking paper Abolishing Nuclear Weapons by George Perkovich and James Acton was first published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies as an Adelphi Paper in September 2008. One of the paper's main aims was to jump-start a broad international debate about how to achieve the immensely important and equally difficult goal of nuclear disarmament. The present volume takes the next step. Perkovich and Acton have invited a distinguished group of experts -- current and former officials, respected analysts and authors -- from thirteen countries, nuclear and non-nuclear, to critique the Adelphi Paper, which is reprinted here. Their diverse views explore pathways around obstacles to nuclear disarmament and sharpen questions requiring further deliberation. The volume concludes with an essay by Perkovich and Acton that works through some of the key questions and dilemmas raised by the critiques.

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy offers a look inside the antinuclear movement and its recent successful campaign to ban the bomb. From scrappy organizing to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and achieving a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons, this book narrates the journey of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and developments in feminist disarmament activism. Acheson explains the process through which diplomats, activists, and nuclear survivors worked together to elevate the horrific humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons, develop new international law categorically prohibiting the bomb, challenge the nuclear orthodoxy, and strengthen norms for disarmament and peace. Told from the perspective of a queer feminist antimilitarist organizer who was involved from the start of the process through to the treaty’s adoption, the book utilizes interviews with dozens of participants, as well as critical theoretical perspectives about transnational advocacy networks, discourse change, and intersectional feminist action. It is meant to provide useful insights for anyone trying to make change amidst structures of power and politics.

Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has puzzled scholars and commentators. Some have claimed that it was a purely political maneuver, while others have explained it as a ruse conjured up by presidential advisers to weaken Soviet resolve. These assumptions, however, fail to acknowledge the depth of Reagan’s involvement in nuclear abolition, and how passionately committed Reagan was to the pursuit of this goal. In Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow renders untenable the persistent belief that Reagan was an ideologically shallow figurehead. Reagan’s wish to ban nuclear armament first came to light in 1945, just months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. While sidestepping political partisanship, Lettow demonstrates that scholars and historians have largely neglected to assess properly the influence of Reagan’s ideal and how it led to one of the most important, if the least understood, of Reagan’s accomplishments. In a narrative that covers the start of Reagan’s presidency and the 1986 Reykjavík summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, during which SDI was a defining issue, we see SDI for what it was: a full-on assault against nuclear weapons waged as much through policy as through ideology. While cabinet members and advisers–Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger among them–played significant roles, it was Ronald Reagan, himself who presided over every element, large and small, of this paradigm shift in U.S. diplomacy. Lettow conducted interviews with former Reagan officials–four of his six national security advisers, both of his ambassadors to the USSR, and both of his defense secretaries. He also draws upon the vast body of declassified security documents from the Reagan presidency; much of what he quotes from these documents appears publicly here for the first time. The result is the first major work to apply such evidence to the study of SDI and superpower diplomacy. In Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow does not simply add nuance to the existing record; he revises our very understanding of the Reagan presidency.

Apocalypse Never illuminates why we must abolish nuclear weapons, how we can, and what the world will look like after we do. On the wings of a brand new era in American history, Apocalypse Never makes the case that a comprehensive nuclear policy agenda that fully integrates nonproliferation with disarmament, can both eliminate immediate nuclear dangers and set us irreversibly on the road to abolition. In jargon-free language, Daley explores the possible verification measures, enforcement mechanisms, and governance structures of a nuclear weapon-free world.