Disarming Conflict

With the approach of August 6 and August 9, the two days in 1945 when the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by US nuclear weapons, the indications of a sea change in American attitudes are becoming increasingly persuasive. Here is what Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, said recently in Berlin: 

“This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.”

President Ronald Reagan ventured similar sentiments at one time, but his minders were always available to remind him of the more traditional posture of US presidents – namely, to stray from strict fealty to nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction only to explore nuclear war-fighting options and missile defence technologies. However, in May of this year the Republican’s presumptive candidate for President, John McCain, recalled and endorsed the Reagan vision:

“A quarter of a century ago, President Ronald Reagan declared, ‘Our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.’ That is my dream, too. It is time for the United States to show the kind of leadership the world expects from us, in the tradition of American presidents who worked to reduce the nuclear threat to mankind.”[i]

There is a large chasm between attitude and policy, but some of the most unlikely Americans, some that were close to Reagan, have taken up his unfulfilled but, by all accounts, genuinely held hope. As is by now well known, Shultz   and Kissinger, two Republicans, joined by Perry and Nunn, two Democrats, all four key actors in shaping American foreign, defence, and arms control policies,[ii] in 2007 and again in 2008 called for a collective commitment to move to zero nuclear weapons. But they went well beyond a fond vision to engage the issue with an international expert community and set out concrete steps toward that end, as well as advocating other measures to reduce nuclear dangers in the meantime.

The agenda is familiar. Continuing reductions of existing arsenals; verification mechanisms to confirm and preserve reduction; de-alerting of   deployed systems; protect command and control systems from hackers; end all plans for massive retaliation (mutual assured destruction is an obsolete policy); explore cooperative early warning and missile defence systems; secure existing nuclear weapons.[iii] Others list the entry into force of the comprehensive test ban treaty and the negotiation and ratification of a fissile materials cut-off treaty as two matters of intense urgency.

In the meantime their call has been seconded by Mikhail Gorbachev and former UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and an impressive list of high-ranking American Republican and Democratic former officials. Highlighting the dangers of the very existence of nuclear weapons poses, George Shultz and his three colleagues refer to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s warning, given at the 2007 conference they convened: “Mistakes are made in every other human endeavor. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt?”

More recently, in the UK three former foreign secretaries, Malcolm Rifkind, Douglas Hurd, David Owen, as well as the former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson praised the Kissinger statement and follow-up and declared that:[iv]

“Substantial progress towards a dramatic reduction in the world's nuclear weapons is possible. The ultimate aspiration should be to have a world free of nuclear weapons. It will take time, but with political will and improvements in monitoring, the goal is achievable. We must act before it is too late, and we can begin by supporting the campaign in America for a non-nuclear weapons world.”

Now five major Italian figures, including formed prime minister and foreign minister Massimo D’Alema, praised the American initiative, saying that “for the first time, the issue of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons was being addressed, in the United States, by politicians who represent the mainstream of American strategic policy, from both parties, stressing the fact that this is an objective to be pursued in the interests of both the nation and the world.” The five declared that Italy should join the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons and described their common statement as evidence of support for the idea across the political spectrum.[v]

And on July 1 this year some 73 members of the European Parliament signed a statement to support negotiations toward a Nuclear Weapons Convention.[vi] 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki leave us a “never-again” imperative. The only way the world can meet that obligation is to finally take the advice of the likes Reagan, Kissinger, Gorbachev, Robertson, McCain, and Obama and implement the now mainstream hope for a world without nuclear weapons.