Down & Out: A Nuclear Path
by Gar Alperovitz, Alex Campbell, Thad Williamson
The Nation (December 30, 1996) Vol. 263, No. 22: 16-20.
Copyright 1996 The Nation Company Inc.

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On July 8 the World Court ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal except possibly when the survival of a nation is at stake. One way to initiate movement toward general disarmament may simply be to push vigorously for nuclear disarmament-beginning with another round of strategic arms reduction negotiations (START III). If successful, such a strategy would eventually force the other issues onto the table.

A specific plan for the step-by-step elimination of nuclear weapons was proposed earlier this year by the Canberra Commission, a group of world leaders brought together by the government of Australia that includes Robert McNamara; Jayantha Dhanapala, Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United States and president of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Extension Conference, and Michel Rocard, former prime minister of France. Related to this is the Abolition 2000 campaign, an effort that now links more than 500 nongovernmental organizations behind the goal of nuclear abolition.

Six countries that have had nuclear weapons programs or nuclear aspirations have in fact independently reconsidered the wisdom of joining the nuclear club and have slowed, halted or even reversed their activities. Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine have eliminated their programs, and even North Korea, India and Pakistan have demonstrated varying degrees of restraint.

A new element in the equation is money: In what is sometimes called the "new dollar diplomacy," the United States has employed its financial muscle to increase U.S. security by "buying down" potential foreign threats. The United States paid Belarus to dismantle its small nuclear arsenal, it compensated Kazakhstan for the removal of some 600 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium; it offered Ukraine economic assistance after it renounced nuclear weapons; and it has used the promise of improved economic assistance to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons effort.

So far the United States has appropriated a total of $ 2 billion over the past six years to help the former Soviet republics disarm and safeguard nuclear materials. There is also a $ 12 billion, twenty-year agreement under way to buy 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium from Russia, the program has already brought nearly 600 bombs' worth of it to the United States.

Another possible approach to long-term disarmament is a recent proposal by Jonathan Dean, former U.S. representative to the NATO-Warsaw Pact force reduction negotiations. Dean suggests starting with the Kennedy plans first stage: a 30 percent across-the-board worldwide cut in active-duty forces, reserves, arms production, arms transfers and defense budgets. He, too, stresses that reducing "nuclear weapons to residual levels and the possible elimination of nuclear weapons will not be possible unless there is serious progress in conventional disarmament."

Movement toward G.C.D. could also begin at the regional level. Here, too, there has been greater progress than is sometimes realized. Nuclear Weapon Free Zones have been slowly developing in various regions around the world: "With one N.W.F.Z. already in force banning nuclear weapons from Latin America and the Caribbean (the Treaty of Tlatelolco), and N.W.F.Z. treaties for Africa (the Pelindaba Treaty I and Southeast Asia soon to be implemented," arms control expert Zachary Davis observes, "it appears that nuclear weapons are becoming irrelevant to the security calculations of all but a few countries."

Existing agreements, of course, already ban nuclear weapons from the ocean floor, Antarctica, the moon and outer space, and new nuclear-weapons-free zones have been proposed for the Middle East, South Asia, North Asia, Europe and Central Asia.

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