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A critical mass for disarmament
Change, failure and fear are propelling us toward a
world without nuclear weapons.

By Joseph Cirincione
LA Times
June 4, 2008

Speaking to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on
March 26, Sen. John McCain surprised many listeners
when he said that "the United States should lead a
global effort at nuclear disarmament."

It has been a long time since a Republican candidate
for president said anything close to this, let alone
seemed to think it would help him win election. But
McCain senses what many may have not: This is a rare
moment in national and international politics, a
period of rapid change that promises a transformation
in global nuclear policy.

This transformation is the result of four converging
factors. The first is the deep and ongoing concern
about existing nuclear threats. These threats include
the possibility that a terrorist group might get hold
of a nuclear weapon; the fact that there are still
26,000 existing nuclear weapons held by nine nations
today; the efforts of a few countries -- most
prominently Iran and North Korea -- to develop their
own nuclear weapons for the first time; and the
possible collapse of the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty regime triggering a cascade of proliferation.

The second factor is the widespread sense, among
policymakers and the public, that existing U.S.
policies have failed to lessen these dangers.
President Bush sought to maintain U.S. supremacy
through a reduced but still large nuclear arsenal, new
nuclear weapons (like his "nuclear bunker buster" or
the artfully dubbed "reliable replacement warhead"),
rejection of treaties limiting U.S. freedom of action
and preemptive military action against hostile states.
But nuclear threats only increased as confidence in
American leadership decreased.

Third (and in response to this policy collapse), there
is a new drive for the complete elimination of nuclear
weapons. This once utopian dream (held a few decades
ago only by those on the left of the foreign policy
mainstream) is now the focus of a bipartisan appeal
from Republicans George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and
Democrats William Perry and Sam Nunn in two Wall
Street Journal Op-Ed articles for "A World Free of
Nuclear Weapons." They are not alone. The foundation I
lead funds dozens of institutes working on plans for
sweeping change in nuclear policy, including the
Council on Foreign Relations, the Monterey Institute
for International Studies and the Physicians for
Social Responsibility.

Finally -- and this is what may make it all come
together at last -- there is a nearly simultaneous
leadership turnover in most of the world's major
nations, creating openings for new leaders less
rigidly wed to the failed policies of the past. By
early 2009, four of the five permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council, seven members of the G-8 and a
number of other major states will have installed new
executives. Among them: Australia, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Russia, Pakistan, South Korea, Britain,
the United States and possibly Israel and Iran.

Together, these factors offer an extraordinary
opportunity to advance new policies that can
dramatically reduce and even eliminate many of the
dangers that have kept political leaders and security
officials worried about a nuclear 9/11.

How extraordinary? Consider this: The drive to reduce
and eliminate nuclear weapons comes from the very
center of America's security elite. The conservative
Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where
Shultz and Perry are both scholars, is the epicenter
of this nuclear policy earthquake. Of the 24 former
national security advisors and secretaries of State
and Defense who are still living, 17 have endorsed the
Hoover campaign for a series of practical steps
leading toward nuclear abolition.

They favor deep reductions in our and others' nuclear
arsenals, as well as a complete ban on nuclear tests
and on the production of bomb materials. They've also
called for the rapid securing of all bomb materials to
prevent nuclear terrorism and taking U.S. and Russian
missiles off hair-trigger alert so a president has
more than 15 minutes to decide if he should initiate
Armageddon.

These former officials -- including former Republican
Cabinet members from every administration going back
to President Nixon -- recognize that the current
strategy has not worked.

The clearest failure is the Iraq war. The war was the
prototype for what the Bush administration hoped would
be ongoing U.S. policy: the use of military means to
stop proliferation preemptively. Bush said on its eve,
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for
the final proof -- the smoking gun that could come in
the form of a mushroom cloud."

But there was no Iraqi nuclear weapons program -- and
there were no chemical or biological weapons either --
and the war, in the end, actually provoked Iran and
North Korea to accelerate their programs. Both have
made more progress in the last five years than in the
previous 10.

The idea that we and our allies could keep our nuclear
weapons and simultaneously prevent others from getting
them also proved bankrupt. While opposing, correctly,
nuclear efforts in Iran, the Bush administration
blessed, incorrectly, the nuclear weapons program in
nearby India with a special trade deal and looked the
other way while Pakistan continued work on its bomb
program and nuclear trade until it was too obvious to
ignore.

Indeed, the most dangerous country in the world today
is not our adversary Iran, which is still five to 10
years from a nuclear capability, but our ally
Pakistan. Its unstable government, growing mountain of
nuclear weapon material and tolerance of Al Qaeda
bases within its territory give Osama bin Laden the
best chance he has ever had of acquiring the nuclear
weapon he seeks.

This is one reason realists like Kissinger have
concluded that we must turn "the goal of a world
without nuclear weapons into a practical enterprise
among nations." This policy is in tune with the
American people, with 70% favoring nuclear elimination
in polls. McCain has now adopted some of the new
policies; Sen. Barack Obama has embraced the entire
plan, including his pledge to secure all loose nuclear
materials -- thus preventing nuclear terrorism -- in
his first term.

We cannot know for certain if these plans will work.
But we do know these policy moments do not last long.
As quickly as they open, they close. The next two to
three years will tell if the leaders we elect will
have the wisdom and courage to make the change they
promise and the people desire. We may not get another
chance.

Joseph Cirincione is the president of Ploughshares
Fund and the author of "Bomb Scare: The History and
Future of Nuclear Weapons."