Nuclear disarmament: the global challenge

Abstract

The world is closer now to a catastrophic nuclear weapons exchange–and not just because of developments in North Korea–than it has been at any time since the height of the Cold War. That is an alarming view, but almost now a mainstream one. It is the position taken by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, when this year it moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock to 2½ minutes to midnight, the closest they have been since the mid-1950s. And it is also the view of the so-called four horsemen–George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and Bill Perry–those hard-headed Cold War realists, and previous staunch defenders of nuclear weapons, in their seminal series of Wall Street Journal articles of recent years. They argue persuasively that whatever deterrent utility nuclear weapons may have had during the Cold War, in the present international environment, the risks of any state retaining them far outweigh any possible security rewards.