A world free of nuclear weapons: how realistic is Obama's vision?

• Author: Murdock, Clark A.
• Position: COMMENTARY

Debating the realism of trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons--an initiative recently branded as "Global Zero" by its advocates--is a pointless exercise.

The pursuit of nuclear disarmament has been the policy of the United States ever since it ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969. The NPT grand bargain was simple: states that did not have nuclear weapons agreed not to seek them; states that had nuclear weapons agreed to eventually give them up.

How seriously the United States took this commitment has always been doubted by many in the international community, but skepticism has grown recently because of the perception that the Bush administration's proclivities for preemption had extended to the nuclear realm. It now appears to be a political fact--a subjective reality, so to speak--that the willingness of many nations to cooperate with U.S. efforts to prevent further nuclear proliferation has been reduced by the widespread perception that the United States is not living up to its half of the NPT grand bargain.

Unlike the Cold War, when Soviet nuclear weapons posed an existential threat to the United States, today's top dangers are nuclear terrorism and proliferation. As the number of nuclear powers grows, so does the risk that terrorists may gain access to such weapons and that they may be used. The unsettling developments in Pakistan underscore the risks associated with proliferation.

With North Korea halfway through the door and Iran knocking at it, proliferation is at a tipping point, which makes it imperative that President Obama tell the rest of the world that "together we will strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a basis of cooperation."

Stating clearly and with conviction the U.S. commitment to a world without nuclear weapons is necessary to galvanize international support for the U.S. non-proliferation agenda. Rejecting Global Zero as unrealistic undermines that effort. Regardless of the realism, or even wisdom, of the final objective, the initiatives that President Obama outlined in his Prague speech in April are each justifiable and should be pursued. Taken as a whole, they represent a comprehensive and credible U.S. disarmament and non-proliferation agenda, but they do not provide a vision for the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

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