Ridding the world of nukes

Take away the names of those who signed on to the statement and its somewhat overstated portrayal of Ronald Reagan as an anti-nuclear weapons president, and the Jan. 4 op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal calling for a new focus on achieving a nuclear weapons-free world might well have been a piece in Mother Jones, say, or The Nation, or on any number of Web sites devoted to tracking the dangers of nuclear weapons and sounding the alarm.

But those names, they are the point, entirely, at this stage of the quest. There were George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn signing on to a statement headlined "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons."

No one can question the Cold Warrior credentials of this group or construe them for a bunch of moralizing lefties impractically obsessed with the notion of a peaceable kingdom.

The authors of the statement recall the beginnings of the hope that the nuclear age could be reversed in the 1986 meetings between Reagan and then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland, when the two "initiated steps leading to significant reductions in deployed long- and intermediate-range nuclear forces."

It is well known, however, that both Russia and the United States continue to possess arsenals that pose the kind of ultimate threat that caused statesmen, popes and international peace groups of all sorts to advocate for abolition of nuclear weapons since the earliest development of the threat.

To advance the cause of nuclear disarmament, the group proposes eight steps outlined in the piece by David Krieger on Page 12.

"First and foremost," they write, in addressing what is essential to the task, "is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise. Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, would lend additional weight to efforts already under way to avoid the emergence of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran."

It is difficult to imagine that the bipartisan group that agreed to sign this statement is not aware of the inherent challenge it poses to not only the prevailing disposition of the current administration but its nuclear weapons development plans as well.

"Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America's moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible."

There is much to applaud in the statement. But moving beyond a statement will be enormously difficult, given the inclination of the United States in recent years to unilaterally abandon treaty commitments, to act in defiance of long-term allies and to insist on not speaking with those we view as enemies.

For many reasons, some of them very obvious, the United States is in need of a thorough change in culture at the highest levels of leadership. And nothing makes that more apparent than the steps outlined as necessary to pull the world back from the brink of a new arms race.

Beyond the diplomatic front, the boldness of a move toward greater disarmament would require that the United States first return to stricter adherence to previous nuclear nonproliferation promises and that the Bush administration give up ambitions to develop a new nuclear warhead that would cost untold billions and that would dramatically reverse the U.S. position of the past 20 years.

How can we hope to convince Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons programs if we begin working on new generations of weapons?

The need for new and bold steps to reduce and eventually eliminate the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles and development programs may well be an idea, as Krieger writes, the truth of which has become "self-evident."

COPYRIGHT 2007 National Catholic Reporter
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