Dangerous knowledge: Can nuclear weapons be abolished?

The end of the Cold War spurred significant and encouraging steps towards the abolition and eradication of nuclear weapons. After the breakthrough discussions between Gorbachev and Reagan at Reykjavik in 1986, the substantial cut-backs in Russian and American nuclear warheads agreed to under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) negotiations, successive initiatives at the United Nations (UN) and the review conferences of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Canberra Commission's report in 1995, the 1996 advisory opinion of the World Court, the New Agenda Coalition, Middle Powers Initiative and other efforts by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) raised hope that the world may soon be rid of this menace. After 1997 the momentum of progress slowed and then turned from optimism to increasing frustration, pessimism and despair. The possession of nuclear weapons serves not only military and political but economic and social functions, elevating the prestige of the select nuclear group to a special status in world affairs that none will be anxious to relinquish voluntarily. Yet in spite of the setbacks and the obstacles, there is ample scope for constructive action. Most promising is a renewed effort to establish international law prohibiting the use, threat of use or possession of nuclear weapons, along the lines of the Chemical Weapons Convention that has very effectively stopped the use of these weapons in all but one instance since 1925. At the root of the nuclear problem, a Cartesian dualism in our thinking about ourselves and the world fosters a sense of detachment, complacency and inactivity regarding an issue that holds our very lives in the balance. The finite zero-sum game of competitive international security needs to be replaced by an infinite win–win game of global cooperative security like that now unfolding on a model scale in Europe.