The United States must lead efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons

Fifty years ago, on January 24 1946, members of the United Nations unanimously passed their first resolution which created the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) and committed all nations to achieving a world in which no nation possessed nuclear weapons. The commission was directed to develop proposals "for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction...."

At the first meeting of the UNAEC, in June 1946, U.S. representative Bernard Baruch offered a blueprint for the abolition of nuclear weapons. According to Baruch, "the search of science for the absolute weapon has reached fruition in this country. But she stands ready to proscribe and destroy this instrument -- to lift its use from death to life -- if the world will join in a pact to that end."

The Soviets countered with their own proposal banning nuclear weapons. Already feeling the icy chill of the impending Cold War, proposals and debate on the details and time lines of these two plans continued for years under the auspices of the UNAEC. Its last meeting was held on July 29, 1949. One month later, the Soviets test exploded a nuclear weapon. The nuclear arms race had begun.

The obstacles which have frustrated efforts to achieve a global ban on nuclear weapons have now vanished. Ideological tensions between the Soviet Union and the West crumbled when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact disappeared. Germany is united. U.S. and Russian troops have held joint exercises. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have ordered that their nations' nuclear missiles no longer target each other. Russia is receiving U.S. aid to dismantle nuclear weapons. There is no reason why the United States should not once again lead an effort to achieve the goal first proposed by Bernard Baruch. Such an initiative would send a positive signal to other nations that America, the world's first and foremost nuclear power, is ready to lead the way to a non-nuclear world.

The danger of nuclear proliferation arises from the perception that nuclear weapons give a nation stature, strength, and security. As long as this motivation exists, the pressure to join the nuclear club will be irresistible. A rededicated effort to eliminate nuclear weapons will help dampen this motivation, and, more importantly, will help strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in which signatories not already possessing nuclear weapons agreed to forego the most deadly of all weapons known to humankind.

Eliminating nuclear weapons would be beneficial to the United States. Nuclear weapons are a threat to the United States, the environment, the world economy, and the future of the human race. We certainly do not need nuclear weapons to fight a war. It is true that war is about killing people and destroying things and nothing does this more comprehensively than nuclear weapons. The problem is, the indiscriminate and uncontrollable nature of nuclear weapons makes them unusable. Even though we faced military defeat in Vietnam, not one of our 30,000 nuclear weapons was used. The reason is simple: If you use nuclear weapons, you destroy everything that the war is about.

The only purpose for U.S. nuclear weapons today is to deter the use of nuclear weapons by other nations, namely Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, China, France, and Britain. We do not need to maintain a warfighting capability to do this, only a retaliatory force, and only for as long as any nation has significant numbers of nuclear weapons. Other threats to the United States can be met with conventional weapons. After all, as demonstrated in the Gulf War, the United States can destroy any target and defeat any enemy with its vast array of powerful non-nuclear weapons.

The United States maintains roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons. Assuming the ratification and implementation of the START II treaty, which is suspect, this number will fall to some 8,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons by the year 2003. There is no need for the United States to maintain a minimum deterrent force in excess of 1,000 warheads on Trident submarine-based ballistic missiles. There are simply not enough conceivable targets to justify a U.S. arsenal of more than 1,000 nuclear weapons in 1995, let alone in 2003. For example, there are only 180 Russian cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

The United States must pursue deeper reductions in its own arsenal and also in the arsenals of other nuclear weapons states. We should be working to create a world in which it is possible for all nations, including the United States, to agree not to develop, build, acquire, maintain, or use nuclear weapons. We will all be far safer in a world without nuclear weapons.

We cannot create such a world overnight and the United States cannot and should not do it alone. Many unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral steps are all needed. However, as the nation which invented the nuclear weapon and as the only nation to have used it in war, the United States has the prime responsibility to lead the world forward, toward a world in which the mushroom cloud is only a nightmare of the past.

Just as the longest journey begins with a single step, it is time for the United States to begin this journey toward eliminating the nuclear threat for all time. It's the safe thing, the responsible thing to do.

Kathryn Schultz
Research Analyst
Center for Defense Information
11 December 1995

For more information on eliminating nuclear weapons, contact Chris Hellman