After the worst of times, we are perhaps entering the best of times for proponents of nuclear disarmament. At long last, advocates of the elimination of nuclear weapons have reason for some guarded optimism. The road to a nuclear-weapons-free world will be long and bumpy, but those expected to take the initiative seem to have finally decided to lead. That is encouraging.
Sixty-four years ago the world was free of nuclear weapons, but after the production of some 140,000 of these artifacts of mass destruction, there seems to be a significant shift in the role some Governments have assigned to them. They are no longer generally considered to be the best means to ensure national security. Deterrence and mutually-assured destruction have become outdated concepts in a world now more concerned with other questions and challenges, including widespread poverty, climate change, a worldwide economic and financial meltdown, and other threats such as the recent alarm over the pandemic outbreak of a new kind of influenza virus.
Above all, the motivation for seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons now seems to be a fear of the further proliferation of these weapons to other States and possibly to the so-called non-State actors, including terrorist groups. There is the rub.
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically dangerous and pose an unparalleled threat to the very existence of humankind. They do not enhance a country’s security but, rather, imperil the survival of all nations, which should be the point of departure of nuclear disarmament efforts.
To dwell on the potential danger that they may fall into the wrong hands is to misconstrue the argument for their elimination. They should be banned because they are immoral—and probably illegal—tools of destruction. Since their use would likely be fatal for all, they cannot even be considered instruments of war.
The twin questions of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy have been on the agenda of the United Nations since its beginning: the dawn of the atomic age coincided with its birth. The UN Charter, however, makes no mention of nuclear weapons for the simple reason that it was adopted at the San Francisco conference three weeks before the first test and six weeks before their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The transcendental nature of the discovery of atomic energy prompted the delegates to the UN General Assembly’s first session to address the issue immediately. In its very first resolution—1 (I) of 24 January 1946—the Assembly established the Atomic Energy Commission, composed of the Security Council members and Canada, and requested that it submit specific proposals for ensuring the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes only, for the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction and for the establishment of a system of safeguards, including inspections, to prevent violations and evasions.
A number of specific proposals followed, including one by the United States in June 1946. As the only nuclear-weapon State (NWS), it was natural that the United States put forward its own ideas on the matter. These were contained in what became known as the Baruch Plan, which was based largely on the United States government publication A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, issued in March of that year.
The US, which still held an unchallenged nuclear monopoly, called for an open exchange among all nations of basic scientific information for peaceful ends; control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction from national arsenals; and the establishment of effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions.
Though forward-thinking in many aspects, the Baruch Plan had several drawbacks. The most controversial one was probably its insistence that the United States retain its nuclear stockpile (which then consisted of nine weapons) until it was satisfied with the effectiveness of the international control system.1 This proved unacceptable to the USSR, which wanted to reverse the order: all should first surrender their nuclear weapons and then implement an international verification system. One will never know if the world might have returned in 1946 to its nuclear-weapons-free status. What we do know is that there followed four decades of an unbridled nuclear arms race between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the acquisition of those weapons and their delivery systems by other nations.
After the USSR’s first nuclear test in 1949, the United Kingdom followed in 1952, France in 1960, China in 1964, India in 1974 and Pakistan in 1998. Israel also acquired nuclear weapons as did South Africa, which later surrendered its stockpile. After the USSR’s collapse, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine became for a time de facto NWS. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has also tested a nuclear device. In addition, there are many countries that possess the scientific know-how, technology and fissile material that would allow them to play the nuclear card in a relatively short time.
In 1952 the US achieved a qualitative leap in the nuclear-arms race when it detonated its first thermonuclear device. A year later the USSR followed suit.
The development of nuclear-weapons delivery systems—bombers, missiles and submarines—is another chapter of the arms race. However, the testing of nuclear weapons and the rockets to transport them would eventually rally public opinion (at least momentarily) in favour of nuclear disarmament measures.
Despite repeated and sometimes intense efforts to put disarmament efforts on track, the United Nations was unable to devise negotiating schemes that would bring the different parties together. Deep-rooted suspicion of the rival’s motives and the absence of political will ensured a negotiating stalemate for almost two decades.
In the early 1960s the US and the USSR finally agreed to lead disarmament talks at the Geneva Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee (endc) meeting. Calls for an end to nuclear tests, especially in the atmosphere, and a stop to further horizontal proliferation were instrumental in getting the endc going in 1962. Not surprisingly, the first order of business was a treaty to ban nuclear-weapons tests in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space.
