In discussions of nuclear disarmament among experts – be their expertise in the technical or political domain – it is a great challenge to move the conversation beyond questions of the feasibility and desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons and into inquiry of how to go about disarming. This is unfortunate, because as long as it remains the case, the development of a well-thought roadmap to zero nuclear weapons will remain impossible. Furthermore, without such a road map there is little hope of advancing most of the programs designed to reduce the proliferation of nuclear materials and the technologies used to produce them. Without advancement on disarmament, we can at best expect continued gridlock – as witnessed in the 2005 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) – and, at worst, we may see the nonproliferation regime unravel.

 

Why is disarmament of the nuclear weapon states essential to preventing the spread of nuclear material and related technologies to new states that may be less capable of taking the extraordinary care necessary to keep such material out of the hands of terrorists? Many of the non-nuclear weapon states balk at the idea of giving up further rights while the nuclear weapon states are failing to make good on the two main prongs of their side of the bargain: a.) to allow unfettered, if not assisted, access to all peaceful uses of nuclear technology (some of which also have nefarious applications); and b.) disarmament.

 

Few concepts are as hardwired into the human psyche as the desire to be treated fairly. I have on occasion attended talks by researchers who study primate behavior at the Yerkes Center, and have seen footage of an experiment on fairness. In the experiment, two monkeys caged side-by-side are fed foods in their normal diet, but one is fed a food that the monkeys love (e.g. grapes) and the other is fed a food that is mundane yet palatable (e.g. cucumber pieces.)  After the second monkey, having seen his neighbor’s delight at receiving a grape, puts the cucumber morsel into his mouth, he promptly does a spit-take and refuses to accept a cucumber piece thereafter. Lest one think that our human behavior is sufficiently less petty and more virtuous than that of other primates, experimental economists have shown that people faced with a game in which one side gets to divvy up a resource and the other gets to determine whether or not either of them receives a share or not will overwhelmingly reject unfair offers that would none-the-less make them better off. While collective behavior may not always align with individual behavior, it does seem that states are willing to give up carrots in rejection of an offer deemed patently unfair. In order to reduce the risk posed by nuclear weapons we need to convince states, when possible, to avoid increasing the number of facilities producing nuclear fuel or, when not, to put such facilities under the strictest safeguards regime possible, but they cannot hear us through the walls of our glass house.      

 

Many will argue that the lessons of history support the value of nuclear weapons. I would not disagree with the premise that nuclear weapons contributed to international stability during the Cold War. Sting pondered in song whether “the Russians love their children too.” It turned out that the Russians did love their children, and this has given us confidence that the Chinese, and perhaps even the rhetoric-spewing Iranian and North Korean leaders, love their children as well. If only this was the true nature of the problem confronting us today. Today we face an opposition so elusive that it has been largely able to evade our best efforts to track it down, and that has good reason to believe that retaliation could not be effectively rendered against it. It is an enemy entrenched among the innocent such that – barring our own willingness to forsake humanity for barbarity – a massive retaliatory response is not an option. Furthermore, it is an enemy willing and, in some cases eager, to cast off the mortal coil, and to do so while taking innocents with it. It may seem that the sage advice rendered by Santayana is immutable, when he said:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, one might equally well say that those who are slaves to the status quo will eventually suffer a catastrophic surprise. The world changes; and we must do our best to estimate what the impacts of those changes will be.

 

My suggestion is this, let great minds place the questions of desirability and feasibility on the back-burner for the time being, and instead consider the puzzle of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. The former questions can be reconsidered at a later date, but the latter will take an immense effort because of the daunting technical, strategic, political, and economic challenges inherent in it. Technically, advances must be made to support a verification regime that optimizes the confidence of states, and to develop facilities that pose less risk of diversion of material from peaceful to bellicose applications. As Texas A&M Professor, Raymond Juzaitis, aptly suggested in describing a world in which nuclear weapons had been eliminated during a recent event on disarmament at Georgia Tech: “The world will still know how to make nuclear weapons, and the materials used to make such weapons will still exist.” The difficulties from a social science and policy perspective are no less formidable. National leaders must be convinced to accept that the level of uncertainty about cheating that will always exist is more tolerable than the uncertain future posed by continuing the status quo. This applies not only to the nuclear weapon states, but also to those countries that derive benefits from the extended deterrence offered by the nuclear weapon states. These problems may not be easy, but those who solve them will be beneficiary of the world’s gratitude.

 

Former Senator Sam Nunn has on occasion said that his thoughts on this issue have been guided by two questions: a.) “If a nuclear weapon someday devastates a city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it?” and b.) “Why aren’t we doing it?” Today there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about where to begin on the road to zero nuclear weapons. What needs to occur to achieve a verification system in which people can have confidence that states are not developing fissile material by way of covert programs parallel to their safeguarded program? How can we keep the genie, once trapped, inside the bottle (i.e. how do we make sure no highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium is later produced)? How can stability be maintained as the number of nuclear weapons is reduced to the point that states may fear a first strike is tenable? As you make nuclear weapons less relevant by agreeing to remove warheads from missiles, how do you prevent cheating? With confidence in verification at some level below certainty, how does one mitigate against the possibility of being catastrophically wrong in a world in which missile defenses are not yet effective, and, even if they were, ballistic missiles do not pose the preponderant threat? These are but a few of the questions that must be worked out.  

 

Nuclear nonproliferation experts should take advantage of the opportunity presented by the two Wall Street Journal Op-eds co-authored by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn. These individuals are known for both pragmatism and a willingness to make difficult decisions in support of this nation’s security, and it is time others give serious thought to the process of disarmament without fear of being caste as part of a lunatic fringe.

     

Bernard Gourley manages the Sam Nunn Security Program at Georgia Tech; which is funded by the MacArthur Foundation to support research and education at the nexus of science, technology, and international security. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer or sponsor.