Reducing Nuclear Danger

A Dramatically New Situation

Two enormous events of recent years have opened the way for effective worldwide action against the danger of nuclear weapons. The first is the end of the Cold War and Soviet communism. The second is the sharp double lesson of the case of Saddam Hussein: that a rich and aggressive tyrant could get close to building a bomb of his own, but also that his effort could be blocked by effective international action. There is now a real prospect that almost all countries--those with many warheads, those with few and those with none--can come together in a worldwide program to reduce the existing nuclear arsenals and to prevent their further proliferation.

There are three immediate tasks: to execute the large bilateral reductions in U.S. and Russian forces that have been announced in recent years, to assure that Russia remains the only nuclear weapon state among the successor states of the old Soviet Union, and to reform and reinforce the worldwide effort to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons by applying the lessons learned in the case of Saddam Hussein.

In a dramatically new situation we must ask ourselves afresh the question that belongs to us all by the basic rules of our society: What should we ask of Washington in its policy and its behavior with respect to nuclear danger? What do present worldwide conditions tell us about what our government's policy should be, and what it should try to achieve, in the rest of this century? We have been led to the following propositions.

The United States should respect the reality that as long as there are bombs, there will be a nuclear danger that is unique in all history. The bomb is uniquely dangerous because it is uniquely destructive--so destructive that in all the conflict and tumult of the Cold War no one chose to use it or to provoke its use by others. That reality must permeate American policy choices even more thoroughly in the future than in the past. It requires intense and continuous effort to reduce the danger that comes from the very fact that the bomb is technically possible. It requires respect and support for those who have responsible control over such weapons. It also requires, at the other end of policymaking, a higher priority than ever for choices that can help prevent the possession of this weapon by international adventurers like Saddam Hussein.

From Opponents to Friends