Non-Proliferation | Back to Top

Nuclear non-proliferation refers to efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. This includes preventing countries or non-state actors (terrorists) that do not have nuclear weapons from obtaining them and stopping nuclear capable countries from enlarging their arsenals and developing new nuclear weapons technologies.
The cornerstone of nuclear arms control is the Non-proliferation Treaty (1968). This treaty requires countries without nuclear weapons never to develop such weapons and nuclear capable countries to work towards complete nuclear disarmament. Members of the treaty meet every five years to review the status of the treaty commitments. Other existing non-proliferation efforts include the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and Nuclear Weapons Free Zones.

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Disarmament | Back to Top

In the struggle for a nuclear weapons-free world, the elimination of existing arsenals is imperative. Under Article 6 of the Non-proliferation Treaty, states with nuclear weapons have an obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament and to pursue a treaty on general and complete disarmament.

To achieve disarmament it is important that weapons are irreversibly destroyed in a transparent manner, and that the resulting fissile materials are sufficiently safeguarded. Though some arsenal reductions have been made through bilateral agreements and unilateral actions, There are still some 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, mostly in arsenals of the US and Russia. Other countries maintaining nuclear weapons arsenals are Israel, France, the United Kingdom, China, India and Pakistan.

Existing disarmament commitments made by the United States and Russia include the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

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U.S. Nuclear Policy | Back to Top

US government policies are moving dangerously in the direction of making nuclear weapons an integral component of its normal force structure. The United States is working on designing new nuclear weapons, planning to build a new nuclear facility to create plutonium pits for nuclear weapons, threatening to use these weapons in more and more circumstances, and pursuing other techniques for establishing nuclear supremacy. The US has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Bush administration is looking to shorten the amount of time it would take to resume full-scale underground testing. The US Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the press in January 2002, included contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, five of which are non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the NPT, in direct contradiction to long-standing security assurances given to countries without nuclear weapons.

U.S. Nuclear Policy Archive

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The Nuclear Threat | Back to Top

Nuclear weapons pose a vast threat to our society and to the global environment. They are indiscriminate in nature and enough warheads exist to threaten human existence. The use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly demonstrated the horrifically destructive powers of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons deployed today have a destructive capacity many times greater than those used in 1945.

The Nuclear Threat Archive

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Missile Defense | Back to Top  

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems are intended to destroy missiles of an adversary in flight. Such defense systems pose a significant obstacle to disarmament efforts because they create a perceived need for adversarial nations to expand their nuclear arsenals so as to be assured of being able to overcome the other's defense capabilities in the case of a nuclear attack.

In the past, defense limitations went hand-in-hand with disarmament efforts. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a bi-lateral agreement between Russia and the United States, significantly limited BMD systems and played an important role in negotiating significant cuts in nuclear arsenals. The ABM treaty however, was terminated in June 2002, six months after the United States indicated its intention to withdraw from the agreement, against Russia's wishes. Currently, the Bush administration is aggressively pursuing a variety of missile defense options, and has promised to deploy a partially operational system by 2004.

Thus far, US National Missile Defense development programs have proven to be exorbitantly expensive and to have highly questionable effectiveness.

Missile Defense Archive

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Abolition | Back to Top

The elimination of nuclear weapons is an achievable goal. The process that leads to nuclear weapons development and deployment is punctuated with choices and alternatives, and there are many possible inroads for change.

Over 250 municipalities worldwide, 75 American Indian nations and five world regions, covering most of the Southern hemisphere have declared their jurisdictions as Nuclear Weapons Free Zones or Nuclear Free Zones. Abolition 2000 is a network of over 2000 non-governmental organizations and municipalities committed to a nuclear weapons-free world. These initiatives, begun by individuals, make a collective political statement and an economic commitment to investing in peaceful alternatives.

On the global level, a detailed plan for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons has been laid out and circulated in the United Nations General Assembly in the form of a draft Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC).

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Abolition Archive

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