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The peoples and governments of the world face an urgent challenge relating to nuclear weapons. At the crossroads of technology, terrorism, geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and potent dangers for humanity. Despite the end of the nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weapons continue to threaten the people of the world with catastrophic possibilities.

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Abolition

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

Disarmament

In the struggle for a nuclear weapons-free world, the elimination of existing arsenals is imperative. Under Article VI 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 19,000 nuclear weapons in the world, mostly in arsenals of the US and Russia. Other countries with nuclear weapons arsenals are Israel, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

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

Disarmament Archive

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Nuclear Famine

Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that even a relatively "limited" nuclear war between India and Pakistan, in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons against the other's cities, could create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.

The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would reduce growing seasons would cause the starvation of up to 1 billion people.

Nuclear Famine Archive

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Nuclear Deterrence

Nuclear deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation for a proscribed behavior, generally an attack upon the threatening state.  The theory of nuclear deterrence posits that such threat, if perceived as real and likely to cause sufficient devastation, will prevent an attack or other proscribed behavior from occurring.

Each country that has developed nuclear weapons has justified doing so by the pursuit of nuclear deterrence.  The security of not only the nuclear weapon states but of civilization has rested upon the reliability of the theory of nuclear deterrence.  Vast numbers of people throughout the world believe the myth that nuclear deterrence contributes to the security of the planet and perhaps to their personal security and that of their family.  But does it? Many experts think not.

Deterrence Archive

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U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

US government policies continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security. Plans for "modernizing" the nuclear weapons complex by building new nuclear warhead production facilities are moving ahead. The US has thus far failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although a unilateral testing moratorium has been in place since 1992.

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy Archive

The Nuclear Threat

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. Most nuclear weapons deployed today have a destructive capacity many times greater than those used in 1945.

The Nuclear Threat Archive

Missile Defense

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. 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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Non-Proliferation

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 Nuclear 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.

Non-Proliferation Archive
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