The NPT was definitely an asymmetric treaty at the outset because it acknowledged that some countries had nuclear arsenals. It did have a general obligation of good-faith negotiation of nuclear disarmament, but what has been a fairly momentous development since the end of the Cold War is that during Review Conferences for the treaty in 1995 and 2000, countries have agreed on the steps that need to be taken to implement the disarmament obligation and to eventually arrive at a nuclear weapons-free world. Those steps include a CTBT, a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, application of the principles of verification, irreversibility, and transparency to reductions of nuclear arsenals, a diminishing role of nuclear weapons in security policies, and concrete measures to reduce the operational readiness of nuclear weapons. If you look at the agenda which was approved by states participating in the 2000 NPT Review Conference, you can see that if that agenda was implemented it would result in the eventual creation of a nuclear weapons-free world.

Since the most recent nuclear reductions agreed upon by the United States and Russia will leave both countries with sufficient forces to conduct a global nuclear war, do these reductions amount to anything more than cosmetic politics?

Realistically, the Bush Administration is engaged in rationalization of US nuclear forces. There are significant reductions planned, but the Bush Administration is mainly concerned with lowering US forces to a level that they think makes sense in the post-Cold War era. There is not any intention of moving towards very low levels of nuclear weapons and, eventually, to their elimination. “Cosmetic” is too strong, however, because the reductions of deployed strategic warheads will decrease the arsenals on both sides to fewer than 2,200 warheads by the year 2012. If we persuade the Bush Administration that those reductions need to be verified and transparent, I would consider that progress. Unfortunately, the current total arsenal of US warheads is about 10,000, and it will likely be about 6,000 in 2012.

One fundamental problem is that, amazingly, the United States and Russia remain locked in high alert status. The United States has about 2,000 warheads primed for launch within minutes of an order. Right now, US submarines are still circling around the edges of Russia, able to hit Moscow within 15 minutes. Russia has hundreds of warheads in a similar state of readiness. Nuclear weapons need to be marginalized in relations between United States and Russia through measures of de-alerting. De-alerting will entail the withdrawal of US nuclear submarines and the removal of warheads from land-based missiles. These are the kinds of measures that, while they do not eliminate nuclear weapons, increase the time that it takes to launch a nuclear attack. If we can achieve the marginalization of nuclear forces, the way will be much clearer for effective reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

Some of the critics of disarmament claim that a completely disarmed world is unattainable. Is it even realistic, given the modern political climate, to expect that every country will surrender its aspirations for nuclear weapons?

Moving towards a nuclear weapons-free world would require global institutions with more effective compliance and inspection mechanisms so that when the United States and Russia forfeit their last few weapons, it would occur in a drastically different political environment than the one we have today. That does not show the infeasibility of a nuclear weapons-free world. A less powerful state considering nuclear weapons acquisition would have to bear in mind the possible responses by the most powerful states in the world. We are already witnessing this phenomenon in the response to North Korea, as well as the responses to Iran’s possible nuclear program and Iraq’s nuclear program in the 1980s. There would be tremendous pressures on a less powerful country considering acquiring nuclear weapons in a nuclear weapons-free world. Secondly, the most powerful states in the world will realize that nuclear weapons do not augment their security, they diminish it. The only truly existential threat to the United States is posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and other countries. Once the decision is made to go to a nuclear weapons-free world, there will be a lot of commitment to that decision; it will not be taken lightly nor moved out of lightly.

Critics also argue that unless we move to a world without powerful states, and I do not think that world is coming any time soon, the inability to extinguish knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons will make reconstitution of nuclear weapons programs inevitable. But it is also possible to reinstitute slavery; that does not mean countries are about to do so. A decision by a major power to reacquire nuclear weapons would also be made knowing that other major powers would likely follow suit, returning us back to the kind of world we know today.

The key to thinking about this idea is to compare a nuclear weapons-free world to a world in which numerous states have nuclear weapons—and there may be more nuclear states coming—and assess the risks and the benefits in each. In a nuclear weapons-free world, there will be a risk of a breakout, that is true. But, in today’s world, we face all the risks of the accidental or unauthorized or deliberate use of nuclear weapons. There is also the moral debilitation that is inherent in countries like the United States maintaining nuclear weapons, which have the capability to destroy other societies, as a principal basis of national security.

There are reports of a US program to design a new generation of sturdier, more reliable nuclear weapons. Do you think that technological advancements of, for instance, tactical nuclear weapons, could spawn a new arms race?

In 1997, the Clinton Administration deployed a modified nuclear bomb, the B61-11, with increased capability to penetrate subterranean bunkers. This shows that the United States has already done this sort of modification of existing nuclear weapon types, and what the Bush Administration has been pushing for is research and the eventual development of warheads modified to yield even more earth-penetrating capability. Although the US Congress decided in 2004 to not fund further research on a so-called “robust nuclear earth-penetrator,” the Bush Administration has recently again sought funding for the research. The claim is that the project is just research, and that the decision about development, meaning engineering for mass-production and deployment, would be made later.