ABSTRACT
The threat of nuclear war remains relatively abstract and imperceptible to complacent world leaders and civil society, despite the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons in a world that still resorts to war to resolve conflict. The singular destructiveness of a nuclear weapon places it in a unique category, distinctly separate from conventional, chemical, and biological weapons. Article VI of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty imposes a legal obligation on the non-nuclear weapon states to forgo nuclear weapons and on the nuclear weapon states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. A Nuclear Weapons Convention is an international treaty that would prohibit the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat, or use of nuclear weapons. The important difference between disarmament and abolition is that, while disarmament is primarily a technical process of dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons, abolition is a normative process that not only embraces disarmament but also prohibits the development, acquisition, transfer, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
