Introduction

Is a nuclear-weapons-free world (NWFW) desirable – and, if so, is it feasible?1 The first resolution to be passed by the UN General Assembly answered the first of these questions in the affirmative, only to find that, with the advent of the Cold War, such a world was not to be. Several years later, in the midst of intense arms-racing and spurred on by the Cuban missile crisis, arms control replaced the objective of nuclear disarmament. The aim was to reduce the risk of unintended war by enhancing stability. Arms limitation was part of this, but not necessarily disarmament: in principle, stability might be enhanced by arms acquisitions as well as by arms reductions. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, committed all signatories – nuclear-and non-nuclear-weapon states – to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Legally speaking, a failure to take ‘effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament’ (Article VI) does not necessarily amount to noncompliance by any particular state. Progress depends on the seriousness of all negotiating parties, which is arguably beyond the power of any single participant. However, the political process that led to the NPT made it clear that Article VI was conceived as part of a dynamic bargain to be implemented over time, erasing – in due course – the distinction between nuclear-weapon states (NWS) and non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS). Converging expectations were created and a review mechanism was set up to facilitate implementation of the treaty. Since then, all states save four (India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea) have committed themselves to the goal of elimination by joining the NPT. As the Cold War began to wind down, a spectacular attempt was made to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan shared the objective of an NWFW, and had a go at it in Reykjavik in October 1986. They failed because of disagreement over the US Strategic Defense Initiative – but their meeting prepared the ground for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which eliminated all US and Soviet missiles in this category, and for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which halved the number of their operational strategic weapons. Two interrelated issues were glaringly absent from the 1986 Reykjavik negotiations agenda. First, in talking about an NWFW, the two superpowers seem to

have taken the consent of the other NWS for granted, as if they were mere appendices to the dominant bilateral dimension of the Cold War order. Second, there was no mention of the NPT. The superpowers failed to recognize the legal obligation to disarm even as they were seeking to implement it. By the time the four US statesmen (Shultz, Nunn, Kissinger and Perry) revived the vision of an NWFW on the twentieth anniversary of the Reykjavik summit, the world had undergone major changes. It had moved from being bipolar to becoming multipolar, and from six NWS (the five recognized by the NPT plus Israel) to nine (with India, Pakistan and North Korea). The world of nuclear weapons had become more dangerous and had better be replaced by a world without such arms. Their call was followed up by Barack Obama. On his initiative, a UN Security Council summit was convened in the autumn of 2009, at which all member states reiterated their commitment to work for an NWFW. In the spring of 2010, a new strategic arms reduction agreement – New START – was concluded, limiting US and Russian strategic weapons to 1,550 each. A new US nuclear posture review extended unconditional security assurances to all non-nuclear signatories to the NPT in good standing and promised to work to establish the conditions for a transition to no-first-use doctrines. But then progress came to a halt. There have been no disarmament negotiations for more than half a decade now. All NWS have set about modernizing their arsenals, and the Asian arsenals are growing. New nuclear weapon systems, which may be deployed in 10 to 15 years and which may last for 30 to 40, indicate potent arsenals up to 2070. The question is therefore not how best to continue disarmament, but whether and how it can be restarted. The NPT is a road map to zero, but it is a rudimentary one and it says nothing about the kind of zero to aim for. Preferably, this would be a world where the inhibitions against reversal are strong enough to make it stably non-nuclear. What then are the requirements of such a stable zero? The question is not just hypothetical, of no practical consequence, for how we conceive of the goal has implications for the road map leading to it. The four statesmen hit the nail on the head when they emphasized the interrelationship between visions and measures: the vision is necessary to give full meaning to the measures, and the measures are necessary to make the vision realistic. The interplay is vital for the dynamism of any disarmament process. The literature on nuclear disarmament has not paid much attention to this question. By and large, the focus has been on the next steps. Discussions tend to stop where the NPT stops: with the elimination of the weapons. Elimination is in itself a distant goal, and to plunge into a discussion of the conditions under which it could become a permanent feature of international security affairs may seem both unnecessary and presumptuous. Understandable as this may be, however, it is a major shortcoming: a reasonably clear conception of the goal is not only important in itself, but can shed light on what kind of disarmament process to promote. The vision can and should guide actions. The book seeks to fill the lacunae by examining the requirements of stable zero and their implications for the road map to that goal. The focus is on the

international dimensions of the problem. Strong interests in nuclear weapons are also woven into the domestic fabric of the NWS, and these obstacles may be as great as the international hurdles, but those issues are not the subject of this volume. Part I features a chapter by Thomas Schelling, one of the founding fathers of arms control. In the face of renewed calls for elimination of the nuclear arsenals he remains a sceptic, concerned that the stability that has been achieved may be abandoned without any guarantee that a world without nuclear weapons will be a stable one. Schelling’s chapter is followed by a contribution by Manpreet Sethi (India), who contests the assumption that the existing world order is secure enough not to require the elimination of nuclear weapons, especially in view of the nuclear dynamics in Asia. Sethi proposes a set of principles that should anchor an NWFW in order to make it stable and sustainable. These two chapters are commented upon by Harald Müller (Germany) and Nikolai Sokov (Russia). In Part II, Harald Müller engages in thinking ‘out of the box’, where opponents – as well as many proponents – of an NWFW have difficulties liberating themselves from traditional security thinking, notably with regard to nuclear deterrence. Müller argues forcefully that deterrence – the virtual deterrence of a world where nuclear weapons have been eliminated but where not much else has changed – contradicts the principles on which an NWFW must be founded. He goes on to specify the elements that would help make such a world stably non-nuclear. In turn, Andreas Persbo (Sweden) examines the role of verification in a world that has attained nuclear-weapons-free status, and the verification requirements on the way to that status. He identifies three top-level tasks: during the transition to zero, dismantlement of the weapons must be verified; when this has been done, nuclearand non-nuclear-weapon state compliance with the obligations must be verified; and at all times during the transition it must be possible to verify that nuclear weapons are not emerging elsewhere. These chapters are commented upon by Tom Sauer (Belgium), Jingdong Yuan (China) and Patricia Lewis (Ireland). In the final summary and conclusions chapter, the editor – Sverre Lodgaard (Norway) – elaborates on the requirements of stable zero and their implications for the steps that may lead there, starting with the vision and going back to the present. The book is a project of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (Tokyo/Hawaii). Sverre Lodgaard is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and a senior research fellow of the Toda Institute. We are grateful to the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation for hosting the seminar that sparked off the work, and to Susan Høivik for applying her great professionalism and social science experience to the manuscript.