ABSTRACT
Mutual reassurance incorporates, and extends, the verification regime on which any weapons abolition system must rely. A nuclear weapons abolition regime would exist if nuclear weapon states destroyed their existing nuclear weapons and all states agreed not to make new ones. Taking the fissile material bottleneck as primary, hurdles between permitted material and weapon-usable material as complementary, and the display inescapable in assembling and supplying personnel and equipment to accomplish a clandestine weapons program as revelatory, a practical program for zero nuclear weapon maintenance is altogether possible. Moreover, states will be free, under any likely abolition regime, to train personnel for civil nuclear power programs, conduct research, and maintain diverse and varied capabilities in materials, refinement, milling, circuitry and controls, simulation, and vehicles technology with evident application to a nuclear weapon program. Alleged non-compliance would, of course, bring into play whatever treaty mechanisms addressed obligations, and then violations, under the treaty.
