Carla Anne Robbins: Thinking the Unthinkable: A World Without Nuclear Weapons
When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked at the 1986 Reykjavik summit about giving up all of their nuclear weapons within a decade, it was dismissed as a trick or more frightening proof that the American president was out of touch with strategic realities. The deal fell apart over Mr. Reagan’s refusal to limit testing of a missile defense program that was notional then and is still.
In the days after, Mr. Reagan’s advisers denied that he had seriously entertained any such idea, until the Russians released quotes from the meeting. Britain’s prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, flew over to bludgeon her old friend out of such foolishness. James Schlesinger — the voice of the Washington establishment — thundered in the journal Foreign Affairs that Mr. Reagan’s performance was the dangerous result of “casual utopianism,” “indifferent preparation” and a lack of understanding of strategic “exigencies.”
Two decades later, a who’s who of the national security establishment — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn — is calling on the United States to lead a global campaign to devalue and eventually rid the world of nuclear weapons.
None of these men (two former secretaries of state, a former secretary of defense and a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) is given to casual utopianism — or anything casual. They are trying to shock sensibilities.
In two opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal, they described a frightening new world of ever-expanding nuclear appetites, in which traditional deterrence no longer works. They argued that the only way for the United States to rally the cooperation it needs to confront such dangers is with a clear commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
They called for backing that up with policies that have also long been anathema to hawks: including banning all nuclear testing, taking American and Russian missiles off of hair-trigger alert and agreement on “further substantial reductions” in both countries’ arsenals....
Read entire article at NYT
In the days after, Mr. Reagan’s advisers denied that he had seriously entertained any such idea, until the Russians released quotes from the meeting. Britain’s prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, flew over to bludgeon her old friend out of such foolishness. James Schlesinger — the voice of the Washington establishment — thundered in the journal Foreign Affairs that Mr. Reagan’s performance was the dangerous result of “casual utopianism,” “indifferent preparation” and a lack of understanding of strategic “exigencies.”
Two decades later, a who’s who of the national security establishment — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn — is calling on the United States to lead a global campaign to devalue and eventually rid the world of nuclear weapons.
None of these men (two former secretaries of state, a former secretary of defense and a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) is given to casual utopianism — or anything casual. They are trying to shock sensibilities.
In two opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal, they described a frightening new world of ever-expanding nuclear appetites, in which traditional deterrence no longer works. They argued that the only way for the United States to rally the cooperation it needs to confront such dangers is with a clear commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
They called for backing that up with policies that have also long been anathema to hawks: including banning all nuclear testing, taking American and Russian missiles off of hair-trigger alert and agreement on “further substantial reductions” in both countries’ arsenals....