Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

Abingdon, Oxon, England: Routledge [published for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS], 2008. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Trade paperback. Very good/No DJ issued. 130, [2] pages. Glossary. Key Suggestions and Questions. Notes. Adelphi Paper 396. Publishers/IISS ephemera laid in. George Perkovich is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, overseeing the Technology and International Affairs Program and Nuclear Policy Program. He works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues; cyberconflict; and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies. He is the author of the prize-winning book, India?s Nuclear Bomb, and co-author of, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism. Perkovich?s short-form writing has appeared in leading international journals and newspapers. He has advised many agencies of the U.S. government, and testified before both houses of Congress. He has been a member of the National Academy of Science?s Committee on Arms Control and International Security,and the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Nuclear Policy. James M. Acton is a British academic and scientist. He is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Acton was awarded his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Cambridge University. Acton was a member of the faculty of the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. Acton's research projects have included analyses of IAEA safeguards in Iran, verifying disarmament in North Korea and preventing novel forms of radiological terrorism. Nuclear disarmament is firmly back on the international agenda. But almost all current thinking on the subject is focused on the process of reducing the number of weapons from thousands to hundreds. This rigorous analysis examines the challenges that exist to abolishing nuclear weapons completely, and suggests what can be done now to start overcoming them. The paper argues that the difficulties of 'getting to zero' must not preclude many steps being taken in that direction. It thus begins by examining steps that nuclear-armed states could take in cooperation with others to move towards a world in which the task of prohibiting nuclear weapons could be realistically envisaged. The remainder of the paper focuses on the more distant prospect of prohibiting nuclear weapons, beginning with the challenge of verifying the transition from low numbers to zero. It moves on to examine how the civilian nuclear industry could be managed in a nuclear-weapons-free world so as to prevent rearmament. The paper then considers what political-security conditions would be required to make a nuclear-weapons ban enforceable and explores how enforcement might work in practice. Finally, it addresses the latent capability to produce nuclear weapons that would inevitably exist after abolition, and asks whether this is a barrier to disarmament, or whether it can be managed to meet the security needs of a world newly free of the bomb.