Government agencies, including the Pentagon, are preparing for the Nuclear Posture Review, due at the end of this year. In a recent Huffington Post article, Joe Cirincione, nuclear policy expert and Ploughshares Fund president, says that the White House needs to take a more active role in the preparation for the NPR to prevent the defense establishment from digging in its heels.
PNA agrees: the Nuclear Posture Review is the prime opportunity to cement President Obama’s vision laid out in his Prague speech and to depart from the archaic Cold War way of thought.
Over the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Japan engaged in a fierce debate. Some hardliners in Japan argued Japan ought to pursue nuclear weapons to protect itself. Luckily, Japan’s leading politicians and its opposition party both spoke out against a Japanese nuclear weapons program. During this debate, a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, released an editorial encouraging the nuclear powers to follow through with their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Most importantly, though, Asahi urged President Obama to use his
chairmanship of an upcoming UN Security Council meeting about nuclear proliferation to promote a “non-nuclear umbrella” and to take a leadership role on this issue. A non-nuclear umbrella would ensure that no nuclear power would use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear
states which are part of the NPT. The objective is to lower the risk and thus the need for such weapons.
Asahi had several other excellent suggestions: to make full use of the nuclear weapons free zones; to declare no first use of nuclear weapons; and to find ways to make North-east Asia more secure. Without further ado, the Asahi editorial:
This summer has special significance for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that it is the first since U.S. President Barack Obama gave his landmark speech in Prague in April to declare that the United States will “take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.”
It is enormously significant that Obama said the United States, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, has “a moral responsibility to act.” But this is not the only reason why his Prague speech was so galvanizing.
In this age of globalization, the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. A nuclear explosion in any major city in the world would not only kill a great number of people but also bring the global economic system to the brink of collapse. The consequences would be the same whether it was a nuclear strike or a terrorist attack.
The argument that nuclear deterrence is more effective in securing stability around the world still enjoys considerable support among the nuclear powers and their allies. But succumbing to the allure of nuclear deterrence could result in the acceleration of nuclear proliferation. The world is also facing a real danger of nuclear arms falling into the hands of terrorists. If that nightmare becomes reality, the risks would be immeasurable.
What must be done? Shouldn’t we come up with a new security strategy to move toward a nuclear-free world?
