A world without nuclear weapons is a goal worth pursuing in itself. Beyond that, and most importantly, endeavoring to achieve that goal will also invigorate efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the road will not be an easy one. Real and serious obstacles lie ahead.

Nations that have privileged positions in the international system by virtue of being nuclear weapons states will be reluctant to give up that status, or even to accept parity in nuclear weapons as stockpiles are reduced to low levels. Nations that fear the conventionallyarmed military might of other nations will be reluctant to give up the option of a nuclear “equalizer.” Factors such as these, rather than technical problems, are the main reasons why reaching zero will be so difficult. And these are problems that can be overcome. No law of nature stands in the way.

Thinking about a world without nuclear weapons in a more than casual way cannot help but flag a number of ramifications— related issues that have to be considered. This is one of the strengths of the idea. It focuses attention on important questions that might otherwise be neglected because they are seen as not “urgent.”

Considering the many complications, there are skeptics who think that a world without nuclear weapons is beyond imagining at this point in time.

Among the unconvinced, however, there is broad support for the individual steps of nuclear restraint that were advocated at the two conferences held at the Hoover Institution in 2006 and 2007, as described by Messrs. Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, and Nunn in their two influential Wall Street Journal articles (see Appendix 1 and 2).

These steps were recognized as necessary to pave the way for the “end state” where nuclear weapons arsenals are finally reduced to zero, once the verification and compliance requirements have been satisfied. ...

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Appendix 1: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons
Appendix 2: Toward a Nuclear-Free World
Appendix 3: Remarks by President Barack Obama, Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic
Appendix 4: Floor Statement by Senator John McCain, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons”

FORWARD
As he watched the world’s reactions to the first atomic explosions, Albert Einstein wearily remarked that “everything has changed except our way of thinking.” I quoted that remark in my Foreword to an earlier book by Sid Drell and Jim Goodby, The Gravest Danger, published in 2003. “He was right for a time,” I wrote in that Foreword. My view was that, up to that time, nuclear deterrence had served us well for half a century or so.

But there were unintended consequences. After the attempts to eliminate atomic bombs failed in the United Nations, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a competition that led to tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and thermonuclear weapons on each side. Britain, France, and China became recognized nuclear weapons states.

The world’s aggregate holdings of nuclear weapons finally began to decline after 1986, four decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It happened largely because two men—Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev— recognized the truth of what Einstein had said. Together, these two leaders wrenched the world away from the path it had been on. ...

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sidney D. Drell is a physicist and arms control specialist. A faculty member at Stanford University since 1956, he is a Professor of Theoretical Physics (Emeritus) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University (of which he was also Deputy Director until retiring) and a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

For many years Dr. Drell has provided technical advice to the Government on national security issues. This includes terms as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and Science Advisory Committee and, for the Congress, as Chairman of the Technical Advisory Group of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence and of the Nuclear Weapons Safety Study for the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. He currently is an active member of JASON.

Among many honors Dr. Drell received a MacArthur Foundation prize fellowship, the Enrico Fermi Award, the Heinz Award for Public Policy, the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and election to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of ten scientists honored by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office as “Founders of national reconnaissance as a space discipline,” and received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by the U.S. Intelligence Community.

His most recent book contains a selection of his papers on arms control with the title Nuclear Weapons, Scientists, and the Post-Cold War Challenge, published in 2007 by the World Scientific Press (Singapore).

James E. Goodby is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he is working on a study of “a world without nuclear weapons” led by former Secretary of State George P. Shultz. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

He was Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University from 1989 to 1999 and is now Professor Emeritus. Goodby is the author and editor of several books, of which the latest is At the Borderline of Armageddon: How American Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb (Rowman & Littlefield). With Sidney Drell he wrote The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons, published by the Hoover Institution Press in 2003.

Selected for the U.S. Foreign Service through competitive examinations in 1952, Goodby rose to the rank of Career Minister in the Senior Foreign Service and was given five presidential appointments to ambassadorial rank. During his Foreign Service career he was involved as a negotiator or as a policy adviser in the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the negotiation of the limited nuclear test ban treaty, START, the Conference on Disarmament in Europe, and cooperative threat reduction (the Nunn-Lugar program).

His awards include the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the State Department’s Superior and Distinguished Honor Awards, and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Germany. He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1992. He was the recipient of the inaugural Heinz Award in Public Policy in 1995. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the Stetson University College of Law.

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