Achieving Nuclear Weapon Non-Proliferation and Non-Possession: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

We currently live in an era where, for the first time for half a century, the global elimination of nuclear weapons appears possible, though not yet probable. The five nuclear weapon states, who also happen to be the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the P-5), have been for the last six years in a relationship other than acute political hostility. Their pressing need for nuclear weapons to ensure their own security is no longer so self-evident as it was prior to 1991. This in itself will not be sufficient to produce the elimination of nuclear weapons: other changes in the perspectives that states and their leaders hold about nuclear weapons will be necessary. But such changes are not impossible. The `realist’ perspective that suggests that a universal, determinist and unchanging logic applies to attitudes and policies towards such weapons is open to question, at the very least.