Abstract
I want to begin by recounting my earliest memory as a child. It is of a city exploding with joy. The city was San Francisco. The date November 11, 1918 — Armistice Day. I was two years old. The city was celebrating not only the end of the First World War, but the belief, held so strongly by President Wilson, and by many other Americans, that the United States and its allies had won a war to end all wars.
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Notes and References
‘Preventing Deadly Conflict, Final Report’ Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Carnegie Corporation, New York, December 1997, p. xii.
New York Times, 31 December 1989.
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 805.
Carl Kaysen, ‘Is War Obsolete?’ International Security 14(4): 63, Spring 1990.
I have included in my concept of ‘collective security’ elements of what Janne Nolan refers to as ‘co-operative security’ (see Chapter One ‘Global Engagement’ by John Steinbruner, Ash Carter, Bill Perry, Janne Nolan, et al, Brookings, 1996). Ms. Nolan states, ‘one strategy does not preclude the other and both are, in fact, initially reinforcing.’
Washington Post, June 11, 1994, p. A1.
‘The Kennedy Tapes,’ Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, Belknap, Harvard University, 1997.
‘One Hell of a Gamble,’ Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, New York: Norton, 1997.
General Gribkov elaborated on these points at a meeting in the Wilson Center, Washington D.C. on April 5, 1994.
See Anatoly Dokochaev, ‘Afterword to Sensational 100 Day Nuclear Cruise,’ Krasnaya Zvezda, November 6, 1992, p. 2 and V. Badurikin interview with Dimitri Volkogonov in ‘Operation Anadyr,’ Trud, October 27, 1992, p. 3.
Both the Canberra Commission and the Carnegie Commission came to the same conclusion. Using almost identical words they state: ‘The position that large numbers of nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility.’ (Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Commonwealth of Australia, 1996, p.18; ‘Preventing Deadly Conflict…,’ op. cit., p. 70.)
This statement was endorsed by the US National Academy of Sciences in 1991 in a report signed by 18 security experts including David C. Jones former Chief of Staff of the US Air Force (‘The Future of the US-Soviet Nuclear Relationship,’ Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, p. 3); by the Stimson Center’s Panel on Nuclear Forces chaired by the former SACEUR, General Andrew Goodpaster (‘An Evolving Nuclear Posture,’ Stimson Center, Washington D.C., December 1995, p. 15); and by the Canberra Commission (Report of the Canberra Commission, op. cit. p. 18).
I recognize, of course, that the abolition of nuclear weapons would not be possible without development of an adequate verification system. Are acceptable verification regimes feasible? The decision point on whether verification is adequate for complete elimination (as opposed, for example to reductions to a level of say 100 warheads), is not likely to be resolved for some time. In the end, comparative risks must be evaluated. The Canberra Commission, which also recommended abolition, concluded that the risk of use of the weapons far exceeds the risks associated with whatever nuclear force a cheating state could assemble before it was exposed.
See John J. Fialks and Frederick Kemps, ‘US Welcomes Soviet Arms Plan, but Dismisses Pact as Propaganda,’ Wall Street Journal, January 17, 1986; Thomas C. Reed and Michael O. Wheeler, ‘The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the New World Order,’ December 1991.
See William Perry’s statement to the Stimson Center, September 20, 1994; and Department of Defense briefing, September 22, 1994.
McGeorge Bundy, William J. Crowe, Jr., and Sidney O. Drell, Reducing Nuclear Danger: The Road Away from the Brink, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993, p. 100.
‘An Evolving Nuclear Posture,’ op. cit.
See Solly Zuckerman, Nuclear Illusions and Reality, New York: Viking, 1982, p. 70; and The Sunday Times, February 21, 1982.
Henry Kissinger, ‘NATO Defence and the Soviet Threat,’ Survival, November–December 1979, p. 266.
BBC Radio interview with Stuart Simon, July 16, 1987.
Larry Welch to Adam Scheinman, March 21, 1994.
Boston Globe, July 16, 1994.
Robert S. McNamara, ‘The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons,’ Foreign Affairs, Fall 1983, p. 79.
‘De-alerting Strategic Nuclear Forces’ a preliminary draft of a study of nuclear forces presented by Bruce Blair on January 29, 1998 to The Independent Task Force on Reducing the Risk of Nuclear War.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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McNamara, R.S. (1999). Reflections on War in the Twenty-First Century. In: Bruce, M., Milne, T. (eds) Ending War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508606_9
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