There are any number of things that politicians say that I automatically tune out (or at least discount substantially).  One of them is a promise for a nuclear free world.  It is simply not going to happen.  The reasons are legion, but some of the more compelling include the fact that powerful states will never see it in their interest to get rid of military power of this type (despite the idealistic utterances of its politicians) and the fact that it is impossible to achieve global consensus on this topic (see, for example, Iran¹ ).

As such, it is hardly shocking to read the following headline in the LAT:  Obama’s nuclear-free vision mired in debate.

Now, one can see a legitimate debate as to how many nuclear weapons the US needs (if anything, because of the expense of maintaining the arsenal).  And we do have quite a few (although less than we have had in the past):

The government maintains an estimated 9,400 nuclear weapons, about 1,000 fewer than in 2024. But Obama believes that stepping up efforts to reduce the stockpile will give U.S. officials added credibility in their quest to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the cornerstone international arms-control pact.

I would recommend Thomas Schelling’s article in Daedalus from early last year:  A world without nuclear weapons?

One of the key points that he notes is that even if we were to eliminate all the physical nuclear weapons from the globe, that would not eliminate the know-how needed to produce new ones.  As such, the notion of a true “nuclear free” world is not a realistic one.

More significantly he notes that a “nuclear free world” would be more unstable than the current one.  It is worth a read and some consideration in any event.

1. Which is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and yet… [↩]

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