Opposition to Nuclear Armament

Abstract

In view of our security requirements, nuclear weapons are militarily useless; in view of the history of their development, they are militarily dangerous. The standard answers to the problem are not solutions: civil defense programs are inadequate, if not infeasible; sophisticated technological approaches to defense face unsurmountable technical and military difficulties; and our current deterrent policies—balance of forces, the use of deployments as signals—are delusions. Practical solutions depend on the avoidance of mutual enmity between the United States and the USSR, and the recognition of both our common interest in arms control and each other's legitimate security requirements. The renunciation of our doctrines of nuclear war fighting, counterforce, and limited war will change patterns of weapons development and deployment. Arms control agreement will still face significant problems of verification, classification, and equal capability. But certain practical proposals—50 percent across-the-board cuts, and the turning in of weapons by each side for conversion into nonweapons material, coupled with a halt in the production of weapons-grade fissionable material—are promising.