Nuclear Policy and World Order: Why Denuclearization *

Abstract

While taking note of the growing anxiety, particularly on the part of the superpowers, over the spread of nuclear technology and of the frantic campaign (most of all on the part of the USA), through a combination of pressures and blandishments, to halt proliferation, the paper does not see much chance of the campaign succeeding so long as as it remains suspect because, among other reasons, of its being spearheaded by a power which is itself the greatest proliferator and one, too, which has not only got an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons, but is constantly engaged in evolving ever more sophisticated (which means deadly) weapons. Nonproliferation, unless wedded to denuclearization, will continue to be viewed by non-nuclear states as unacceptably discriminatory and as a geopolitical confidence trick calculated to freeze the present hegemonistic global structure. Obviously, the first moves toward denuclearization have to be made by nuclear nations, but, above all, by the two superpowers. However, denuclearization will be illusory if a distinction is made between the military and the civilian uses of the atom. Denuclearization must, therefore, at some stage-now rather than later, when it might be too late-involve the total renunciation of nuclear power for whatever purpose and its substitution with other less centralized, less costly, and pollution-free sources of energy, such as sun, wind, water and biomass. In between, however, the ruling elites all the world over, but principally in its industrialized part, have to accept a concept of world order securely anchored to the values of peace, economic well-being of all, social and political justice, both within and between nations, and environmental quality. Recognising that such a world order cannot be erected at one go, the author suggests transition steps, none frighteningly radical in itself and each demonstrably feasible, although establishment circles, unable to move out of the narrow groove of conventional wisdom, may scoff at them as ‘romantic’ or ‘utopian’.