Getting to Zero
Working Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
Chronology and Links
The threat presented by nuclear weapons has never been
greater. It is this growing threat that has revived the idea
of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Below
is a chronology of key documents and statements related to
Getting to Zero as well as a list of links to publications
and videos which provide background and history relevant to
this effort.
Chronology: Key Documents and Statements
24 October 2008: Seizing the Moment: Breakthrough
Measures to Build a New East West Consensus on Weapons of
Mass Destruction and Disarmament, United Nations, New York.
Watch
the event via UN Webcast.
24 July 2008: Four prominent Italian political figures
and one well-respected physicist have come together to write
an op-ed that endorses the vision of a world without nuclear
weapons. The article, "For A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,"
was published in Italy's leading newspaper, Il Corriere
della Sera. The authors include: Massimo D'Alema,
former Prime Minister and recent Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Gianfranco Fini, former Minister of Foreign Affairs
and current Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies; Giorgio
La Malfa, former Minister of European Affairs; Arturo
Parisi, former Minister of Defense and Francesco Calogero,
Professor of Physics, University of Rome and Secretary General
of the Pugwash Conference. For more information, see Laura
Spagnuolo's GTZ
blogpost.
16 July 2008:Addressing an audience at Purdue University
in Indiana, US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama
declared, "It's time to send a clear message to the world:
America
seeks a world with no nuclear weapons."
15 July 2008: US presidential candidate Senator Barack
Obama highlighted the dangers of nuclear weapons in a major
foreign policy speech in Washington, DC, stating:
"We need to work with Russia to take US and Russian ballistic
missiles off hair-trigger alert; to dramatically reduce
the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material; to seek
a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons;
and to expand the US-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles
so that the agreement is global. By keeping our commitment
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we'll be in
a better position to press nations like North Korea and
Iran to keep theirs. In particular, it will give us more
credibility and leverage in dealing with Iran."
9 July 2008: In an op-ed
to the Washington Times, former Ambassador James
Goodby (BASIC Board member) called upon the next US president
to pledge to work toward a nuclear free world.
30 June 2008: In a ground-breaking op-ed in the Times
(London), former UK Foreign and Defence Secretaries endorsed
the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Sir Malcolm
Rifkind (Conservative), Lord David Owen (Crossbencher), Lord
Douglas Hurd (Conservative), and Lord George Robertson (Labour),
in an article titled 'Start
worrying and learn to ditch the bomb', warned that the
world is entering a dangerous new phase "that combines widespread
proliferation with extremism and geopolitical tension". They
argued that the only way to deal with this danger is to work
multilaterally towards complete nuclear disarmament. See the
related Times article, Former
rivals join forces in nuclear plea: Weapon stocks must be
cut, say ex-Cabinet ministers and BASIC's Media Advisory:
Another milestone to Zero:
UK Statesmen Call for a World without Nuclear Weapons.
The Times (London) op-ed is partly the inspiration
behind an Early
Day Motion (Parliamentary petition) opened for signature.
The Motion is sponsored by recent Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett, recent Conservative Party Leader Michael Howard,
recent Defence Secretary John Reid, serving and former Chairs
of the Commons Defence Committee James Arbuthnot and Michael
Ancram and recent Liberal Democrat Leader and foreign affairs
luminary Menzies Campbell. The Motion welcomes the previous
calls by Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and
Sam Nunn for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation measures
and the subsequent endorsement by the four UK Statesmen in
the Times.
30 June 2008: Disarming
Ideas: It is time to start negotiating reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, Times (London).
30 June 2008: Thinking
the Unthinkable: A World Without Nuclear Weapons, Carla
Anne Robbins, The New York Times, Editorial Observer.
24 June 2008: America
looks to a world free of nuclear weapons, John Kerry,
Financial Times.
6 April 2008: US President George Bush and Russian
President Vladimir Putin met in Sochi in south-western Russia.
The meeting resulted in a Strategic
Framework Declaration. The Declaration included references
to nuclear and conventional arms control, most notably stating
that the two countries would "continue development of a legally
binding post-START arrangement". Previous indications from
the Bush Administration had placed in doubt whether US officials
would pursue such a binding agreement.
2 April 2008: Restoring
US nuclear-free leadership, Thomas Graham, Jr. and Max
Kampelman, Washington Times.
6 March 2008: A
World Without Nuclear Weapons: The International Dimension
A public event sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the British
American Security Information Council (BASIC)
March
6, 2008: New York Review of Books, Volume 55,
Number 3 · The
Greatest Threat to Us All, by Joseph
Cirincione. Cirincione reviews new books by Richard Rhodes,
Jonathan Schell and others highlighting the risks of nuclear
proliferation especially to unstable countries such as Pakistan.
March 2008: A
World Free of Nuclear Weapons: An Interview With Nuclear
Threat Initiative Co-Chairman Sam Nunn, Interviewed by Daryl
G. Kimball and Miles A. Pomper, Arms Control Today.
February 2008: Toward
True Security: Ten Steps the Next US President should
take to transform US nuclear weapons policy, Federation of
American Scientists, National Resources Defense Council and
Union of Concerned Scientists, reviewed in the BASIC
blog.
26-27 February 2008: official website of the international
conference on nuclear disarmament in Oslo: Achieving
the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. This has
the programme, presentation and list of participants.
5 February: Speech
by the UK Secretary of State for Defence, "Laying the
Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament."
23 January 2008: Bennett Ramberg, A
world free of nuclear weapons: The wrong and right way to
do it, UPI Outside View.
22 January 2008: A
World Without Nuclear Weapons, Ambassador Robert Barry,
The Guardian.
21 January 2008: Gordon Brown, in a speech
to the Chamber of Commerce in Delhi, India on January
21, renews the UK government's commitment to move toward a
nuclear-weapon free world. He said: "I pledge that in the
run-up to the Non Proliferation Treaty review conference in
2010 we will be at the forefront of the international campaign
to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent
proliferation to new states, and to ultimately achieve a world
that is freer from nuclear weapons."
15 January 2008: The 'Hoover Group' - George Shultz,
Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and William Perry - publish a renewed
call
to action in the Wall Street Journal, sparking
off another flurry of debate. This came a year after their
original letter in the Journal triggered a series of responses
from governments and civil society around the vision of a
nuclear-weapon free world. The growing and impressive list
of elite US supporters include seven secretaries of state,
seven national security advisors and five former secretaries
of defense.
20 December 2007: US Special Representative for Nuclear
Nonproliferation, Christopher Ford, spoke at the UK Foreign
Office Wilton
Park conference about the goal of zero nuclear weapons:
So this is where we are today, with the United States engaged
in broad diplomatic outreach efforts and ongoing dialogue
not just about numbers, doctrine, and treaty interpretation,
but also about our vision for the future - and about
how one might actually hope to achieve nuclear disarmament.
The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to disarmament,
offered a vision of a zero-weapons future, and engaged
in unprecedented discussion of how actually to achieve this.
[emphasis added]
The full text of Ford's
presentation may be found here. He also delivered a presentation
on "Nuclear
Disarmament and the 'Legalization' of Policy Discourse in
the NPT Regime," at an event hosted by The Nonproliferation
Review on November 29 in Washington, DC.
19 December 2007: President Bush announces a reduction
by 15
percent in the active US nuclear weapons arsenal, which
is scheduled to be completed by 2012.
5 December 2007: UN General Assembly adopts numerous
resolutions related to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.
One resolution
calls for the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations
toward a ban on the production of military fissile materials
and also calls on members to make deep cuts to nuclear weapons
arsenals, with the overall goal of elimination. Another resolution
calls on members to decrease
the operational readiness of their nuclear weapons.
9 November 2007: A new poll,
conducted in the United States and Russia, finds robust support
for a series of cooperative steps to reduce nuclear dangers
and move toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
1 November 2007: UN General Assembly's disarmament
committee approved
a resolution calling for all nuclear weapons to be taken
off high alert, despite objections from the United States,
Britain and France
28 October 2007: Russia and the United States urge
all countries to destroy medium range nuclear-capable missiles,
in a joint
declaration published by the Russian foreign ministry.
24 October 2007: Governor
Schwarzenegger's Nuclear Disarmament Remarks, Hoover Institution,
California
25 June 2007: Keynote
Address: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?, Remarks by
Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs, United Kingdom, Carnegie International Nonproliferation
Conference
31 January 2007: The
Nuclear Threat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wall Street Journal
4 January 2007: A
World Free of Nuclear Weapons, George P. Shultz, William
J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, Wall Street
Journal
24 April 2006: We
Should, So We Can: Life Without the Bomb, Max M. Kampelman,
International Herald Tribune
Links for Further Reading, Viewing
Background on Positions of US Presidential
Candidates on Nuclear Weapons
- Obama
vs. McCain: A Side-by-Side Comparison on Arms Control,
Johns Isaacs and Leonor Tomero, Center for Arms Control
and Non-Proliferation, updated 9 June 2008.
- A
Return to Arms Control, The Washington Post,
2 June 2008.
- An
Early Look Ahead: What to Expect from Clinton, McCain, and
Obama on National Security, John Isaacs, Council for
a Livable World, 28 February 2008.
- The
Democratic Presidential Candidates on Nuclear Weapons Elimination,
Joseph Cirincione and Alexandra Bell, Center for American
Progress, via the Huffington Post, 17 January 2008. (Includes
a chart that lists the former cabinet members who now support
the elimination of nuclear weapons.)
- Issue
Tracker: The Candidates and Nuclear Nonproliferation,
Council on Foreign Relations, updated 16 January 2008.
- Where the presidential candidates stand on nuclear issues,
Lawrence Krauss, The
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 9 January 2008.
Earlier Detailed Proposals for Nuclear
Disarmament
Report of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Weapons
of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and
Chemical Arms, ("Blix Report"), June 2006
Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Hiroshima Peace
Institute and the Japanese Government, Report of the Tokyo
Forum on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 1999
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National
Academy of Sciences, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy,
1997
The Stimson Center, An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear
Weapon-Free World, 1997
Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of
Nuclear Weapons (Canberra: Australian Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade), 1996
Further Reading
Nuclear disarmament
The
Logic of Zero: Toward a World without Nuclear Weapons,
Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, Foreign Affairs (via the
website of the Brookings Institution), November/December 2008.
The
Future of Nuclear Weapons in an Interdependent World,
Harald Muller, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, No.
2 (Spring 2008), pp. 63-75.
The
new nuclear abolitionists, Hugh Gusterson, Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, 13 May 2008.
Ban
the Bomb. Really. Michael Krepon, Henry L. Stimson Center.
Article appears in The American Interest, Winter (January/February)
2008.
U.S. strategic policy
Toward
True Security: Ten Steps the Next US President should take
to transform US nuclear weapons policy, Federation of
American Scientists, National Resources Defense Council and
Union of Concerned Scientists, February 2008. Reviewed in
BASIC's GTZ
blog.
Nuclear
Weapons in U.S. National Security Policy: Past, Present, and
Prospects, Amy F. Woolf, Congressional Research Service,
29 October 2007 (report via the website of the Federation
of American Scientists).
What
Are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for Restructuring
U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces, Sidney E. Drell and James
E. Goodby, Arms Control Association, October 2007.
Proliferation
New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 3, The
Greatest Threat to Us All, by Joseph
Cirincione, 6
March 2008. Cirincione reviews new books by Richard Rhodes,
Jonathan Schell and others highlighting the risks of nuclear
proliferation especially to unstable countries such as Pakistan.
The
Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, Jonathan
Schell, Henry Holt and Co. Metropolitan Books, November 2007.
Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
Resurrecting
the Test-Ban Treaty, Michael O'Hanlon, Survival,
Volume 50, Issue 1, February 2008.
Nuclear
Weapons: Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, Jonathan Medalia,
Congressional Research Service Report for US Congress, updated
30 November 2007 (report via the website of the Federation
of American Scientists).
Overcoming
Nuclear Dangers, The Stanley Foundation, Policy Analysis
Brief, November 2007.
Nuclear material
Managing
the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Policy Implications of Expanding Global
Access to Nuclear Power, Congressional Research Service,
1 November 2007.
Global
Fissile Material Report 2007: Second report of the International
Panel on Fissile Materials: Developing the technical basis
for policy initiatives to secure and irreversibly reduce stocks
of nuclear weapons and fissile materials.
Securing
U.S. Nuclear Material: DOE Has Made Little Progress Consolidating
and Disposing of Special Nuclear Material, U.S. Government
Accountability Office, 4 October 2007.
Videos
1983:
The Brink of Apocalypse, BBC Documentary available via
Google Video (free), aired on BBC's Channel 4, 2008.
The
ultimate lecture: Anthropology 101, award-winning film
short from 'Beyond Trident', a joint initiative involving:
Acronym Institute for
Disarmament Diplomacy, BASIC,
Oxford Research
Group and the WMD
Awareness Programme, 2007.
More on Getting to Zero
Working Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
BASIC's work is made possible by the generous support
of our donors: the Ploughshares
Fund, the Ford Foundation,
the Joseph Rowntree Charitable
Trust, Polden
Puckham Charitable Foundation, Rockefeller Family &
Associates, and individual contributors to BASIC. We are grateful
to all of them for their support.
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