The Illogic of Zero

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered/. 2. “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” July 1968, http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/npttreaty.html. 3. See Joachim Krause, “Enlightenment and Nuclear Order,” International Affairs 83, no. 3 (May 2007): 483–499 and Christopher A. Ford, “Interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Nonproliferation Review 14, no. 3 (November 2007): 401–428. Some also point to the 1996 advisory opinion given by the International Court of Justice, which states that: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” However, this did not create an additional legally binding obligation for nuclear weapons states. 4. Since the addition of Cuba in 2003, all countries without nuclear weapons are now parties to the treaty, with three exceptions: India, Israel, and Pakistan. The case of North Korea—which in 2003 announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT—is legally complex. 5. “‘You Can't Bomb Knowledge,’” Newsweek, December 21, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/id/226413. 6. Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, “The Logic of Zero,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 6 (November/December 2008): 83. 7. Most of the effects of nuclear weapons are blasts, heat, and indirect fires. But their secondary effects are essential in the psychology of deterrence: most people would rather die by a bullet than by radiation. 8. See Thomas C. Schelling, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons?” Daedalus 138, no. 4 (September 2009): 124–129. 9. Some compare the precedents of the post-1648 world or of the post-1815 world to the post–World War II world but these are poor examples. There were about 20 interstate military conflicts in the fifty years that followed the Westphalia treaties of 1648 on the European continent, involving most great powers of that time including Denmark, France, Holland, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The same can be said for the period lasting from 1815–1914, which saw dozens of conflicts involving major European and Asian powers (excluding colonial wars). 10. See John Lewis Gaddis, Philip A. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 11. See Schelling, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons?” p. 126. 12. See Schelling, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons?” p. 126.; George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116787515251566636.html; George P. Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120036422673589947.html. 13. See John Mueller, Atomic Obsession. Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 14. See Robin M. Frost, “Nuclear Terrorism After 9/11,” Adelphi Paper, no. 378 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], 2005); Michael A. Levi, On Nuclear Terrorism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, November 2007); Brian M. Jenkins, Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, September 2008). 15. Shultz et al., “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” 16. See Morton H. Halperin, Bruno Tertrais, Keith B. Payne, K. Subrahmanyam, and Scott D. Sagan, “The Case for No First Use: An Exchange,” Survival 51, no. 5 (October–November 2009): 17–46. 17. “What To Do With the Vision of Zero,” Economist, November 13, 2008. 18. See Shultz et al., “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” 19. Harold Brown, “New Nuclear Realities,” The Washington Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Winter 2007–2008): 19, http://www.twq.com/08winter/docs/08winter_brown.pdf. 20. Gilles Andreani, “Is Non-proliferation a Lost Cause?” Halifax International Security Forum Paper Series (Washington, D.C.: German Marshall Fund of the United States, November 2009), http://www.gmfus.org/halifax/docs/HalifaxPaper_Andreani_Final.pdf. 21. Brown, “New Nuclear Realities,” p. 17. 22. See Jonathan Schell, “The Folly of Arms Control,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 5 (September–October 2000). 23. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). The point is made by Tiphaine de Champchesnel, “Un ‘monde sans armes nucléaires’ ou l'utopie du zéro” (A ‘World without Nuclear Weapons’ or the Utopia of Zero) in Annuaire Francais de Relations Internationales (French International Relations Yearbook) (Brussels : Bruylant, 2010 [forthcoming]) (in French). 24. Daalder and Lodal, “The Logic of Zero,” p. 82. 25. A comparison could be made with attempts made to abolish the use of gunpowder in the nineteenth century. For challenges regarding the abolition of nuclear weapons, see Philip Taubman, “The Trouble With Zero,” New York Times, May 10, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/weekinreview/10taubman.html. 26. See Dennis M. Gormley, “The Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions: Dealing with American Conventional Superiority,” Proliferation Papers, no. 29 (Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Fall 2009), http://cns.miis.edu/other/PP29_Gormley.pdf. 27. See George Perkovich and James M. Acton, “Abolishing Nuclear Weapons,” Adelphi Paper, no. 396 (London: IISS, 2008); George P. Shultz, Sidney D. Drell, and James E. Goodby, eds., Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, December 2008); Sidney D. Drell and James E. Goodby, A World Without Nuclear Weapons: End-State Issues (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2009). 28. George Perkovich, “The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament,” p. 15 (paper, Helinski, Finland, October 22–24, 2009) (presented at conference titled “The NPT and a World Without Nuclear Weapons”). 29. America's Strategic Posture, Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, May 2009), p. 17, http://www.usip.org/files/America's_Strategic_Posture_Auth_Ed.pdf. 30. Drell and Goodby, A World Without Nuclear Weapons, pp. 33–34. 31. Planning the Future U.S. Nuclear Force II, National Institute for Public Policy, 2009, pp. 122–124. 32. Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Why We Don't Want a Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124726489588925407.html. 33. Champchesnel, “Un ‘monde sans armes nucléaires’ ou l'utopie du zéro.” 34. See UN Security Council Resolution 1887 (2009), SC/9746, September 24, 2009, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sc9746.doc.htm. 35. Winston Churchill, address to the U.S. Congress, quoted in speech by Margaret Thatcher at Lord Mayor's Banquet, November 10, 1986, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/Speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106512&doctype=1 and Harry S. Truman, Mr. Citizen (New York: Bernard Geiss and Associates, 1960), p. 267. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBruno Tertrais Bruno Tertrais is a senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris, France, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly

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