Source: Abolition Debate Series

The Role of the PublicIn Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (2008), we posited that governments in nuclear-armed states with competing political parties probably would face charges of being weak and careless with national security if they took the last steps to eliminate nuclear arsenals. Opposing parties could always find ways in which verification and enforcement mechanisms could be stronger than those agreed multilaterally. This tendency appeared starkly in the U.S. Senate debate over ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999 and is present today in the negotiations of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on treaty.

Lawrence Freedman suggests that “if popular opinion becomes animated, it is as likely to serve as a brake on disarmament progress as an accelerator.” Moreover, public opinion is unlikely to be the same in all states, creating dilemmas that are intractable or at least extremely difficult to resolve, as Zia Mian trenchantly notes. Arguments that might convince the public of one nuclear-armed state that it will gain security in a world without nuclear weapons might communicate to other states that they would lose relative power in such a world. Mian avers that “some of the potential problems over nuclear-weapon abolition that result from arguments based purely on national security and national interest” could be overcome “by broadening the frame to include normative, moral, and legal considerations” that are universal and therefore do not convey relative advantage or disadvantage. This recommendation deserves to be taken seriously. Yet, it is probably arguments from security that will ultimately overcome the braking impulses of public opinion and opposition parties contemplating decisions by their leaders to relinquish nuclear weapons.

Historically, public movements to affect nuclear weapon policies have arisen in few states, primarily in the United Kingdom, the United States, and continental Europe. Some key nuclear-armed states do not allow independent public movements. Developments since President Barack Obama’s famous April 2009 Prague speech suggest that nuclear policy does not inspire significant numbers of citizens to mobilize, even where they are free to do so. An impressive array of former officials from many states have joined the Global Zero organization, but the issue remains the province of elites. This need not impede governments from adopting policies to reduce nuclear arsenals, strengthen the nonproliferation regime, and prepare conditions conducive to the multilateral elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet if such policies were to animate popular opposition to disarmament, as Freedman speculates they might, the question is whether countervailing public opinion would be mobilized in favor of it.  This is difficult to foresee especially in nuclear-armed states whose governments believe—publicly or privately—that nuclear disarmament would disadvantage them relative to their more powerful competitors.