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World government need not be invoked in considerations of abolishing nuclear weapons. Instead, nuclear abolition can be a realistic organizing principle of states seeking to balance and order their relations in ways that remove the threats of mass destruction.
Although there is no precedent for a preventive UN Security Council resolution, it should be more effective in making clear to Iran the negative consequences of its actions than any post facto curative measure.
U.S. Secretary of State Clinton leaves for Moscow for a Quartet meeting on efforts to revive Israeli–Palestinian peace talks. She will also meet with President Medvedev to address the bilateral agenda, not least the successor agreement to START and Iran's nuclear program.
The goal of nuclear superiority is unattainable. Instead, the United States can enhance its security by giving nuclear-armed adversaries strong incentives for restraint in a crisis.
More than ever, preventing nuclear weapons proliferation requires cooperation among the United States, Russia, and China, plus emerging powers. To achieve this cooperation, measures must be crafted to uphold the bargain between disarmament and nonproliferation.
While Russian leaders support the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons in theory, the Russian security community is still committed to the principle of nuclear deterrence.
Opponents of the START follow-on agreement are employing scare tactics to impede Senate ratification of the treaty at the long-term risk of imperiling national security.
Recent arguments against a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany are based on anachronistic perceptions regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons capacity, but bring up important points concerning broader implications for nuclear disarmament.
A treaty to replace the expired START agreement is an essential step not only toward global nuclear disarmament, but also toward managing the risks associated with Russia's nuclear arsenal, which still poses the single greatest existential threat to the United States.
Although the atomic bomb poses profound challenges to American constitutional governance, the post-Cold War environment should allow alternative ways to balance nuclear deterrence with a deliberative decision-making process that does not put nuclear weapons solely in the hands of the executive branch.