Abstract
President Obama’s pledge during an April 2009 speech in Prague to eliminate nuclear weapons from the US arsenal has been condemned by many military strategists. There are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed with any nuclear reduction; unfortunately, many “nuclear hawks” create false, scary-sounding concerns to argue that disarmament is impractical. Dr. Charles E. Costanzo’s “What’s Wrong with Zero?” in the summer issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly is a recent and flamboyant ex­ample of this nuclear scaremongering. Dr. Costanzo claims that no other recognized nuclear weapons state (NWS) shares Obama’s disarmament goal. He emphasizes other NWSs’ modernization plans while ignoring how modest they seem compared to US modernization. He also neglected to observe the work these countries have already done to reduce their reli­ance on nuclear weapons. In many cases it is more than the United States’. An honest comparison of modernization plans and the history of nuclear disarmament treaties shows that despite President Obama’s stated desire to eliminate nuclear weapons, he will find more opposition domestically than abroad.
A common refrain of nuclear hawks is that other countries do not en­dorse Obama’s vision of nuclear disarmament. This is simply not true. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—which the five NWSs (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) ratified in 1970—mandates these countries to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons. Article VI states, “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessa­tion of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
The debate for the past 40 years has centered on finding the practical steps necessary to achieve this vision. At the 2010 NPT review conference, the NWSs explicitly reconfirmed their continued commitment.1 Obama’s Prague speech did not set a new policy agenda; it simply shifted focus back to a forgotten one.
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