First, a growing alarm that despite all of the evidence, we have yet to fully grasp the monstrous effects of these weapons, that the consequences of their use defy reason, transcending time and space, poisoning the earth and deforming its inhabitants;
Second, a deepening dismay at the prolongation of cold War policies and practices in a world where our security interests have been utterly transformed;
Third, that foremost among these policies, deterrence reigns unchallenged, with its embedded assumption of hostility and associated preference for forces on high states of alert;
Fourth, an acute unease over renewed assertions of the utility of nuclear weapons, especially as regards response to chemical and biological attack;
Fifth, grave doubt that the present highly discriminatory regime of nuclear and non-nuclear states can long endure without a credible commitment by the nuclear powers to eliminate their arsenals; and
Finally, the horrific prospect of a world seething with enmities armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and hostage to maniacal leaders strongly disposed toward their use.

Many argue for the retention of nuclear weapons, either as fearsome weapons of last resort, or as a vital hedge against a resurgence of a hegemonic communism; to deter an attack by other weapons of mass destruction, or as a form of a retaliation against such attack.
To them I contend that proliferation cannot be contained in a world where a handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves the privilege of owning nuclear weapons and extol the ultimate security assurances they assert such weapons convey. That overt hedging against born-again. Soviet-style hard liners is as likely to engender as to discourage their resurrection. And that we cannot resort to the very acts we condemn. I regret to have to say that the harsh truth is that six years after the end of the Cold War we are still enmeshed in the apocalyptic vocabulary of mutual assured destruction, still in the thrall of the nuclear era. Even worse, strategists persists in conjuring up worlds which spiral toward chaos, and concocting threats which they assert can only be discouraged or expunged by the existence or employment of nuclear weapons. Indeed, I am dismayed, that even among more serious commentators the lessons of fifty years at the nuclear brink can still be so grievously misread, that the assertions and assumptions underpinning an era of desperate threats and risks prevail unchallenged, that handful of nations cling to the impossible notion that the power of nuclear weapons is so immense their use can be threatened with impunity, yet their proliferation contained. Albert Einstein recognized this hazardous but very human tendency many years ago, when he warned that the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled the catastrophe.

How else to explain the assertion that nuclear weapons will infallibly deter major war, in a world that survived the Cuban missile crisis no thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God? How else to accept the proposition that any civilized nation would respond to the act of a madman by adopting his methods? How otherwise to fathom a historical view that can witness the collapse of communism but fail to imagine a world rid of nuclear weapons? Or finally, to account for the assumption that because we are condemned to live with the knowledge of how to fabricate nuclear weapons, we are powerless to mount a global framework of verification and sanctions which will greatly reduce the likelihood or adequately deal with the consequences of cheating in a world free of nuclear weapons.

Many well meaning friends have counseled me that by championing elimination I risk setting the bar too high, providing an easy target for the cynical and diverting attention from the more immediately achievable. My response is that elimination is the only defensible goal and that goal matters enormously. First and foremost, all of the declared Nuclear Weapon States are formally committed to nuclear abolition in the letter and the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Every President of the United States since Dwight Eisenhower has publicly indorsed elimination. A clear and unequivocal commitment to elimination, sustained by concrete policy and measurable milestones, is essential to give credibility and substance to this long standing declaratory position. Such a commitment focuses analysis on a precise end state; all force postures above zero simply become way points along a path leading toward elimination. The goal matters enormously and the only defensible goal is elimination.
But let me say clearly, and unreservedly, that realistic prospects for elimination will evolve only over a number of years. They are still too rigidly conditioned by an arms control mentality deeply rooted in the Cold War. We fall too readily into the intellectual trap of judging the goal of elimination against current political conditions. We forget too quickly how seemingly intractable conflicts can suddenly yield under the weight of reason or with a change of leadership. We have lost sight too soon that in a blink of an historical eye the world we knew for a traumatic half-century has been utterly transformed.

Is it possible to forge a global consensus on the propositions that nuclear weapons have no defensible role; that the broader consequences of their employment transcend any asserted military utility; and that as true weapons of mass destruction, the case for their elimination is a thousand-fold stronger and more urgent than for deadly chemicals and viruses already widely declared immoral, illegitimate, subject to destruction and prohibited from any future production?
I am persuaded that such a consensus is not only possible, it is imperative. A renewed appreciation for the obscene power of a single nuclear weapon is coming back into focus as we confront the dismaying prospect of nuclear terror at the micro level. Clearly the world has begun to recoil from the nuclear abyss.