Nuclear disarmament: step by careful step

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/26/nuclear-disarmament-step-by-step-editorial

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It has long been widely accepted that nuclear weapons are, as one American general put it years ago, "increasingly a danger rather than a benefit or a source of strength". The problem has been to move from that perception to the concrete measures required if the danger is to be reduced to the minimum possible, given that the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons cannot be wished away.

It is to President Barack Obama's credit that he has made the achievement of Global Zero, a world free of all nuclear weapons, one of the special objectives of his presidency. There has, of course, always been rhetoric of this kind, even during the worst years of the cold war, but Mr Obama has given it an edge it previously lacked. Since his Prague speech on nuclear disarmament in 2009, he has shifted attitudes both in the United States and internationally, changing the context in which these issues are debated. He moved things further on in South Korea by stating more forthrightly than he has in the past that the United States has more nuclear weapons than it needs – quite a courageous underlining of his position when there are Republican adversaries more than ready to denounce him for endangering American security.

Secondly, by linking American, Russian, and, potentially, Chinese reductions so clearly with the need to prevent nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands, which is the subject of the international summit he is attending in Seoul, he has emphasised that disarmament cannot and should not be compartmentalised. Thirdly, he has encouraged an approach, exemplified by this conference, in which all countries can make their suggestions and contributions about preventative measures that are likely to be more fruitful than the top-down model in which the powerful craft a control regime and try to impose it. His next big step will be to decide on the reductions in strategic weapons he wants to discuss with Vladimir Putin, who will have just been inaugurated as president when the two men attend the G8 meeting at Camp David in May. Mr Obama wants to go down from the 1,550 strategic warheads for each side agreed in 2010 to a lower level. Rumour in Washington has suggested a radical drop to 300, but it would be politically safer, although still not without risk, for Mr Obama to settle on a figure around 1,000.

The Russians are likely to go along, while raising difficult issues about tactical nukes and advanced conventional weapons. North Korea grabbed the headlines yesterday with plans for a rocket launch and Mr Obama also had a predictable warning for Iran, but the incremental improvements to the nuclear landscape which he has been trying, with some success, to fashion are more worthy of emphasis this week than these pro forma strictures.