The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

transfer, will feed a black market in nuclear materials. Sooner or later, the wider availability of such weapons will lead to their use in combat between nations, or to attacks on major population cen- ters by terrorists. Then there are the economic and social consequences of a nuclear arms race to consider. There would be an exponentially greater availability of nuclear weapons for terrorists, meaning that borders must be made entry- proof for any illicit cargo. This would require significantly more intrusive police and intelligence activities. Their effects on all aspects of life in the United States would be stifling, and the econom- ic effects are likely to be very severe. Difficult though it would be, the alternative of negoti- ating a new nonproliferation contract is far superior to the alternatives. Undeniably, the NPT has helped deter some nations that were tempted to think about develop- ing or keeping nuclear weapons, such as Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Still, the handwriting on the wall tells us that the NPT is unlikely to remain an effective barrier against the creeping men- ace of nuclear terrorism, and that a new contract is need- ed to validate the basic bargain in stronger terms than the present treaty. The new accord should, at least operationally, super- sede two articles in the current Nuclear Nonpro- liferation Treaty. These are the undertakings by the nuclear weapons states to negotiate on nuclear disarma- ment (Article VI), and the right enjoyed by the non- nuclear weapons states to develop civilian nuclear power programs (Article IV) while refraining from using these programs to acquire nuclear weapons. Both arti- cles have been neglected or abused by a number of countries. The commitment to negotiate on nuclear dis- armament is no longer credible. Several countries have used civilian nuclear power programs to bring them- selves to the threshold of building nuclear weapons. Begin with Moscow The world is veering dangerously toward losing the struggle to prevent proliferation. To reverse this, the United States will have to lead the way to a new nuclear contract, one that must be nearly universal. At the core of future U.S. policy should be a bold American vision. In a Jan. 4 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissin- ger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Chair- man of the Senate Foreign Rela- tions Committee Sam Nunn — joined by several others, including the author of this article — endorsed “setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal.” The new agreement’s nuclear disarmament clauses must be more than nice words about intentions, and must apply to all the nuclear weapons states, and prob- ably the near-nuclear weapons states like Iran — not just Washington and Moscow, as in the past. But an understanding between the two nations that possess by far the largest arsenals is the place to begin. If the United States and Russia are perceived as working together in a serious way to roll back the world’s nuclear arsenals, that will help bring the other states possessing atomic weapons into the new struc- ture. And that, in turn, will help secure the other half of the contract: a binding commitment by those states not possessing such weapons never to acquire them, buttressed by guarantees that nuclear fuel will always be available when needed. A journey toward a world free of nuclear weapons has to start with the recognition that they are a drag on national security, not a boon, and that their use in any conflict should be the last resort, not the first. The case for prompt-launch, operationally deployed nuclear war- heads is of declining persuasiveness in today’s environ- ment, where the “use it or lose it” rule of the Cold War era has little relevance in the U.S.-Russia relationship and none at all in the case of terrorist attacks. Indicative of the trends, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command has said that he would like to deploy a “pre- cision global strike missile” for a fast response to a developing terrorist threat. But this would not be nuclear-armed; rather, it would be a conventionally F O C U S 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 The most serious potential sources of nuclear terror are the new weapons being built, the ones already stockpiled and the fissionable materials they use.