President-elect Obama and nuclear disarmament between elimination and restraint

In the now famous articles of January 2007 and 2008 in the Wall Street Journal, the 'Gang of Four' former US statesmen called on governments to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Their intervention has been followed in the United States by a flurry of conferences and publications on nuclear disarmament, with esteemed organizations such as the Federation of American Scientists, Stanford and Princeton Universities, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Stimson Center and the Arms Control Association entering the fray. The force of their ideas became evident when presidential candidates from both the Democratic and Republican Parties felt obliged to issue statements lending at least some support to the Gang of Four and its aspirations. The calls on the next administration to lead the way towards a 'world free of nuclear weapons' mark the emergence of a significant political movement in the United States. Achieving such a world is not just the fancy of groups of idealists that have marginal influence in US politics. Nor is the attention that nuclear disarmament is now receiving primarily a response to longstanding international pressures on the US and other nuclear weapon states to engage with the issue. It is coming from within - from the judgements of an increasingly influential elite on where US and international interests now lie. Although this elite has its critics, it is currently in the ascendant. The pursuit of nuclear disarmament by the US government has been given a blessing of sorts in President-elect Obama's statement that: 'As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will retain a strong deterrent. But we'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy'. There is obvious caution in these words. They imply that the US is unlikely to take radical, unilateral steps to disarm, and that any embrace of nuclear disarmament will have to be collective. They also seem designed to appeal to a broad range of opinion inside and outside the US Government. But the new American emphasis on elimination is unmistakable. Obama's statement nevertheless begs many questions. Three will be considered in this paper. Why has the goal of nuclear disarmament emerged as 'a central element' in US nuclear policy at this time? How achievable is it? If the obstacles are acknowledged to be formidable and possibly insurmountable, what is the new US administration likely to settle for - what indeed may become its true objectives? (author)