From Union of Concerned Scientists at http://tinyurl.com/59xqbl
Nuclear weapons remain the gravest and most immediate threat to human civilization. Fifteen years after the end of the cold war, there are still some 25,000 nuclear weapons worldwide (the vast majority of which are in the U.S. and Russian arsenals). In late 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and thus became the most recent nation to cross the nuclear threshold. If the world remains on its current path, more nations will follow.
Eventually, terrorists will get the bomb. Current U.S. nuclear weapons policy is outdated, dangerous, and misguided. The United States maintains several thousand warheads on alert, able to be launched within a matter of minutes once the decision is made. The only conceivable purpose for the United States to maintain this many nuclear warheads on alert is to target Russian warheads. As a consequence, many of Russia’s warheads also remain on alert, giving rise to a real risk of an accidental or unauthorized attack, or a deliberate attack in response to a false warning. Such an attack could destroy the United States as a functioning society. Since 2001, the United States has asserted that it has the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively against nations that do not possess nuclear weapons, ironically providing a strong motivation for such nations to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent to a U.S. attack. Furthermore, the Bush administration is proposing an ambitious plan to replace the entire U.S. arsenal with a new generation of nuclear weapons and revitalize the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex.
The United States can—and must—lead the world in a different direction. Increasingly, this is being recognized by prominent foreign policy experts from both political parties. In a January 4, 2007, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz wrote, “We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal.” The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has held this position since 1969, when the organization was founded due in part to concern in the scientific community about the threat of nuclear weapons and the dangers posed by U.S. nuclear weapons policies. UCS continues to call for a fundamental reassessment of the role, purpose, and future of nuclear weapons and U.S. nuclear weapons policy. We promote U.S. policies that will lead to a world free of nuclear weapons and diminish the chance that existing weapons will be used. We are working to stimulate a broad, bipartisan national discussion and generate a political consensus for bold new U.S. leadership and policies.
