Can the world denuclearise? Around 50 world leaders met in Washington at the Nuclear Security Summit to discuss ways to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack, whether in conventional warfare or by a terrorist group. The two-day summit was held with the lofty aim of a nuclear-free world. We are probably as far from such an aim as we have ever been. US President Barack Obama admitted in the fourth nuclear summit of his term that he had to straddle the fine line between improving the efficiency of the existing US nuclear warheads and his emphasis on non-proliferation. This was perhaps the reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin was also absent from the summit. The result was that no consequential agreement on reducing nuclear stockpiles could be made. The agreements reached to reduce stockpiles of enriched uranium from East European countries and removing enriched plutonium from Japan are rather tame. The US president was keen to highlight what has been gained in recent years. The year 2015 was a good one after a key breakthrough was made on Iran’s nuclear programme. With sanctions lifted and inspections back on the agenda, there was hope that nuclear diplomacy might work. However, it is in North Korea that nuclear diplomacy has continued to fail with the country marking the nuclear summit with a ballistic missile test of its own.
While Obama was keen to emphasise the threat of the ‘madman’ in the shape of Isis or North Korea, it should be worth recalling that the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare has been the US, in 1945. In 2001, it was US President George Bush who had proposed the use of bunker-busting tactical nuclear warheads in the war against the Afghan Taliban. The fear of a ‘nuclear holocaust’ is still as real as the fear of the so-called ‘dirty bomb.’ The threat of elected leaders going berserk is real. A big threat lies in the possibility of US Republican presidential candidacy hopeful Donald Trump becoming US president. Before the Nuclear Security Summit, Trump proposed that Western countries must loosen their strict controls on nuclear weapons. While these comments were met by a strong rebuke from Obama, the fact that a strong US presidential candidate could contemplate the use of nuclear weapons in conventional warfare should be disturbing. Nuclear disarmament is a worthy global agenda to pursue but the process must begin with those who are pushing it. The US and Russia took a positive step by deciding to cut their nuclear arsenals in the last decade, but given their number of warheads is in the thousands there is a long road ahead before we believe their commitment to nuclear disarmament. What the world must recognise is that nuclear weapons are a danger in warfare. The threat of the madman exists only as long as the technology exists. If the West is serious about disarmament, it will have to begin with itself.
