Nuclear Disarmament in an Armed World

Introduction

The term disarmament is sometimes used interchangeably with arms control. However, the terms do differ. Disarmament starts from the assumption that the existence of certain weapons leads states to perceive threats to their security. If a state feels threatened, it is more likely to go to war to protect its security. If the weapons are eliminated, so the argument goes, then states will have no cause to go to war (Barnet, 328).

By contrast, arms control presupposes that conflict will occur and that the roots of conflict may not be eliminated. Arms control, as described by the scholar Harald Muller in his 1994 book Nuclear NonProliferation and Global Order, endeavors to prevent an arms race, which “may indeed lead to war in the event of a crisis in which war might have been avoided if the antagonists had chosen different postures.” Thus, arms control seeks to limit which weapons are used in a conflict, whereas disarmament attempts to avoid conflicts aggravated by the existence of certain classes of weapons (Barnet, 325).

Forced disarmament resulting from the terms of surrender at the end of major wars occurs when the victorious state imposes restrictions on the military capabilities of the defeated state. In the 20th century, forced disarmament has most notably been imposed on Japan and Germany at the end of World War II. After the countries surrendered, the Allied powers imposed limitations on German and Japanese military forces (Wittner, 89). The Allied powers disbanded the Axis powers' armed forces, seized their naval fleets, and strictly prohibited them from developing nuclear weapons. The objective of forcing Germany and Japan to disarm was to prevent them from being a future threat to security (Domenici, 114).

Nuclear Disarmament & USA

Politically, the change of the 1950s resulted in President Kennedy's Test Ban Treaty in 1962. Socially, Nuclear Disarmament grew throughout the 1960s, in part via beatnik philosophies of world destruction through nuclear war. The Cold War resulted in elevated fear of nuclear attack, construction of backyard nuclear bomb shelters, and regular duck-and-cover drills in grade schools. The “ban the bomb” movement began in Britain, construction of missile bases were protested, and increasing controversy developed over construction of commercial nuclear power plants. In 1968 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed, placing commercial nuclear materials under the control of the Atomic Energy Commission (Dougherty, 48).

Although Nuclear Disarmament continued in the United States during the late 1960s and into the 1970s, some momentum was lost as many other social issues came to the forefront, such as the Vietnam War, women's rights, black rights, and many other environmental issues. One environmental issue that strongly affected Nuclear Disarmament was concerns about thermal pollution due to hot water discharge from nuclear power facility cooling systems. Although the effects of thermal pollution were minimal and have been corrected through regulation and improved technology, concerns about thermal pollution in the early 1970s led the way to environmental impact challenges of nuclear power facilities by citizen groups (Wittner, 91).

A resurgence of interest in ...