Disarming Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Nuclear weapons occupy the highest rung on the ladder of military cowardice. Nuclear proliferation and the globalization of nuclear arsenals is the flip-side of nuclear disarmament. General George Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the United States (US) Strategic Command, who was in charge of all US nuclear weapons, has expressed his deep concerns about deterrence. There has been a high degree of concern for nuclear terrorism, but nuclear terrorism has been practiced by the nuclear weapons states. If terrorism is the threat or use of violence to achieve political goals—especially if it results in injuring or killing innocent people—then the nuclear weapons states are by definition terrorists. In the Nuclear Age, the US began testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, including in the Trust Territories that had been assigned to it by the United Nations. The US and USSR, Russia, as well as other nuclear weapons states, also appropriated the global commons for their nuclear forces.