Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

350<strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Reset</strong>: Arms Reduction and Nonproliferationa final goal of nuclear disarmament. 1 In light of the policy failuresof the Bush administration, this idea quickly captured the imaginationof people in the United States before spreading to the rest of theworld, bringing about a real renaissance in the topic of nuclear disarmamentin the consciousness of the international community andexpert research.In Russia, this topic has become the subject of a bitter strugglein scientific circles and the media between the pro-nuclear majorityand a minority of nuclear disarmament proponents, althoughthe goal of nuclear disarmament was officially reaffirmed at the firstsummit between Presidents Medvedev and Obama in London. 2It is difficult now to imagine a world without nuclear weapons,even over the long term. <strong>Nuclear</strong> deterrence has become the normalsituation for the great powers. It is integrally linked to their militaryand political relations and guarantees of security for their allies,and any change would meet with resistance from an enormousmilitary, strategic, political, and psychological momentum backedby the generally accepted opinion that the fear of nuclear catastrophehas protected the world from a Third World War over the fivedecades since 1945.Moreover, the opinion prevails in Russia that only nuclear weaponscan guarantee its security, given its lag in general purpose forces andin advanced technical systems as well as its geostrategic vulnerability.Both conservatives and liberals have frequently and with a certainamount of bravado denounced the old official USSR propaganda positionfavoring nuclear disarmament; nuclear weapons are now char-acterized as a “civilizing” factor in international relations.The idea that nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation are connectedis countered by the thesis that new members and “applicantsto the nuclear club” act only in their own self-interests. It is allegedthat not only would the nuclear disarmament of the great powers beof no interest to them, but that it might in fact incite them to acquirenuclear weapons by giving them a chance to stand up to theBig Five.There are, however, a number of important considerations thatcast doubt upon the validity of this conventional wisdom.