Daniel Poneman, a former U.S. Secretary of Energy—a position that includes supervision of America’s nuclear weapons—gave a talk called “Prospects for Nuclear Proliferation,” in which he argued that in an ever more dangerous world, the best chance for security is to bolster the U.S. deterrent.
In other words, build more and better weapons and delivery systems. Poneman advocated for more arms control. But is that not a performative contradiction?
An unworkable paradox has operated all along in American arms strategy and for other nuclear powers also: Build more so that one is in a better position to negotiate reductions.
While deterrence may have had some residual effect in making some nations more cautious, it contains a fatal dilemma: In order to never be used, everyone’s weapons must be kept on hair-trigger alert, and so they become accidental apocalypses waiting to happen.
Detonation of only a small fraction of nuclear weapons over large cities would be sufficient to raise enough soot into the upper atmosphere to bring on a decade-long nuclear winter.
One does not have to love one’s enemies to realize that one’s own survival depends upon their enemy’s and their enemy’s upon their own. That applies equally to both nuclear weapons and climate effects.
There are alternatives, some of which are politically risky, but their time has come. Four possibilities for our own nation:
First, the U.S. should stand down its entire land-based ballistic missile force, as a good-faith gesture toward the reality of what the future could look like with a change of direction.
Second, the U.S. should sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a further gesture toward a nuclear-free future.
Third, we should call an international conference of political, military and non-governmental stakeholders to explore the no-exit nature of our present direction on Earth.
Fourth, we are invited to elect political representatives that offer feasible plans for addressing climate change and are eager to work with other nations on agreements that ensure equal burden sharing.
When are we going to understand that power no longer resides in military might, but instead in mutual understanding of what leads to common survival? When we admit this to ourselves, the door to new visions of security will open.
Winslow Myers is a retired teacher and the co-author with Libby Traubman of ‘One: One Humanity, One Earth, One Future.’
