Nuclear Disarmament: Good Idea, But Difficult to Achieve

Derek Paul

© Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/

Nuclear disarmament has been suggested or demanded by very many people and organizations throughout the last 70 years. Yet I do not remember any scheme being presented by which such disarmament is to be attained. This brief paper has been written to start that very necessary discussion.

It is easy and natural to advocate the reduction of threat in a world with nuclear weapons.

But the omission of non-nuclear weapons leaves a large threat which could continue and increase indefinitely unless addressed. The mode of disarmament needs to be thought out in full detail. Today, the threats from many modern non-nuclear weapons are menacing, to say the least.

I suggest planned proportional reductions of the weapons and military personnel by all the heavily armed countries, merging into a more general scheme as the more lightly armed nations join in. My preliminary study proposed a nineteen-year disarmament scheme involving annual six percent reductions of the initial military budget. It might be wise, however, to begin with smaller annual reductions to avoid a failure in the overall process, which might bring it to a standstill. The six percent might thus best be achieved in several slowly increasing steps. The reason for choosing the military budget as a measure or indicator of what is needed is that it is inclusive.

Clearly a more rapid decline than my 19-years of reductions would be preferred However, it would be unwise to approve a much faster rate at the outset, when the difficulties and snags are still unknown. Correct planning would yield a reducing menace experienced by every country, whether weakly or heavily armed. This is easily proved.

I suggest that the disarmament would include nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, together with reductions of military personnel, and that any given nation would choose how much of each they would disarm in any given year, to achieve the required percentage. The reductions would thus be based on cost units: next year’s military budget compared with this year’s. Basing the disarmament on the military budget would imply looking at the total of investment in arms and military personnel. There would, of course, be substantial work involved in achieving the reductions. As disarmament progresses, additional employment of non-military kinds would need to be created as the personnel is reduced within the military. Creating the new employment as suggested here is more important than many may think, since an increasing unemployment could easily bring the whole process of disarmament to a standstill.

As disarmament progresses, the lightly armed countries would become involved in the same process. Ultimately, each country would need to judge what minimum armed forces it feels it must maintain. This level might vary from country to country.

Derek Paul is a retired physicist, author of works in ecological economics, and a former president of Science for Peace.