Why are nuclear

weapons so hard
to get rid of?

1. guardrails (n) a. written or spoken communication or debate

b. in a clear and detailed manner, leaving no room for confusion or

2. nonproliferation (n)
doubt

3. abolitionist (n) c. nothing other than; unmitigated (used for emphasis)

4. discourse (n) d. portray in words; describe

5. underpinnings (n) e. the prevention of an increase or spread of something, especially the

number of countries possessing nuclear weapons

6. sheer (adj.)
f. able to be justified or forgiven; forgivable

7. explicitly (adv.) g. a railing guarding usually against danger

8. intrinsic (adj.) h. a set of ideas, motives, or devices which justify or form the basis for
something
9. excusable (adj.)
i. belonging naturally; essential

10. depict (v)

j. a person who favours the end of a practice or institution

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Why are nuclear weapons so
hard to get rid of?
Because they’re tied up in nuclear countries’
sense of right and wrong. -An opinion piece-
1 Every five years, the nearly 200 member states of
the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear
Weapons meet to review their progress – or lack
thereof. After being postponed because of the COVID-
19 pandemic, the monthlong conference is now
meeting in New York and opened with a stark
warning.
2 The world is “just one misunderstanding, one
miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
said Aug. 1, 2022, citing growing conflicts and
weakening “guardrails” against escalation.
3 The treaty has three core missions: preventing the
spread of nuclear weapons to states that do not have
them, ensuring civil nuclear energy programs do not
turn into weapons programs, and facilitating nuclear
disarmament. The last review conference, held in
2015, was widely regarded as a nonproliferation
success but a disarmament failure, with the five
members that possess nuclear weapons failing to
make progress toward eliminating their nuclear
arsenals, as promised in previous conferences.
4 At the heart of this dispute are states’ motivations for
keeping nuclear weapons – often perceived as rooted
in hard-nosed security strategy, by which morality is
irrelevant or even self-defeating.
5 To understand leaders’ motives – and therefore
effectively negotiate the elimination of nuclear
weapons – other scholars and I argue we must
acknowledge that policymakers express underlying
moral concerns as strategic concerns. History shows
that such moral concerns often form the foundations
of nuclear strategy, even if they’re deeply buried.
National values
6 It is easier for many people to see how the nuclear
abolitionist argument is fundamentally based in
morality. The fear of nuclear winter – or even a less
severe “nuclear autumn” – is rooted in the immorality
of killing millions of innocent people and devastating
the environment in long-lasting ways.
By contrast, a realistic and strategic approach to the
7
value of nuclear weapons has dominated security
discourse since the early Cold War era. This approach
argues that the primary purpose of nuclear weapons
is to deter adversaries from attacking vital national
security interests. If an attack does occur, then
nuclear weapons can be used to punish aggression in
a proportional way and caution other adversaries,
restoring nuclear deterrence.
Even so, according to political scientist Joseph Nye,
8
the assistant secretary of defense for international
security affairs under President Bill Clinton, a
strategist may pose as a moral skeptic but “tends to
smuggle his preferred values into foreign policy, often
in the form of narrow nationalism.”
Nationalism asserts the moral priority of one’s own
9
nation over others. Communities’ deep-held beliefs
are intimately woven into ideas about nationhood,
security and prestige.
10 In the United States, for example, the moral
underpinnings of American identity are deeply rooted
in the idea of being “a city on a hill”: an example the
rest of the world is watching. Americans are anxious
about losing their way, and many feel that their
country was once a force for good in the world, but
no longer. Thus, national survival is embraced as a
moral value, and deterring or defending against
aggression has strategic, political and moral
overtones.
Regardless of whether someone thinks these
11
concerns are justified, it is important to recognize
that, in their defenders’ view, they go beyond
strategy or sheer survival. They reflect societies’
foundational ideas about what is wrong and right –
their sense of morality.
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 Early motives
12 So how are these moral concerns applied to the
questions of nuclear weapons and their role in
security strategy?
17 Walzer described such situations as “supreme
emergency conditions,” in which ordinary moral
prohibitions against mass destruction are suspended
to ensure what political leaders see as the highest
value: national survival.

13 It is worth remembering what motivated President 18 This is self-preservation – but people often think
Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the development of
about that, too, as a moral concern. Social norms
the atomic bomb: the genocidal evil of Nazi German
against suicide, for example, imply that people have a
aggression in World War II and the knowledge that
moral duty to preserve their lives except under
Adolf Hitler had begun an atomic bomb program.
certain conditions, reflecting a belief that human life
has intrinsic moral value.
14 And when Nazi Germany had been defeated, the U.S.
justifications for using atomic bombs on the Japanese
19 Walzer did not claim that using nuclear weapons, or
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki centered on two
even threatening their use, was morally justified.
kinds of moral concerns. The most frequently invoked
However, he suggested they might be necessary for
was utilitarian: preventing a greater number of
national security, and therefore become morally
deaths in a land invasion of Japan. The second, not
excusable in supreme emergency situations. His
expressed as explicitly, viewed the atomic bombing as
argument has been very influential in government
a kind of moral punishment for the Japanese invasion
and academic circles.
of Pearl Harbor and the brutal treatment of Allied
prisoners of war. 20 Many critics claim that it is always immoral to use
nuclear weapons, since they cannot discriminate
15 In short, the motivations for the original atomic bomb
between soldiers and innocent civilians, including
program and its uses could not be described in solely
children, the elderly and the infirm. Moreover, the
“hard-nosed” strategic terms. As political
use of nuclear weapons cannot but bring social and
philosopher Michael Walzer has argued, both
environmental catastrophe, the kind that our darkest
morality and strategy are about justification: Both tell
dystopian novels and films depict. And if it is immoral
us what we should do or should not do, based on
to use nuclear weapons, it is immoral to threaten to
some set of values. And strategy is often used for
use them.
decision-makers’ moral aims, such as their goal to
defeat a genocidal regime. 21 But it is unsurprising that the leaders of the nuclear-
weapon states are ultimately committed to the
Morally excusable?
survival of their countries and peoples, even if others
16 Along with other scholars, I have argued that moral must pay an ultimate price. To fully appreciate
concerns also motivated the central role of nuclear nuclear motivations, we must understand the role of
deterrence policy during the Cold War. American this kind of moral concern in their decision-making.
policymakers portrayed Soviet communism, like
Nazism, as a politics of brute force that had no regard
for law or morals. Once the Soviet Union and China .
had acquired nuclear weapons, American analysts
came to believe that communism represented an
existential threat not only to U.S. security, but to
liberal democracy in general.

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Summarize the reason(s) the author states that prevent the elimination of nuclear weapons. Do
you agree or disagree with the author? Discuss why or why not.

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