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facilitated,” they said, “by a clear statement of our ultimate goal.
Indeed, this is the only way to build the kind of international trust
and broad cooperation that will be required to effectively address
today’s threats. Without the vision of moving toward zero, we will
not find the essential cooperation required to stop our downward
spiral.”
The “downward spiral” has little to do with the nuclear strategic
relationship between the United States and Russia, although the
authors have, in both statements, called for ratification of the New
START Treaty. In fact, that relationship has declined in importance
to the point where it makes little difference whether the Russians
have more nuclear weapons or fewer than they have now. The
calculations of the consequences of a nuclear exchange between the
United States and Russia, a proper obsession during the Cold War,
are no longer relevant and, despite President Obama’s overblown
claims, the New START Treaty is of no substantial benefit.
What the “downward spiral” refers to is the world’s descent into the
dangerous disorder of a fast-growing number of nuclear-armed states—
North Korea already, with Iran and others to follow. It is the bloody
prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of irresponsible regimes, or
even terrorists, that has galvanized Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, and
Nunn, and which urges the development of a post–Cold War nuclear
weapons strategy.
In other words, the utopian vision of a world without nuclear
weapons is driven principally by the fear of nuclear proliferation. The
fear of many more nuclear weapon states is the key matter of concern
for serious people, not cutting or fine-balancing—Cold War style—
the US and Russian nuclear arsenals. The case for global zero hinges
on whether embracing that goal contributes to halting the
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
I worry that the commitment to global zero, and the actions of

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