Abstract
“Just another weapon.” That's how many U.S. leaders viewed the atomic bomb in the years following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Historical precedent was on their side: Once a weapon is introduced, it is typically just a matter of time until it is widely accepted as legitimate.
Yet, that would not be the case with nuclear weapons, which came to be viewed as abhorrent weapons of mass destruction. The taboo against their use was the product of a gradual evolution in thinking, driven by the grassroots efforts of the global antinuclear movement; the stigmatization of nuclear weapons within the United Nations; a vociferous campaign waged by the non-nuclear, nonaligned states; the no-win nuclear stalemate of the Cold War, and, eventually, the institutionalization of arms control in the U.S. government as a means to stabilize relations between the superpowers.
The widespread sense of revulsion associated with this unique class of weapons helps explain why no leader has used a nuclear weapon in war since 1945, even against non-nuclear states. This taboo is also fundamental to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, which cannot be sustained over the long haul by sheer force, coercion, or physical denial.
Today, although the taboo on use remains strong, accumulating developments threaten to erode it: Russia's return to greater reliance on nuclear weapons in its defense policies, heated rhetoric from India and Pakistan, pursuit of nuclear weapons by North Korea and possibly by Iran, and the dismal failure of the May 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.
This erosion is also visible in the United States, which has nearly 6,000 operational nuclear warheads. In recent years, the U.S. government has endorsed doctrines that place renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons. These developments raise the question of how deeply the taboo has been internalized–and nowhere is this more evident than in the fate of government bureaucracies with institutional interests in arms restraint.
Starting in 1997, under pressure from a housecleaning Republican Congress, the U.S. government dismantled the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), an independent agency created in 1961, and folded its duties into the State Department, where it became the Bureau of Arms Control. In July 2005, the Bureau of Arms Control was eliminated. The relevant agency is now the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation–the phrase “arms control” is gone.
Who advocates for the stigmatization of nuclear weapons within the U.S. government today? As in the old adage about bureaucracies, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” In the 1960s, the ACDA was a forceful advocate for the NPT, arguing against the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission, which wanted to preserve “peaceful nuclear explosions,” and even against the State Department, which sided with friendly countries hoping to retain the nuclear option.
Today, no U.S. agency is devoted to nuclear self-restraint, and the unsurprising consequence is that U.S. policy appears to imply that the taboo does not apply to the weapons themselves but rather to who has them.
What's needed now is the modern-day equivalent of the ACDA, a sort of Bureau of the Nuclear Taboo, if you will, to serve as an independent watchdog. Its job would be to publicly identify and advocate policies (such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) that reinforce the stigmatization of nuclear weapons and to oppose measures that would further legitimize them. And like the Environmental Protection Agency, which comments on the environmental impact of various government initiatives, this bureau would file impact reports evaluating the consequences of proposed nuclear weapons policies and doctrines.
An unrealistic proposal? Perhaps. But just as proposals for a Department of Peace, once viewed with amusement, have now picked up 60 votes in the House of Representatives, such an idea might generate support. At minimum, it would put the issue back on the agenda. Nuclear restraint cannot depend solely on the wise judgment of elected leaders but must be built into the institutions of governance themselves.