Speculative commentary on NPT, nuclear‑free world advocacy, and past WSJ articles

10 process requires—and that, in turn, depends on a consensus at the UN. For another, the NPT incorporates the utopian vision of global zero and even sails beyond it, calling for “general and complete disarmament that liquidates, in particular, nuclear weapons.” Since almost no governments anywhere in the world actually believe in “general and complete disarmament,” the effect of its inclusion in the NPT simply robs that treaty of any gravity. It is widely accepted among those who think the Non-Proliferation Treaty is the key to containing the spread of nuclear weapons that control of the international fuel cycle must be achieved by an international consensus and administered and enforced by the UN or comparable body. But suppose a much smaller group of nations—a coalition of the willing, perhaps—sought to control the nuclear fuel cycle, or at least deal with would-be proliferators in a firm, timely and decisive manner: Could such a coalition achieve legitimacy in light of the universalist conceit of the NPT? Would it even contemplate action outside the treaty? But what made the 2007 Wall Street Journal article so important was not its prescription for obviously necessary measures such as ensuring controls for nuclear fuel. It was that its appearance reinforced a growing utopianism that has flowered into a movement for “a world free of nuclear weapons,” a movement whose momentum is reminiscent of the 1980s movement for a “nuclear freeze” —a Soviet-manipulated protest aimed at halting Ronald Reagan’s modernization of the American nuclear deterrent. Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, and Nunn should have foreseen that their statement would be seized upon by irresponsible actors. All four, after all, opposed the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s. The goal of a nuclear-free world was made even more emphatic in a second article, also in the Wall Street Journal, that the authors wrote a year after the first one (January 15, 2008): “Progress must be HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023496