Publisher's Synopsis
As the President moves toward a nuclear free world, we must ask some very important questions about that journey: 1) Are there different negotiation considerations and dynamics in play when Russia and the United States go below 1,000 strategic warheads? 2) What are the implications of non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapons in the world security environment? 3) Finally, what are some potential implications for the United States nuclear force structure, and the impact on the role of nuclear deterrence as our national arsenal moves below 1,000 strategic warheads? A world free of nuclear weapons is a noble goal and a commitment we have as a nation in accordance with Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) as ratified by the United States in March 1970. Over the past 40 years, the United States has negotiated directly with the Soviets, and now the Russians, to reduce their nuclear arsenals. While negotiations were difficult, viewed from a distance these talks were very similar to Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This is not to say there was a one for one reduction in warheads between the two nations, but as one nation proposed an action to reduce weapons, the other responded with what they saw as an equal reduction while always maintaining the status quo balance of power. As we move into a period where the United States and Russian arsenals are perhaps reduced below 1,000 warheads, we leave Newtonian physics of equal and opposite actions and enter a new quantum physics world of negotiations with additional actors affecting strategic stability and crisis stability with implications we don't yet completely comprehend.
