nuclear disarmament

A political movement which emerged soon after the advent of nuclear weapons, demanding their control, the limitation of their spread to non-nuclear weapon states, and their eventual abolition. Although the US and Soviet governments had some success in reaching arms limitation treaties, such as the Partial Test-Ban Treaty (1963), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972, the US withdrew in 2002), and the Intermediate range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement (1987), mass political movements such as the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) continued to attract support during the 1980s, but their significance has declined with the emergence of post-Warsaw Pact E Europe.

Nuclear disarmament is the proposed undeployment and dismantling of nuclear weapons, particularly those of the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia) targeted on each other.

Proponents of nuclear disarmament said that it would lessen the probability of nuclear war occurring, especially accidentally. Critics of nuclear disarmament said that it would undermine the theory of deterrence, which has apparently kept the world free of nuclear war.

In the United States, where nuclear weapons were first created, the movement for disarmament had a few prominent proponents in the earliest days of the Cold War who argued that the creation of an international watchdog organization could be used to enforce a ban against the creation of nuclear weapons. During the 1960s, a much stronger popular movement against nuclear weapons began to develop, rallying primarily around the fear of nuclear fallout from nuclear testing. After the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), which prohibited atmospheric testing, the movement against nuclear weapons somewhat subsided by the 1970s (and was replaced in part by a movement against nuclear power).

Only one country has been known to ever dismantle their nuclear arsenal completely—the apartheid government of South Africa apparently developed half a dozen crude fission weapons during the 1980s, but they were dismantled in the early 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of former Soviet republics (Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) found themselves in possession of Soviet nuclear weapons, but they were apparently given to Russia (who took responsibility and ownership of the Soviet arsenal), though due to a clerical error it has been reported that Ukraine may still be in possession of some number of nuclear missiles. the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which advocated a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament in the United Kingdom together with the Labour Left, leading it to become Labour Party policy in 1960-61 and again in 1980-89.

In 1955, 11 leading scientists and intellectuals signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, warning of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and calling on world leaders to find peaceful solutions to international tensions.

The 1985 Nobel peace prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) advocates abolition of all nuclear weapons.