Tad Daley
Foreign Policy in Focus / Op-Ed
Published: Tuesday 28 August 2012
“Citizen movements increasingly demonstrate their limitless promise.”

Can We Abolish Nuclear Weapons Before We Abolish War?

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In the end, what are nuclear weapons, but war writ large?

In 2011, people across the planet reached out to Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Millions watched as one nation after another rose in mass revolutions across the Arab world. The Occupy movement blossomed, as citizens in cities around the globe expressed rage over the excesses of capitalism and corporate power. And Timemagazine named "The Protester" its annual Person of the Year.

The world has never been smaller. Citizen movements increasingly demonstrate their limitless promise. So, think it sounds too dreamy to imagine that someday people power might transform our small world into one world -- a federal republic of the Earth?

Then read Lawrence Wittner's 2009 book, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (excerpted at Foreign Policy in Focus). And think again.



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ABOUT Tad Daley

Tad Daley is the author of Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers University Press), just released in paperback. He is currently working on a new book about the history and future of the ancient dream that something like a world republic could serve as the solution to the problem of war.

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1 comments on "Can We Abolish Nuclear Weapons Before We Abolish War?"

dville

August 28, 2012 10:13am

Neither war or atomic weapons are going away. The globe is becoming more populated by the second in an exponential rise. Soon we will be waring over water, as the more growth that we have on this planet the less water will become available. As was said 'War is inevitable'. We have a finite amount of fossil fuels.

Too much religious and ethnic waring rivalry that diplomacy will not resolve. Historically it has caused more deaths than for any other reason.

I don't believe the newborns child or great grand child will see a world without war or atomic weapons. That is unless we start grooming world leaders to realize that the planet is doomed until they start looking at our future objectively.