Book contents
- On Nuclear Weapons: Essays by Richard Falk on Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament
- On Nuclear Weapons: Essays by Richard Falk on Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword by Zia Mian
- Preface by Richard Falk
- Acknowledgments
- Part I International Law and World Order
- Part II Impacts of Democracy, Neutrality, and National Interest
- Part III Nuclear Policy Initiatives
- Contents
- 12 Arms Control, Foreign Policy, and Global Reform
- 13 The Illegitimacy of the Nonproliferation Regime
- 14 No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
- 15 Environmental Warfare and Ecocide
- Part IV Remembering the Past, Encountering the Future
- Index
13 - The Illegitimacy of the Nonproliferation Regime
from Part III - Nuclear Policy Initiatives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2019
- On Nuclear Weapons: Essays by Richard Falk on Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament
- On Nuclear Weapons: Essays by Richard Falk on Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword by Zia Mian
- Preface by Richard Falk
- Acknowledgments
- Part I International Law and World Order
- Part II Impacts of Democracy, Neutrality, and National Interest
- Part III Nuclear Policy Initiatives
- Contents
- 12 Arms Control, Foreign Policy, and Global Reform
- 13 The Illegitimacy of the Nonproliferation Regime
- 14 No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
- 15 Environmental Warfare and Ecocide
- Part IV Remembering the Past, Encountering the Future
- Index
Summary
There is a consensus in US policy-making circles that preventing the proliferation of nuclear weaponry is the top foreign-policy priority of the post-Cold War world. A typical assertion along these lines is that of Michael Mazzarr at the start of an article on US efforts to halt the North Korean nuclear weapons program: “Halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction has become, in the minds of many US officials and analysts, the dominant post-Cold War US national interest.” Even in the setting of US–Russian relations, the most important arms control goal has been articulated by a recent blue-ribbon panel of prominent specialists as “preventing nuclear anarchy,” by which is meant “leakage” to others from “Russia’s huge inventories of nuclear weapons and fissile material.” This preoccupation with proliferation also underlies the revival of support, this time with the surprising bipartisan backing by a Democratic president, of a defense shield that its proponents claim might sometime early in the next century provide protection against nuclear missiles launched by a country that had managed to acquire or produce a few nuclear warheads.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and DisarmamentSelected Writings of Richard Falk, pp. 244 - 253Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019