GENERAL DISARMAMENT

With the end of the Cold War many traditional assumptions about national defense and foreign policy need to be re-examined. The current situation is complex and contradictory. The clash of superpowers seems to pose a diminished threat to the planet; but weapons-grade nuclear material is becoming available, and accidental nuclear war is still possible. Vicious ethnic wars, from the former Yugoslavia to Central Africa, are erupting, fueled by the multi- billion dollar global arms trade in light and major conventional weapons. In this fluid situation, alternative approaches to security dilemmas should be considered.

Mateja Prunk, 12 years old, Slovenia
(UN Photograph)

One of these approaches has been termed "general and complete disarmament" (GCD).

Most Americans do not realize that serious GCD proposals were once part of the mainstream political dialogue in this country. Such proposals were put forward by the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Especially important -- and perhaps newly relevant as we begin a new century -- were the 1962 McCloy-Zorin U.S./Soviet "Agreed Principles" for general and complete disarmament, and the 1961 State Department template, "Freedom from War."

Recently, renewed public discussion of nuclear abolition has come from such previously unlikely sources as Paul Nitze and Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, as well as from former heads of the Strategic Air Command and NATO. What could result is a recognition that in order to deal effectively with nuclear issues, one must also inevitably consider the question of conventional imbalances -- and hence, "general" nuclear-conventional disarmament schemes.