Nuclear disarmament has become increasingly important as nuclear possessors continue to increase military spending on weapons modernization and maintenance programs rather than allocate funds to social and environmental programs.
Here you will find a compilation of legal analysis, articles, statements, letters, and books displaying the importance and urgency of nuclear disarmament. These resources include legal, moral, and ethical arguments in support of nuclear abolition as well as background information on disarmament-related issues.
These resources were largely produced by LCNP staff, board members, and advisors. They showcase LCNP’s extensive work on disarmament issues and provide useful insight into the primary legal rationale for nuclear disarmament.
Trump Administration’s “Hardball” Negotiation Tactics on New START Risk Nonproliferation Regime, Guy C. Quinlan, LCNP President, October 2020
LCNP letter to Vice President Biden, August 11, 2020
Renew Nuclear Arms Control, Don’t Destroy It, Andrew Lichterman and John Burroughs, IPS, January 2, 2019
Self-Assured Destruction: U.S. Defense Policy in the Nuclear Era, Guy C. Quinlan, LCNP President, Harvard Club of New York City, September 5, 2018
Nuclear Crossroads: The Urgent Need for Action to Prevent Catastrophe, IALANA, June 19, 2018 (PDF version here)
U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Racing: Still Crazy After All These Years, Andrew Lichterman and John Burroughs, Truthdig, March 16, 2018
A Prescription for Disaster: Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review, Guy Quinlan, LCNP President, and John Burroughs, Executive Director, March 12, 2018
Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review: A Call to Nuclear Arms, John Burroughs, The Simons Foundation Briefing Paper, February 26, 2018
Public Books Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons, February 26, 2018, with Rep. Jim McGovern, William Perry, Bruce Blair, Rosa Brooks, Kennette Benedict, Bruce Ackerman, Zia Mian, Hugh Gusterson, Sissela Bok, and John Burroughs
Despite assurances, only Trump stands between peace, nuclear war, John Burroughs, The Hill, November 21, 2017
North Korea: Solution or Disaster, IALANA Statement, Peter Weiss, President Emeritus; Peter Becker and Takeya Sasaki, Co-Presidents, October 10, 2017
Interview with Peter Weiss, Law and Disorder Radio, October 23, 2017
Peaceful Resolution of the U.S.-North Korean Confrontation: Lawful and Wise, LCNP Statement, April 25, 2017
Statement Opposing a US Green Light for Saudi Production of Nuclear Fuel, February 7, 2011
Letter: US Policy on the Spread of Enrichment and Reprocessing Technologies, March 14, 2012
William Perry: My Journey at the Nuclear Brink: All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City, October 24, 2016
In his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, former Secretary of Defense William Perry describes his lifelong passion to prevent nuclear war, including his experience as Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. With George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, he was co-author of a series of influential op-eds in the Wall Street Journal on the need to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons. He believes that the dangers posed by nuclear arms are now greater than ever, that action is urgently needed to reduce those dangers, and that nuclear weapons should be abolished as soon as possible.
Sponsored by: Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force, Peace Action of New York State
Controlling the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Michael Spies, Disarmament Times, Spring 2008, p.1
Model Nuclear Weapons Convention
In 2007, LCNP and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, in association with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, released a revised Model Nuclear Weapons Convention (Model NWC) drafted by an international consortium of lawyers, scientists, disarmament experts, physicians and activists. The original version was released in 1997.
The Model NWC was drafted to demonstrate the feasibility of the elimination of nuclear weapons and thus stimulate negotiations to that end. It prohibits the use, threat of use, possession, development, testing, deployment and transfer of nuclear weapons and provides a phased program for their elimination under effective international control. Its comprehensive provisions for the prohibition and monitored and verified elimination of nuclear weapons are similar in scope and design to those of the existing Chemical Weapons Convention. There is also a convention prohibiting the third type of “weapons of mass destruction,” biological weapons, but as yet there are no extensive verification procedures for that convention.
The proposal to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention received widespread support among governments (see below), but such negotiations have not commenced primarily due to the opposition of the Western nuclear weapon states and Russia. The Model NWC served as an inspiration for the initiative resulting in the 2017 adoption of a much simpler instrument, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The TPNW is primarily focused on the prohibition of nuclear arms as distinct from extensive and detailed provisions relating to their elimination, including regarding monitoring, verification, compliance inducement, and enforcement.
In 2007, Costa Rica and Malaysia submitted the updated Model NWC to the United Nations (see A/62/650), and Costa Rica also submitted it to the 2007 NPT PrepCom. A UN General Assembly resolution calling for negotiation of an NWC was adopted that year and every year from 1997 to 2016 under the title Follow-up to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. In recent years the resolution has been modified to refer to the TPNW. Another perennial General Assembly resolution, Follow-up to the 2013 high-level meeting of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament, calls for the urgent commencement of negotiations on a comprehensive convention on nuclear weapons.
The groups that drafted the Model NWC published it with commentary in the book Securing Our Survival (read online). Links to the Model NWC in multiple languages are provided here: ARABIC | CHINESE | ENGLISH | FRENCH | GERMAN | JAPANESE | RUSSIAN | SPANISH