Should nuclear weapons be abolished?
A debate over whether eliminating nuclear arsenals would make the world safer, or whether deterrence prevents great-power war and abolition is both unverifiable and destabilizing.
Overview
The nuclear question pits two visions of safety against each other. Abolitionists see weapons capable of ending civilization as an unacceptable risk that should be eliminated; deterrence theorists credit those same weapons with preventing major war for eighty years and fear that disarmament would invite it.
Much of the disagreement is about counterfactuals and verification: whether the 'long peace' was caused by deterrence, and whether abolition could ever be verified and enforced in a world of rival states and hidden programs.
The strongest arguments on each side
The case for Abolish
- Catastrophic risk. Any use, by accident, miscalculation, or malice, could kill millions and threaten global civilization, an unacceptable standing danger.
- Accident and miscalculation. Numerous near-misses show deterrence depends on flawless judgment and technology under pressure, which cannot be guaranteed indefinitely.
- Proliferation spiral. As long as some states keep arsenals, others seek them, so only abolition durably halts the spread.
- Moral status. Weapons designed to incinerate cities and civilians are inherently indiscriminate and, abolitionists argue, fundamentally immoral.
The case for Deterrence
- Deterrence works. Mutual vulnerability has plausibly deterred great-power war since 1945, a record disarmament might jeopardize.
- Verification problem. A state could secretly retain or rebuild weapons, so a disarmed world might be more dangerous, vulnerable to a sudden monopoly.
- Conventional war returns. Without the nuclear shadow, large-scale conventional wars between major powers could again become thinkable.
- Stability over idealism. Critics favor arms control and risk reduction over abolition, which they see as unattainable given great-power rivalry.
Key thinkers
- Thomas SchellingTheorized deterrence and the strategy of conflict.
- Ward WilsonChallenged the case that nuclear weapons keep the peace.
- Kenneth WaltzArgued, controversially, that proliferation can stabilize.
- Beatrice FihnLed ICAN's campaign for a nuclear-ban treaty.
Common fallacies to avoid
- Affirming deterrence by survivorship. Crediting weapons with peace simply because catastrophe has not yet occurred.
- Utopian leap. Assuming abolition is achievable without confronting verification and enforcement.
- False dilemma. Framing the choice as total abolition versus unlimited arsenals, ignoring arms control.
A short history of the debate
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War produced massive arsenals and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, alongside arms-control treaties like the NPT (1968) and later START agreements.
Post-Cold-War cuts reduced stockpiles, but the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, opposed by the nuclear states, and renewed great-power tension have revived the abolition-versus-deterrence debate.