This debate is taking place against a backdrop of widespread public apathy. The end of the Cold War has erased nuclear fears from most people's radar screens, as the threat of Armageddon has evaporated. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which contains a provision pledging to move towards elimination of nuclear weapons, was extended indefinitely in 1995. South Africa, Brazil, and the former Soviet republics have voluntarily given up nuclear weapons. And pending approval from the Senate, a new test ban treaty may go into effect.
Numbers are less important than removing nuclear weapons from hair-trigger status. . . .
Less is not necessarily safer. The superpower build-down has had little impact on regional rivalries which shape the calculus of nuclear wannabes. In the Middle East, it is unrealistic to expect Israel to give up its ultimate insurance policy until there is full-blown peace in the region, as the Iraq case underscores. Or suppose after Korean reunification the new regime in Seoul discovers that North Korea had indeed manufactured a couple of nuclear weapons and decided to keep them as an insurance policy against Japan or as leverage against China. In fact, China's status as a rising power that is only partly integrated in the current international order suggests that its nuclear behavior may be the single most important variable affecting the nuclear status quo in the early twenty- first century.