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The legacy of Reykjavik and the future of nuclear disarmament

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 67; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0096340211426507

1938-3282

Paul F. Walker, Jonathan Hunt,

Nuclear Issues and Defense

AbstractTwenty-five years ago in Reykjavik, Iceland, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev walked to the threshold of a nuclear-free world—and then turned back. Reykjavik has since become synonymous with the unforeseen and anticlimactic in nuclear diplomacy. Another feature of Reykjavik's legacy is less well-understood—its constructiveness. The authors contend that nuclear disarmament should serve as the public keystone of US efforts to reduce nuclear threats across the board and compare and contrast the geopolitical and diplomatic contexts of 1986 with today. The authors identify three historical parallels—fiscal pressures, nuclear accidents, and missile defense; and they identify three discontinuities—a transition from global bipolarity to multipolarity, a shift in US priorities from arms cuts to nonproliferation, and weakening support for international law in US domestic politics. From this comparative analysis, the authors deem Reykjavik to have imparted three core lessons: Disarmament agreements are achievable if the right conditions exist. Even if unrealized, good-faith disarmament efforts provide the diplomatic framework and global credibility needed for nuclear diplomacy to succeed. And Reykjavik's successes and shortfalls testify to the crucial importance of leadership in making progress on the entangled matters of nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament.Keywordsarms controlINF TreatyMikhail Gorbachevnuclear disarmamentReykjavikRonald ReaganSDISTART I FundingThis research benefited from summer research grants from the Department of History of the University of Texas at Austin and the Archer Center Graduate Program in Public Policy, and general support from Global Green USA.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAuthor biographiesPaul F. Walker is a political scientist who directs the Security and Sustainability Program at Global Green USA, the US national affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International. His expertise is in nonproliferation and arms control. Walker formerly served as a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee, where he was a senior adviser to the chairman and full committee, and as research director with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has spoken and published widely on US foreign and military policy, including "Abolishing chemical weapons globally" in Chemical Disarmament Quarterly and "Russian chemical weapons disarmament" in Protecting Against the Spread of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons.Jonathan R. Hunt is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is writing his dissertation, "Caging the atom: The making of the global nonproliferation regime, 1953–1968." He has been the beneficiary of numerous grants and fellowships from the Department of Education, the Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy presidential libraries, the Center for European Studies, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where last year he was a fellow of the George F. Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He has also served as a research assistant for the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.