Bill Richardson on nuclear weapons

Citizens for Global Solutions : I was Energy Secretary under President Clinton. My department was responsible for the design, manufacture, and maintenance of our stockpile of nuclear weapons. These weapons are not abstractions to me: to see one of them is to be astounded that millions of deaths can be compressed into such a tiny package. To know intimately our nuclear arsenal is to know intimately how our species could destroy itself. Under my administration, we will lead the world toward the reduction of nuclear arsenals, not their augmentation.

I believe that the U.S. should work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. We know that Al Qaeda wants nuclear weapons. We know that Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan sold nuclear materials to rogue states, and we need to ensure that all of Pakistan’s nuclear material is safe and accounted for. We also know that parts of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal still are not secure, and that there are poorly-secured nuclear materials around the world. This is an existential problem. It is urgent. We need to free humanity from the threat of nuclear destruction. America cannot achieve this task alone, but it certainly cannot be done without American leadership, and this means a renewed U.S. commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty commits non-nuclear states to forego nuclear weapons, and it also commits the nuclear weapons states to the goal of nuclear disarmament. Too often, this aspect of the Treaty is forgotten. In order to get others to take the NPT seriously, we need to take it seriously ourselves. We should re-affirm our commitment to the long-term goal of global nuclear disarmament, and we should invite the Russians and others to join us in a moratorium on all new nuclear weapons. And we should negotiate further staged reductions in our arsenals, beyond what has already been agreed, over the next decade.

In a world in which nuclear terrorism rather than war with Russia is the main threat, reducing all nuclear arsenals—in a careful, orderly way—makes everyone safer. Moreover, negotiations to reduce our arsenal also represent our diplomatic ace-in-the-hole. We can leverage our own proposed reductions to get the other nuclear powers to do the same—and simultaneously get the non-nuclear powers to forego both weapons and nuclear fuel enrichment, and to agree to rigorous global safeguards and verification procedures.