Answers + Evidence

The abolition of nuclear weapons is an idea whose time has come, and a future we must achieve. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still a lot of questions.

Fortunately, we’ve got answers. Check out our Q&A, below — and learn why abolition is getting such strong, nonpartisan support that even skeptics have to give it a fair hearing. Want to take the answers with you? Download our formatted factsheet.

If you’ve got a question that we haven’t answered, be sure to let us know by clicking the box to the right. We’ll do our best to respond — and we might even add your question to the list of Answers + Evidence.

why abolish nuclear weapons?

Former Cold Warriors like George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn warn that we are at a nuclear “tipping point.” In the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, the nuclear powers agreed to abolish their arsenals someday if the non-nuclear states refrained from building their own weapons. Now, nearly two decades after the Cold War’s end, the non-nuclear powers are growing impatient with a two-tier world of nuclear haves and have-nots. This dynamic threatens nuclear breakout; breakout means less control over the material needed for a bomb; less control means an increasing likelihood of use and eventual disaster through war, accident, or terrorism.

We’re committed by our own national law to pursue disarmament. Even more pressing, however, is the fact that the old status quo cannot hold much longer. The only alternative is to work deliberately toward the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. If, in a misguided attempt to maintain our own security by retaining our own nuclear arsenal indefinitely, we will not be able to contain the very proliferation that would itself be the most catastrophic security risk we can imagine.