By Jayantha Dhanapala

Jayantha Dhanapala, chair of the UN University Council

The vision of a nuclear weapon-free world was most famously dismissed by the former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, as a “pie in the sky.” Such was the derision which greeted the disarmament scenario championed by governments, especially from the Non-aligned Movement, as well as nongovernmental organizations such as Pugwash.

It is therefore a revolutionary change to see senior officials in former U.S. Administrations combine to write – not one but two –pieces in the conservative Wall Street Journal, calling for such pie in the sky.

In the past, other senior members of U.S. Administrations, like Robert McNamara, and retired military top brass, like Gen. Lee Butler, have also experienced epiphanies and recanted their views on nuclear weapons.

What distinguishes this year-long initiative by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and William Perry is the fact that they have been able to gather a number of distinguished U.S. individuals like Madeleine Albright, James Baker III, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Warren Christopher and Colin Powell behind them with a group of scholars in Stanford University’s Hoover Institution providing the scientific expertise.

The influence of this extraordinary initiative is beginning to percolate in the campaigns for the U.S. presidential elections and the policies of other countries like Britain. At the end of February, the Norwegian government hosted a meeting of global experts in Oslo to carry the initiative further.

A major aim of the initiative is to make the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world into “a joint enterprise.”

The need for broader support is obvious. Not only do many of the nuclear weapon states (NWS) and NATO retain policies for the first use of nuclear weapons, but some also have plans for preemptive strikes and the building of new weapons with the specific intent of violating the taboo that has existed since the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has long stood against proliferation and represented a hope for nuclear disarmament is now in grave jeopardy.

There are no ongoing negotiations for nuclear weapons reductions; negotiations about the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran are still inconclusive, and there is growing evidence of terrorist groups seeking access to nuclear weapons technology and materials.

Faced with this seemingly entrenched attitude in favor of nuclear weapons and their use, broader support for an initiative that will eventually lead to the elimination of the world’s 26,000 nuclear weapons must come primarily from the governments and peoples of the NWS, two of which, the United States and Russia–who own 95 percent of the weapons–will soon have new presidents.

At the same time the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and their citizens also have a right, and indeed an obligation, to take steps that will help usher in a nuclear weapons-free world.

The NNWS do not, however, form a monolithic group. There are the NNWS who are allied to NWS and who, like Japan, enjoy the benefits of a security umbrella by belonging to a security pact or, like Canada, to a security alliance (NATO) with “nuclear sharing” arrangements.

The NATO summits in April 2008 and again on the 60th anniversary of the alliance in 2009 will enable a review of the 1999 Strategic Concept.

The involvement of some NNWS in ballistic missile defense plans clearly linked to nuclear weapons strategy is another factor compromising these NNWS.

But we do have a unique opportunity where the fulfillment of the reciprocal, albeit asymmetrical, obligations of the nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” can together help to usher in a nuclear weapons-free world. This is the “partnership” the Wall Street Journal articles call for.

A new U.S. president can take the lead. But for this United States leadership to be effective, the support for the Shultz/Kissinger/Nunn/Perry initiative must also come from other NWS and the NNWS.

Sweden sponsored the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC), chaired by the respected Hans Blix, which proposed a world summit on disarmament, nonproliferation and terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.

The time is right to prepare for this summit in 2009. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

As the Blix Report noted, “So long as any state has such weapons–especially nuclear weapons–others will want them.

“So long as any such weapons remain in any state’s arsenal, there is a high risk they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic.”

• Jayantha Dhanapala is chair of UN University Council, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Simons Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. He is a former ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States and former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs. This article first appeared in the IHT/Asahi Shimbun on March 20.