Reasons

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A related concern, discussed in technical literature well before 11 September 2001, is that nuclear weapons may

 

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sooner or later fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

 

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The recent explosions and casualties in London are yet another reminder of how the cycle of attack and response

 

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could escalate, unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

 

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The world's reigning power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence"

 

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that covers any contingency it chooses. The means of destruction are to be unlimited.

 

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US military expenditures approximate those of the rest of the world combined, while arms sales by 38 North American

 

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companies (one in Canada) account for more than 60 per cent of the world total (which has risen 25 per cent since 2002).

 

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There have been efforts to strengthen the thin thread on which survival hangs. The most important is the nuclear

 

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Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970. The regular five-year review conference of the NPT

 

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took place at the United Nations in May.

 

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The NPT has been facing collapse, primarily because of the failure of the nuclear states to live up to their obligation

 

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under Article VI to pursue "good faith" efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. The United States has led the way in

 

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refusal to abide by the Article VI obligations. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,

 

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emphasises that "reluctance by one party to fulfil its obligations breeds reluctance in others".

 

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President Jimmy Carter blasted the United States as "the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to

 

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be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only

 

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have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including

 

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anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating 'bunker buster' and perhaps some new 'small' bombs. They also have

 

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abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states".

 

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The thread has almost snapped in the years since Hiroshima, repeatedly. The best known case was the Cuban missile

 

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crisis of October 1962, "the most dangerous moment in human history", as Arthur Schlesinger, historian and former

 

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adviser to President John F Kennedy, observed in October 2002 at a retrospective conference in Havana.

 

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The world "came within a hair's breadth of nuclear disaster", recalls Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defence secretary,

 

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who also attended the retrospective. In the May-June issue of the magazine Foreign Policy, he accompanies this

 

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reminder with a renewed warning of "apocalypse soon".

 

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McNamara regards "current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully

 

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dangerous", creating "unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own", both the risk of "accidental or inadvertent

 

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nuclear launch", which is "unacceptably high", and of nuclear attack by terrorists. McNamara endorses the judgement

 

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of William Perry, President Bill Clinton's defence secretary, that "there is a greater than 50 per cent probability of a