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Strategy 17: Dismantling/Eliminating Nuclear Weapons

There are 40,640 nuclear weapons in the world.[120] Each one of these weapons has the capacity of leveling a city, not just a building, as conventional Oklahoma City type of terrorist bombs can and have. Thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people can be murdered with one device. Some nuclear weapons can be carried in a back-pack; all will fit in a truck. Such instruments of terror and genocide have no place in a moral, humane or even semi-intelligent world. Their presence compromises all human progress and makes a mockery of all religious, ethical and cultural codes and standards of behavior. There is no moral or economic argument for their existence. There are no valid "limited" or specific military targets for instruments of total or mass destruction. In a world where already 90% of the casualties in wars are civilians,[121] the use of nuclear weapons is genocide.[122]

It is technologically possible to eliminate the functionality of all the world's nuclear weapons in a few days. For example, given the official approval and access, teams of technicians (preferably American teams working on Russian nuclear stockpiles and Russian teams working on US stockpiles) could cut all the triggering and detonation wires and disassemble major nuclear weapon components in hours. Such a hypothetical move does not free the world of the nuclear menace, it merely reduces the chances of present nuclear bombs being used -- as does in a limited way the tediously slow dismantling of 2000 nuclear weapons per year that the START Treaty has the US and Russia doing currently. A more lasting solution is needed.

Stopping all testing of nuclear weapons, stopping the production of bomb materials, having open inspections of all nuclear power plants and facilities, and establishing a credible global security system is needed to insure that the elimination of nuclear weapons becomes a lasting part of the world. In addition, the hundreds of tons of plutonium and thousands of tons of highly enriched uranium that these bombs use as their explosive power need to be disposed of. One mechanism is to use a special nuclear power reactor that will consume this fuel, transforming it in the process to a form of uranium that cannot be used for weapons -- as well as producing electric power at the same time.

Biological and chemical weapons should be treated in a similar vein. Their status as outlawed methods of warfare should be renewed and their elimination from the planet dealt with as quickly as possible. But even with these threats to human well-being removed from the planet, a more lasting solution to genocide, war and armed conflict is needed.

The greatest threat to world security is from the potential of regional wars to escalate.[123] The violence from these could disrupt international commerce, unleash massive flows of refugees, create resource shortages, engulf surrounding states and wreck havoc on all the efforts to provide the basic human needs of the world's population. Ethnic and religious conflicts, border disputes, nationalist struggles and resource disputes need to be contained and abated. International arms sales, the strengthening of peacekeeping institutions, the promoting of social and economic development and regenerating the environment -- all the programs outlined in this report need to be implemented for peace to have a sustainable chance.

Costs/Benefits

The costs of implementing the above programs of nuclear weapons dismantling and processing of plutonium and enriched uranium into non-weapons grade material would cost $7 billion per year for ten years -- less than half the amount the Pentagon has spent over the last decade that can not be accounted for at all -- literally, according to the US General Accounting Office, the Pentagon does not know where this money went,[124] or about 0.09% of the world's current military expenditures, or 25% of the $28 billion spent each year in the "security industry" of private security guards, weapons and explosives detectors, video surveillance monitors, x-ray equipment and the like.

Benefits would include a world free of the environmental, economical, social, psychological and spiritual horror of a thermonuclear Armageddon or terrorist threat or attack.

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