Strategic Assessment

In early January 2007, the global nuclear disarmament agenda received important support – indeed, new life – from an unlikely source. Four prominent and formerly high-ranking US officials  – George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn – published a piece in the Wall Street Journal under the title “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” The article, which seeks to rekindle the vision of abolishing nuclear weapons set forth by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986, immediately earned a high profile, and it has commanded increasing attention over the past year in US political discourse as well as in the broader arms control debate worldwide. The vision was underscored a year later by the four authors in a second piece entitled “Toward a Nuclear-Free World.”