Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
President Obama will lead a special Security Council session tomorrow at the United Nations to discuss how to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The World’s Katy Clark takes a look.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: As we heard earlier, one of the four pillars President Obama mentioned in his UN speech today was nuclear disarmament.  Tomorrow, Mr. Obama will lead a Security Council meeting on disarmament and non-proliferation.  The World’s Katy Clark considers whether the president’s goal of a nuclear-free world is within reach.

KATY CLARK: Barack Obama isn’t the first US president to long for a world free of nuclear weapons.

RONALD REAGAN [VOICE-OVER]: There is no higher moral goal than to rid the world of the nuclear nightmare.

CLARK: President Reagan said that back in 1983.  He didn’t achieve his goal of a nuclear-free world.  But Reagan did negotiate a treaty with the Soviet Union that eliminated intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.  President Obama said today that he plans to continue working with Russia to substantially reduce the number of warheads.  That’s significant considering that the United States and Russia possess more than 90-percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.  But Paul Saunders with the US.-Russian Relations Program at the Nixon Center says Washington and Moscow won’t eliminate nuclear weapons on their own.  He says simultaneous, multi-lateral talks with other nuclear nations like China, Britain, and France will also be needed.

PAUL SAUNDERS: Unfortunately, it gets even more challenging when you have to draw in some of the countries that are not acknowledged nuclear powers like Israel, or some of the countries that clearly have nuclear weapons but aren’t recognized as nuclear weapons states under the NPT like India, or Pakistan or North Korea.

CLARK: Even if multi-lateral talks are held, Notre Dame University professor Michael Desch doubts they would accomplish much.

MICHAEL DESCH: Countries develop nuclear weapons when they feel their security is in grave danger.  In a world of independent nation states, some states are always going to feel threatened.  So, the likelihood they would give up their ace in hole is pretty low in my view.

CLARK: Desch goes further.  He questions whether a de-nuclearized world should even be the goal.

DESCH: There’s a visceral horror at the destructive potential, especially of large nuclear arsenals.  But what people ignore is the synergy that results when two great powers have nuclear weapons.  The synergy is deterrence, and deterrence actually makes it less likely that those two states will come to blows.

CLARK: Still, non-proliferation expert George Perkovich with The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says relying on “mutually assured destruction” to continue keeping the world safe is a risky gamble.

GEORGE PERKOVICH: And that’s one of the things the President and others saying is, yes it may have worked so far, but if more and more actors have nuclear weapons, the probability that deterrence will fail, that something will go wrong and these weapons will go off…  That probability is growing over time.  And if and when that happened, it would be such a disaster that we’re better off protecting ourselves against that kind of disaster by getting rid of these weapons.

CLARK: Perkovich admits it’s a tough sell.  But he maintains that if President Obama can get the United States, Russia and others to talk about reducing their nuclear arsenals, that’s a start.  And momentum may be building.  Today, Britain’s prime minister said he’s prepared to scale back his country’s nuclear submarine missile fleet from four subs to three. For The World, this is Katy Clark.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.