The following article argues that it's youth-- especially those on college campuses-- that can make a difference in the disarmament movement.
Written by Johan Bergenas. World Politics Review, July 30 2009.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4136
President Barack Obama's lofty pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons is off to a peculiar start. But the main reasons are not Kim Jong-il's nuclear saber-rattling on the Korean peninsula, the centrifuges continuing to spin in Iran, or even the political and technical reasons that skeptics highlight to mock President Obama's decision to recommit the U.S. to eliminating nuclear arsenals around the world.
Instead, the twin Achilles' heels of the "no nukes" quest are that patience, rather than urgency, is the prevailing attitude, and that the disarmament community has failed to engage youth movements as an antidote to the cynicism that permeates the entire debate.
While stating "clearly and with conviction" America's commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, President Obama has stressed "patience" as a key component moving forward. But patience is a weak guiding principle when trying to achieve great things, and emphasizing it vis-à-vis nuclear disarmament is in stark contrast to the president's rhetoric as a White House candidate. On the campaign trail, then-Sen. Obama spoke of "the fierce urgency of now" in addressing the most pressing national and international challenges.
To ask for urgency in moving toward zero nuclear weapons is not to say that the path from where we are today to a world without these destructive arms will be short and pain-free. But if the end goal really is to eliminate global nuclear arsenals, then to accept that it will be achieved "perhaps not in my lifetime," as Obama has said, is not so far from the fatalism he warned against in his
April 2009 Prague speech.
Passivity about a world without nuclear weapons is a chronic condition and often results in cynicism, which Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, calls the greatest obstacle to the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. Cirincione
recently called youth "the counter to cynicism," but the disarmament community, to a great extent, currently lacks a strong, broad and engaged youth constituency to support their work.
Cirincione is not the only high-profile authority in the field to recognize the value and need for a youth infusion. During the international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission's concluding session in Washington this spring, Hans Blix -- former chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission -- looked out over the half-empty room and noted that had the meeting been about global warming, it would likely have been teeming with younger people. Marching against global warming is fine, Blix said, but realizing that there is more then one "inconvenient truth" is crucial, he urged.
The lack of involvement by young people is a significant problem because, although the leaders and experts who were born, raised and socialized in the Cold War environment possess knowledge and experience, pushing back against political inertia and fighting cynicism have historically been achieved by the world's youth.
Fueled by their optimism and even opportunism -- much to gain, little to lose -- youth populations have defied tyrants, overthrown oppressive regimes and torn down theoretically impenetrable walls. In the last few years, youth groups have been essential to put the genocide in Darfur and climate change on the political map, and most recently the cohort helped America reject the cynical assumption that an African-American would never make it to the White House.
President Obama, too, stressed the power of youth in his
recent Cairo speech, where he said that "if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. . . . [Youth] more than anyone, have the ability to re-imagine the world, to remake this world." There is no reason to believe that the disarmament community -- fueled by moral conviction, confronted with a significant national and international security threat, and powered by a sitting U.S. president who himself has benefited greatly from youth movements -- cannot capitalize on this obvious source of energy to raise awareness, create political pressure and reject errant policies of the past. The success of the "zero nukes" movement is tied to its ability to reach this group.
How can this be done in practice?
Besides trying to widen and deepen nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament education on college campuses, initial practical steps that are in the hands of the disarmament movement can be taken to mobilize students.
First, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, who through their
January 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed revitalized the disarmament debate, could embark on a college lecture tour, bringing their message to students at college campuses all across the U.S. Their status and prestige would generate significant buzz at universities, and help move beyond the all-too-familiar political bickering currently poisoning the debate. While on the road, the four statesmen should encourage students to start local disarmament chapters and discussion groups and, in so doing, create a national network of committed activists.
Similar outreach campaigns can be carried out in other parts of the world -- for example, in Britain, where Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, David Owen and George Robertson,
wrote an op-ed on the same subject for the Times of London in June 2008. Russian leaders, including former President Mikhail Gorbachev, have also spoken out in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide and can play an analogous role to energize youth in Russia and beyond.
Second, the disarmament movement must increase youth representation -- currently largely absent -- at disarmament events, to make sure that this vital group gets a voice and a seat at the table during political, policy and educational forums. Policymakers, experts and educators must make a concerted effort to make sure the younger generation is not shut out of this process, lest it become as disillusioned about the end goal as their predecessors seem to be.
In short, the unconditional and urgent commitment to a world without nuclear weapons is the sine qua non of achieving it as a goal. Only a grassroots youth movement, one free from Cold War-era assumptions about nuclear weapons' centrality to national and international security, can power such an effort.
