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| Message from the Director | |
Nuclear weapons pose a unique threat to human survival unprecedented in human history. Permanent elimination of all nuclear weapons would wholly end this threat. Yet many today believe that the pursuit of nuclear disarmament is utopian: countries possessing nuclear arms show few signs of dispensing with them, key countries in the world without nuclear arms are seeking to attain them, and many countries with no nuclear aspirations nevertheless view nuclear possession as a tangible indicator of power projection and influence on the world stage. In this world, it is said, pursuit of the ideal of nuclear disarmament wastes political and intellectual resources on a desirable but unattainable ideal, while real needs for incremental progress on arms control and nonproliferation go unfilled.
The mission of the Simons Centre takes an opposite point of view: the ultimate objective of global nuclear disarmament is a prerequisite for any arms control and nonproliferation achievements to be sustainable. Inspired by the vision and commitment of its founder, Dr. Jennifer Simons, this mission recognizes the pursuit of nuclear disarmament to be a practical as well as moral imperative. Shorter term efforts even implicitly premising the indefinite legitimized possession of “responsible” nuclear arsenals or precursor technologies by selected states will remain inherently vulnerable to the political pressures and security tensions such inequity will perpetuate. Overcoming immediate nuclear challenges in ways that create tangible and enduring progress requires the vision of complete nuclear disarmament. If that long-term aspiration is idealistic, it is also an essential ingredient of realistic solutions to today’s most pressing nuclear dangers.
The Simons Centre mission further recognizes that the imperative of nuclear weapons elimination is embedded within, and inseparable from, the need to establish human security and global governance based on principles of law and democratic accountability. Hence, near-term progress on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control requires concordant near-term improvement in reducing and eliminating other means of mass violence and, especially, creating and expanding mechanisms of cooperative security and humane governance within states, among states, and across global civil society. Eliminating nuclear dangers and improving human governance are today more intimately linked and mutually dependent than ever before.
Dr Wade L Huntley
