WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s call Friday for a “world without nuclear weapons” brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s idealistic, unfulfilled dream of eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.
“Even with the Cold War now over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet,” Obama said in Strasbourg, France, in advance of laying out his ambitious goals in a speech in Prague on Sunday.
Few experts think it’s possible to totally eradicate nuclear weapons, and many say it wouldn’t be a good idea even if it could be done. But a full-throated program to drastically cut the world atomic arsenal carries support from scientists and even such realpolitik lions of foreign policy and arms control as George Schultz and Henry Kissinger.
Obama’s version of “global zero,” as the goal of a nuclear-free future is now called, will build on a promising agreement this week to renew arms-control talks with Russia.
