One Day University

The uranium and plutonium necessary to make nuclear weapons is shockingly abundant, enough worldwide to make 400,000 devices, each capable of killing millions. During the Cold War, a nuclear apocalypse was averted only by a combination of luck, prudence, deterrence, and arms control. However, the nuclear problem did not disappear with the Soviet Union; a grave new threat is now emerging. Weapons are spreading to more states, some rogues like North Korea and Iran, with unstable governments and regional revisionist agendas. Even more ominously, there is a growing possibility of the leakage of nuclear weapons capability to non-state terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda. These developments pose profound questions, which this lecture explores. Do nuclear weapons demand a world government of some sort, as many called for early in the nuclear era? Can political liberty survive in a world where governments are compelled to impose increasingly draconian measures of internal surveillance and control to contain nuclear materials and thwart those who might use them? Or can the nations of the world work out their differences and figure out a way to prevent catastrophe?