Election breathes new life into nuclear debate

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain, the new U.S. president will take over one of the most awesome of responsibilities -- his finger will be on the trigger of the country's huge nuclear arsenal.

In advance of the election, some of Washington's most influential national security thinkers have argued for a dramatic shift in U.S. policy, to actively pursue the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons from the Earth.

Many dismiss this goal as a dream, given the lack of trust among the nuclear weapons powers and the entrenched role that atomic weapons have in the global balance of power.

But Democratic front-runner Obama, who is leading in polls before Tuesday's election, endorsed it and his Republican rival John McCain said he hopes to move to "the lowest possible number" of U.S. nuclear weapons.

"I will not authorize the development of new nuclear weapons," Obama said in September. "And I will make the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide a central element of U.S. nuclear policy."

The debate, which dates back to the early days of the Cold War, was revived around the start of the election campaign in January 2007 when four Washington national security heavyweights published a call for a total ban.

They were Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, who served as secretaries of state in Republican administrations, William Perry, who was Democratic President Bill Clinton's defense secretary, and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, who has been advising Obama.

In 2008, they said their vision was supported by 14 more former top national security officials from recent administrations.

WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

George Perkovich, director of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment, says nuclear weapons can be banned even if they cannot be "disinvented" -- much like Nazi-style gas chambers.

"Those (gas chambers) haven't been disinvented but we don't have them around now and don't think they should be around and we're prepared to take action to enforce that," he told a Washington audience last week.

"The next American president should emphasize the goal of a world without nuclear weapons -- and really mean it," Perkovich said. Most nuclear weapons, which for many are a symbol of the Cold War, are still held by the United States and Russia.

President Ronald Reagan discussed the idea of a total abolition of the weapons in 1986 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -- to the shock of some of their advisers.

The 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty obliged the five declared nuclear weapons states -- China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States -- to work toward disarmament.

India, Pakistan and North Korea have all since tested nuclear weapons and Israel is widely assumed to have them. The United States accuses Iran of wanting to build a bomb, although Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.