A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM TO END NUCLEAR WEAPONS ADDICTION

The following steps should be taken by the nuclear weapons states prior to the end of the year 2000 to assure that we enter the 21st century with a full commitment to ending the nuclear weapons threat that now hangs over the heads of all humanity and clouds our future:

1. Publicly acknowledge the weaknesses and fallibilities of deterrence: that deterrence is only a theory and is clearly ineffective against an enemy who is irrational, unlocatable, or suicidal, and cannot assure against accidents, misperceptions, miscalculations, or terrorists.

2. Publicly acknowledge the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international law as stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and further acknowledge the obligation under international law for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

3. Publicly acknowledge the immorality of threatening to annihilate millions, even hundreds of millions, of people in the name of national security.

4. Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention to eliminate and prohibit all nuclear weapons.

5. Establish an international accounting system for all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials.

6. Sign and ratify to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and cease laboratory and subcritical nuclear tests designed to modernize and improve nuclear weapons systems.

7. Re-affirm the commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and cease efforts to violate that treaty by the deployment of national or theater missile defenses.

8. De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles.

9. Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.

10. Reduce nuclear arsenals in all nuclear weapons states to no more than 200 de-alerted and de-coupled nuclear weapons each by the year 2005, and place these weapons in internationally monitored storage sites.

11. Set forth a plan to complete the transition under international control and monitoring to zero nuclear weapons by 2020.

12. Reallocate the $35 billion currently being spent annually for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare.