LONDON – Presumably President Vladimir Putin had prepared the disarmament statement he issued on Monday for delivery to the next president of the United States. In the event, he decided not to put it on ice but seized the moment, perhaps aware that for the first time in almost a decade the debate about nuclear disarmament in the American foreign policy community was beginning to open up after the Clinton-induced freeze ( or was it simply torpor?).

It was Jonathan Schell’s long article two month’s ago in the establishment’s favourite foreign policy magazine, Foreign Affairs, that has brought a simmering debate to the boil. Schell did this once twenty years ago with an article in the New Yorker that was quoted the world over but, alas, to no lasting effect. On this occasion the magazine of publication is a better platform. Moreover the timing is perfect. For not only, as Putin makes clear, is Moscow prepared to drastically reduce its stockpile of nuclear missiles, there are powerful, often ex-military voices, in the U.S. advocating the same course for America. Putin’s call was not just for further cuts than the U.S. suggested ceiling of 2,500 for each side (there are about 7,000 at present) but for reductions far below Moscow’s previous target of 1,500. Indeed, from the way Putin put it, he may well have in mind the same kind of deal that Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan hatched at their summit in Reykjavic, a stockpile approaching zero.

That momentous unconsummated plan was Reagan’s brain child – he forsaw a world with perfect missile defences (the so-called Star Wars concept) side by side with the abolition of nuclear weapons by the superpowers. But the moment Reagan’s advisors got wind of what he was hatching with Gorbachev they moved to squelch it, arguing its lack of feasibility and rubbishing its practicality, as they do regularly with any creative proposal that has wound its way through the labyrinth of inter agency review. Interestingly, the only time a major initiative of a unilateral nature won through was when President George Bush, very strongly placed after the demise of the Cold War, secretly hatched a plan to take U.S. nuclear bombers off alert and remove tactical nuclear weapons from service- no one in the bureaucracy or the Senate had time to try and outmanoeuvre him.

According to George Perkovich, writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, 1961 was the last time that the U.S. government- led then by John F. Kennedy- took nuclear disarmament seriously enough to explore how to make it feasible. Although the Clinton Administration called for a “fundamental re-examination” of nuclear doctrine the initiative suffered from presidential inattention and Clinton’s “reluctance to challenge Washington’s odd couple of Pentagon bureaucrats and myopic and doctrinaire senators”

Yet it is not entirely the Pentagon’s fault. The web of civilian experts that stretches from inside the bureaucracy to the Senate to the universities to the specialist think tanks to the arms manufacturers produces a hardened force of opinion, almost immune to any counter-strike. As General Eugene Habiger, the recently retired commander in chief of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, put it, “We have reached the point where the senior military generals responsible for nuclear forces are advocating more vocally, more vehemently, than our politicians to get down to lower and lower weapons.” His predecessor General George Lee Butler goes even further both in wanting to totally eliminate nuclear weapons and in highlighting the savage tactics used by the pro nuclear lobby to publicly destroy the image and credibility of any high profile anti-nuclear campaigner.

Public opinion throughout the western world appears to be in a state of serendipity when it comes to nuclear weapons. Something will come along from somewhere and make the world safe from nuclear war. But reality is far different. Russian nuclear forces are deteriorating, both materially and in their command and control systems. By the day an unauthorised launch becomes more likely. The Chinese-Taiwan situation could sometime in the next few years erupt into a major military crisis, pushing the U.S. to confront China, a situation that could lead to two nuclear-armed powers firing missiles at each other. Nuclear proliferation, as we have seen the last two years, is becoming more and more likely and Kashmir and the Middle East remain nuclear tinderboxes.

But beyond that is the creeping hostility that much of the rest of the world feels as Washington presses its superfluous nuclear advantage. By making no effort to deliver on what it has publicly and solemnly promised a number of times- and once again earlier this year- to initiate serious nuclear disarmament- it encourages other states to resist American foreign policy goals, given half a chance. Even good friends such as Canada, France, Germany and Sweden get gripped with this anti-American angst from time to time. It doesn’t augur well for long term American interests if the country’s leadership is regarded as arrogant and needlessly militaristic.

President Putin has rightly seized his moment. Can Bush or Gore seize their’s? A statement of intent in reply, as they hunker in their bunkers awaiting the electorate’s verdict, would be a welcome sign that they are still in touch with reality.

I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com