After the speech of the President of the United States in Prague about a world free from nuclear weapons during April 2009, it seemed like the campaign against nuclear weapons will gain momentum. After the statements on nuclear weapons made by the US and her one time rival, Russia, people expected to truly see a positive mass movement that would eventually lead to an overall policy change on nuclear weapons. The hope was spawned by the initiative taken up by the world leaders to decrease their pile of nuclear arsenal. But with the sad developments around the world and the distrust among the nations increasing, is disarmament a realistic possibility?

With North Korea testing nuclear weapons and the lack of Iranian cooperation with inspectors from the west, the nuclear threat today is very different from the Cold War era. The distrust among these nations and the widening divide don’t leave any breathing space for hope of a nuclear weapons free world. There are still thousands of nuclear weapons in possession of the super powers and some countries, sensing the potential threat, will keep trying to build nuclear arsenals to desist the possibility of being arm twisted to act against their will.

With the need for disarmament of nuclear weapons gaining popularity as one of the key factors for lasting global peace, the world must raise it’s collective voice so that the statements and promises made by the leaders can lead to some concrete actions and don’t just add to an ever increasing pile of rhetoric. For that to happen , the antinuclear organizations working towards ending the nuclear rat race have to come together and speak in one voice and create mass awareness through campaigns beginning from the schools, explaining the need for an arms equilibrium for a lasting global peace. The threat of the nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the terrorists is another concern that keeps the nations from taking irreversible steps towards nuclear disarmaments.

However, using nuclear technology for meeting the civilian energy needs in the developing and the developed world is a different issue. Fifteen percent of world’s total energy needs are met by nuclear energy and the contribution of nuclear power is slated to rise exponentially in the next decade. While using nuclear energy for peaceful developmental projects is the need of the century, enriching nuclear fuel for building nuclear arsenal needs to be clogged before every other country feels the need to join the nuclear bandwagon to shield itself from a neighboring nuclear power.