NUKES: Retired Experts Should Negotiate A Disarmament Treaty

Once they retire, nuclear weapons experts are liberated to look at this threat in new ways.

What if retired out of office diplomats, politicians and technical experts from both America and Russia sat down to negotiate a disarmament treaty they think might work?

We'd all like the American and Russian governments to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. But at least for the moment, that's not happening.

Could this be the next best thing?

Retired officials know the issues involved in depth, and are largely liberated from concerns about their careers and the next election etc. The freedom from such constraints might allow a degree of cooperative creativity that could break new ground.

Of course whatever agreement such retired officials might reach would not be binding, as such experts are no longer in power. But if high ranking former government officials from both countries were to succeed in reaching an agreement that would at least demonstrate that a full disarmament treaty is theoretically possible.

If nothing else, such an effort would be interesting to reporters and help keep the subject of nuclear weapons in the news and on the minds of the general public in both countries.

UPDATE: This post was originally shared before the war in Ukraine, a tragic development which makes this proposal less realistic. That said, there’s still a lot of work that could be done cooperatively behind the scenes.

And if no retired Russian experts are available at this time, there’s nothing stopping retired American experts from working together to craft a disarmament proposal. No, I don’t mean that each retired expert writes their own book, which few people ever hear about or read. There’s nothing newsworthy about an expert writing a book.

What I have in mind is a public conference of retired diplomats, politicians and technical experts who face the challenge of coming up with a nuclear disarmament plan which they can agree on. Such a conference could be educational to the public, and might produce documents and insights which would be useful to future diplomats, politicians and technical experts.

What have we got to lose?