On Sunday, April 5, North Korea launched a long-range missile which the North Korean Government described as a success but American experts said had been a failure. Of greater significance, however, was the history-shaping speech delivered on the same day in Prague by President Barack Obama. During the Democratic primary campaign last year, Hillary Clinton famously declared that both Senator John McCain and she had actual job experience to qualify them to be commander-in-chief. All that Obama had done, by contrast, was to deliver one speech in Chicago opposing the Iraq war.
As we know, Clinton had fatally underestimated the power of speech. Obama at his best combines linguistic eloquence and powerful oratory with substance and gravitas. On Sunday he was addressing one of the most critically important topics of our day, one that literally has life and death implications for all of us, wherever we may be.
The dream of a world free of nuclear weapons is an old one. Indeed, it is written into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty itself, which balances the prohibition on non-nuclear states acquiring these weapons with the demand on the five NPT-licit nuclear powers Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States (N5) to eliminate their nuclear arsenals through good-faith negotiations.
Considering that the NPT was signed in 1968 and came into effect in 1970, the N5 have not lived up to their bargain. The treaty has been unilaterally reinterpreted by them so that instead of a prohibition regime it is applied solely as a non-proliferation regime.
But the dream of a nuclear-weapon-free world has been kept alive by many non-government organisations, a coalition of like-minded countries, and a plethora of international blue ribbon commissions. A major difficulty is that the abundance of ''zero nuclear weapons'' initiatives has been stillborn because of zero follow-up and a failure to address real security concerns.
If we examine the geostrategic circumstances of the existing nuclear powers, the two with the least zero security justification for holding on to any nuclear weapons are Britain and France. Nor can North Korea justify nuclear weapons on national security grounds. It seems to play a nuclear hand as a bargaining chip, the only one it has.
Israel's security environment is harsh enough, with many in its neighbourhood committed to its destruction. This makes its reliance on nuclear weapons understandable.
Based on history and present disposition of hostile forces all around it, Iran can claim national security justification for nuclear weapons far more credibly than either Britain or France. Pakistan will not give up its nuclear weapons while India still has them. India's main security benchmark is not Pakistan but China. Neither China nor Russia will contemplate giving them up for fear of the US. This is why the circuit-breaker in the global nuclear weapons chain is the US.
Obama's speech acknowledged this. The US cannot achieve the dream on its own, he said, but it is prepared to lead, based on acknowledgment of its special moral responsibility flowing from being the only power to have used atomic weapons, and so lay down the challenge to others to follow. And he outlines concrete follow-up steps that are practical, measurable and achievable.
In other words, his strategy is to map out a vision and then outline the roadmap to achieve it. These steps include ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty negotiated in 1997; a new treaty banning fissile material; reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy; and a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia that is both bold and legally binding. Washington will also host a global summit on nuclear security within one year.
Such measures by the N5 must be matched by robust action against the threat of proliferation. At the very least, Obama reclaims the moral high ground for Washington to pursue a vigorous and robust non- and counter-proliferation strategy. Countries leaving or breaking the NPT must face real and immediate consequences.
An international fuel bank could be created to assure supply to countries whose interest is limited to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. All vulnerable nuclear material around the world for example, loose nukes in Russia will be secured within four years.
Black markets will be broken up, the trade in nuclear materials will be detected and intercepted in transit, and financial tools will be used to disrupt the dangerous trade.
Obama is right to say that reaching the goal will require patience and persistence. But he is wrong to say that it may not be achieved even in his lifetime. He should set down the marker of achieving it by the end of his second term if re-elected. Without such a finite deadline, no one will work to make it happen, instead of retreating into the vague formula of ''yes, some day, eventually''.
He may also be mistaken in pinning his faith on the global regime centred on the NPT which, he said, ''could reach the point where the centre cannot hold''. The NPT is already a broken reed, with far too many flaws, anomalies, gaps and outright contradictions.
For example, the promise that those who break the rules must be punished cannot be enforced against India. The India-US civil nuclear agreement itself, however justified and necessary, breaks the NPT rules. A new, clean nuclear weapons convention might be a better goal to pursue.
That's a minor quibble. More important is the broad sweep of Obama's commitment, based on national interest and personal conviction, to freeing us from the fear of nuclear weapons.
Ramesh Thakur is the founding director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario.
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