Nuclear weapons have inevitably placed a normative strain on political leaders. This strain was “managed” during the first three decades after 1945 in various ways: by periodic calls for disarmament, by a general Western policy that emphasized defense against aggression, and by a diplomacy that from the 1960s onward sought arms-control arrangements to abate the arms race and maintain public confidence in the stability of the overall nuclear situation. More recently, the rising costs and dangers of a quickening arms race have given rise to widespread public anxiety in North America, Western Europe, and Japan about the relationship of nuclear weapons to the security of states and to the viability of a global political order constituted principally, but not exclusively, by sovereign states.

This anxiety has taken several forms, but includes important normative dimensions, that is, moral/legal objections to the role currently assigned to nuclear weapons in the strategic thought and actions of the superpowers. Part of this concern has centered on the combined unwillingness and inability of the superpowers to stabilize the arms race in terms of either resource outlays or risks.