The Nuclear Question and the Obama Presidency
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400115 |
| Author | Michel Fortmann,Stéfanie von Hlatky |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Subject Matter | The 2008 US Election—Challenges for a New President |
Stéfanie von Hlatky &
Michel Fortmann
The nuclear
question and the
Obama presidency
| International Journal | Winter 2008-09 | 173 |
Almost all discussions about the United States and the future of nuclear
weapons policy refer to two now-famous editorials in the
Wall Street Journal
, in
which the “four statesmen”—George Shultz, William Perry, Sam Nunn, and
Henry Kissinger—lay out their vision for a nuclear-free world.1The latest
Adelphi
paper, entitled “Abolishing nuclear weapons,” even proposes a concrete
plan for achieving this vision, an effort ambitiously undertaken by George
Perkovich and James A. Acton.2For a moment, one cannot help but feel a tingle
of optimism as attitudes seem to be changing, even at the elite level.
Stéfanie von Hlatky is a PhD candidate in the department of political science at the
Université d e Montréal and the deputy dir ector of the Research Group in International
Security (REGIS ). Michel Fortmann is professor of p olitical science at the Université de
Montréal, where h e is also the co-director of REGIS, which he founded in 1996. He has
published nu merous books and articles on int ernational security and arms control. The
authors would like to acknowledge the Security and Defence Forum, the Research Group
in International Security, and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture.
1 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A world free
of nuclear weapons,”
Wall Street Journal
, 4 January 2007, A15.
2 George Perkovich and James A. Acton, “Abolishing nuclear weapons,”
Adelphi Papers
396, 31 July 2008, 130.
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