Are the US presidential candidates as serious about nuclear disarmament as their campaign pronouncements suggest? Candidates are, by nature, generalists. They can also be quite cautious on issues that are not central to their interests or their image. Although nuclear weapons issues are incredibly important, they are also technical, abstract and excite very few interest groups.

This election, however, may be different. In part, the difference is a January 2007 op-ed, published in the Wall Street Journal by former US Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and former US Senator Sam Nunn. That op-ed, a second article in January 2008 and a series of conferences have placed the idea of the elimination of nuclear weapons back into acceptable public discourse for high officials.

In March 2008, John McCain—the presumptive Republican Party nominee for the US presidency—told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council that the United States does ‘not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal’ and ‘should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace’. With this speech, McCain joined the two contenders for the Democratic Party nomination—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—in making a public commitment to disarmament in one form or another.

Nothing in the early months of the presidential campaign suggested that the candidates would have a serious discussion about disarmament. In August 2007, Obama volunteered the seemingly obvious observation that he would not use nuclear weapons against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, adding after a moment ‘involving civilians’. Clinton chided him for violating the conventional wisdom regarding how presidents talk about nuclear weapons, saying ‘I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons’.

All three remaining candidates have made thoughtful statements on US nuclear weapon policy. Obama and McCain have both discussed disarmament and nuclear issues in major speeches. The Clinton and Obama campaigns submitted answers to a detailed questionnaire from the Council for a Livable World. In the early phase of the campaign, both Clinton and Obama spoke of reducing the role of nuclear weapons, rather than eliminating them.

Most notable has been a gradual embrace of the language of disarmament. Typical of the evolution was a November 2007 exchange in New Hampshire. In response to the question, ‘You’ll commit to work towards abolition?’ from a disarmament activist, Clinton responded, ‘Yes. I have an article coming out in Foreign Affairs that outlines what I will do.’ But Clinton’s article in Foreign Affairs was carefully worded to avoid discussion of elimination as a goal, including an incorrect description of the Wall Street Journal op-ed as calling for ‘reducing reliance on nuclear weapons’. Despite the apparent caution of her written remarks, Clinton has verbally endorsed disarmament. For example, she later told a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, ‘I endorse the vision set out by Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, and George Shultz of a world without nuclear weapons and their idea of taking practical steps toward that vision’.

Obama’s rhetoric also underwent a change. In a major speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in April 2007, Obama used a phrase similar to the one found in Clinton’s article in Foreign Affairs—‘deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons’. In an October 2007 speech at DePaul University, Obama made a more forceful announcement: ‘Here’s what I’ll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons’.

All of the candidates qualify their commitments to disarmament to one degree or another. Clinton, after endorsing disarmament, added that nuclear weapons would be essential ‘For the foreseeable future’. Obama stated his opposition to ‘unilateral disarmament’. And for McCain, disarmament must be ‘consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace’.

There are real divisions—predictably, along partisan lines—among the candidates in how they would pursue disarmament. In Clinton’s Foreign Affairs essay, she outlined her support for an additional US—Russian nuclear arms reductions treaty, the ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the establishment of an international nuclear fuel bank. Obama’s essay in Foreign Affairs supported all of these and added that the USA should not ‘rush’ to build a new generation of nuclear weapons—a word that Clinton also used to describe her opposition to a reliable replacement warhead option in a questionnaire. Both have supported a treaty to ban the production of fissile materials. McCain is not on record as supporting these proposals. His remarks on disarmament have focused on reducing the size of the US nuclear stockpile.

It remains to be seen whether the next US President will follow through on his or her campaign promises. The US Congress has passed legislation requiring the next president to conduct a Nuclear Posture Review, the third since the end of the cold war. These reviews have a way of allowing presidents to brush aside campaign promises. In her book An Elusive Consensus, Janne Nolan documents the failure of the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review during the US Administration of President Bill Clinton. Although as a presidential candidate in 2000 George W. Bush declared that the USA should ‘remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status’, the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review concluded that—campaign rhetoric or not—‘U.S. forces are not on “hair trigger” alert’.

This US presidential campaign, however, has been different. The Wall Street Journal op-ed is a factor. Perhaps equally important is a growing sense that the United States faces problems—from proliferation and climate change to the credit crisis—that are not suited to incremental change. The candidates are making big promises because this is a time for big ideas. Perhaps that boldness will persist after the campaign signs have come down, the volunteers have gone home and the next US President takes office. But it will require an even greater commitment to the issue—by the President, other US opinion leaders and the broader public—than we have seen thus far.