New Zealand calls on the world's nuclear powers to get serious about nuclear disarmament.

It is a valid argument that, if countries have nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country is likely to use them. By the same argument, if it is possible to build nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country will build some.

Thus, abolishing nuclear weapons globally will take us one step further away from a nuclear war, but not in an irrevocable way. We will be in a less acute variant of the same dilemma we are in now.

So I think global nuclear disarmament calls for a strategic plan: if after global nuclear disarmament one country builds nuclear weapons again, how should the rest of the world respond?

• What if China is that country?
• What if Russia is that country?
• What if the US is that country?
• What if India is that country?
• What if Pakistan is that country?
• What if Israel is that country?
• What if Iran is that country?
• What if Saudi Arabia is that country?
• What if North Korea is that country?
• What if South Korea is that country?
• What if Burma is that country?
• What if Ethiopia is that country?
• What if Hungary is that country?

Along what lines should the world respond?

• Ignoring the nuclear weapons, acting as if they did not exist?
• Pressuring that country to get rid of them?
• Building nuclear weapons and making that country back down?
• Some other approach?

I pose these questions but I do not have answers for them.