Introduction: The dynamics of nuclear disarmament

This special section examines the disarmament dynamics being generated by President Barack Obama and other world leaders in their advocacy of a nuclear-weapon-free world. It explores the responses of five groups of states (nuclear weapon states, threshold states, advocacy states, holdout states, and defiant states) to the new disarmament momentum, assessing whether a global consensus on-and concrete progress toward-nuclear elimination is likely. The main goals of this special section are: to generate scholarly debate on this important subject (the literature has tended to focus on understanding proliferation rather than disarmament dynamics); and to examine the potential consequences of reinvigorated disarmament leadership for the upcoming Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which will be held in New York City in May 2010.