Book Review: Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario
by Dan Worthen
This is a case of one book leading to another. Last year, when Timmon Wallis read Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen’s non-fiction thriller about the end of the world as we know it (Penguin Publishing Group, 2024), he took a breath and set to work on his own book that would counter Jacobsen’s terrifying portrait of nuclear apocalypse with a message of hope. The result of that effort is Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario (Indispensable Press, 2025).
Wallis, the executive director of nuclearban.us, knows his material. He was part of the team that crafted the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the first comprehensive, international, legally binding ban on such weapons. His first book, Disarming the Nuclear Argument: The Truth About Nuclear Weapons (Luath Press, 2018), contributed to the negotiations for the TPNW. His next book, Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War (Indispensable Press, 2023) gave us a detailed blueprint for addressing the two great existential crises of the modern world. In his current book, Wallis explains how the international community might fully adopt the TPNW whose end purpose, when fully implemented, is the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons.
As important as hope is, it’s not a strategy. Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario spells the strategy out. It offers a step-by-step sequence of events based on real people and current trends that could finally make complete abolition a reality. The book is divided into four logical parts. Part one describes the state of international affairs with respect to nuclear weapons as well as a short history of similar treaties (bans on biological and chemical weapons, for example); part two explains how the TPNW might grow to the point of putting maximum pressure on the nine nuclear-armed nations to disarm; part three depicts a possible scenario that could lead the United States to sign and ratify the TPNW; and part four sets forth how the remaining eight nuclear-armed nations might follow the U.S.’s lead in getting rid of their own nuclear arsenals. In a tantalizing epilogue, Wallis offers “an alternative scenario (in an alternative universe) where the President of the United States decides to abolish nuclear weapons, and no pressure is involved at all. It is possible that we are in that alternative universe right now, and that Donald Trump is serious about wanting to “denuclearize.”
Let it be so. Call the White House (202-456-1111).
In the book’s primary scenario, a lot has to happen to turn vision into reality. Critical to the process is the application of economic pressure to persuade corporations like Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Boeing to get out of the nuclear weapons business. Wallis explains: “These corporations are the driving force behind the U.S. nuclear weapons agenda. But [they] don’t exist to make nuclear weapons. They exist to make a profit. And that means they will move on to something else if making nuclear weapons is no longer profitable for them.” Making nuclear weapons unprofitable largely involves “divestment, boycotts, and stigmatization” through grassroots action as well as institutional, city, state, national, and international efforts.
Will it work? We’re going to see. Wallis says that in the current climate of arsenal increase and “modernization,” “there is little chance of anything else working.” But here is some encouragement: at this writing, 99 out of 197 eligible nations have already signed, ratified, or acceded to the TPNW. That’s a global majority, and the number will only increase. It’s a trend that the nine nuclear-armed nations can no longer dismiss. With each step, the TPNW is forcing those nations and their “umbrella” states to face the truth that the world doesn’t want nuclear weapons, that it’s time to find moral, survivable alternatives for building and maintaining national security.
This book provides a neat – at times, it must be said, too neat – scenario through which humanity might save itself from the curse of nuclear weapons. Many of the details in the book will inevitably play out differently as unforeseen circumstances emerge. Perilously, the reality could turn out to be a good deal messier than the book’s scenario depicts. One thing is certain: as the TPNW grows in strength, the desperation of the nuclear establishment not to lose its cash cow will grow increasingly fierce. Our job, regardless of the scenario, is to keep applying the pressure.
Hope in our time is becoming more precious than the rarest of rare earth minerals. In Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario, Timmon Wallis (who is already planning a second edition) has given us a mother lode of information, strategy, guidance, and feasible outcome that we, seeking hope, can all mine in the difficult days ahead.