The Nobel Peace laureate has addressed this very squarely. The Nobel Peace laureate said:
For some to say that nuclear weapons are good for them but not for others is simply not sustainable. The failure of the nuclear weapons states to abide by their legal pledge to negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons, contained in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, is the greatest stimulus to their proliferation.
Hans Blix described it recently at the National Constitution Center in the United States when he presented the Blix commission report. He said that it's not practical for parents to have cigars in their mouths when telling their children not to smoke.
In other words, as long as the P-5 continue to say that they need nuclear weapons or as long as NATO, the most powerful military force in the history of the world, continues to say that these devices, of which one represents more firepower than all of the weapons ever used in the history of humanity.... People forget what we're talking about. We're talking about weapons of massive human annihilation on a catastrophic scale. If they are needed for the security of states with these huge conventional forces, what does it tell other states that will increasingly be able to obtain them at a lower and lower cost?
For that reason, we say it is legally required and it is practical to walk down the ladder. Can it be done in a utopian fashion overnight? Of course not. It's why we're saying that on the pathway toward a more secure world, each step of that pathway makes us more secure. It's not utopian; it's very hard-nosed and realistic.