Mosaiko

Young People to the Fore

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Today’s world leaders have ceded to the next generation the goal of achieving a nuclear weapons-free world. In the past, young people around the world have often driven political, cultural, social, and intellectual movements, achieving progress that older generations had discarded as illusions. To meet the challenge of eliminating nuclear weapons, youth’s contributions must yet again go beyond mere idealism. But how?

First, rising leaders must, through education and collaboration with foreign peers, seek to understand the world as it is and not as it was. The Cold War paradigm and obsolete arguments about the utility of nuclear deterrence continue to poison the debate. If the next generation of decision makers does not reevaluate the relevance of nuclear weapons in combating contemporary threats, it will be equipped with 20th-century tools to fight 21st-century security problems. Before we can substantively reduce warheads on the ground, we must first reduce their value in our minds.

Second, since all humanity has a stake in abolishing nuclear weapons, today’s youth must emerge to identify themselves not only as citizens of nations but as members of a global community. Disarmament will require trust, and this will be hard to achieve if national partisanship is the sole guiding principle in international politics. We cannot allow our forefathers’ conflicts and prejudices to defeat the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. The destruction of the last nuclear warhead will coincide with the age of greater global solidarity.

Third, when arguing the merits of completely abolishing global nuclear arsenals, youth should refrain from demonizing those who disagree. Differences over the end goal of eliminating nuclear weapons must not prevent us from working first to significantly reduce their numbers. Let’s talk about the right issues at the right time.

Being the only group with a chance to create conditions for a world free of nuclear weapons is both an inspiring and daunting realization. Even if today’s young people do not eliminate nuclear weapons within our lifetimes, let it not be because of timidity or passivity in confronting this great threat. Our example must encourage those who come after us to continue the endeavor that began at the dawn of the 21st century. It falls to us to create the conditions for a world without nuclear arms. If we do, our mark on history will be everlasting.