The following words are excerpted from an essay by General Lee Butler, who retired in 1994 after 33 years in the US Air Force. During his career as a B-52 pilot, as director of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, and commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command, and its successor, Strategic Command, General Butler came to preside over the US nuclear weapons arsenal, making key decisions over weapons systems, warhead targeting, and nuclear launch. General Butler now argues for nuclear abolition. The full text of his essay can be found in the May/June 1998 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

"For many people, nuclear weapons retain an aura of utility, of primacy, and of legitimacy that justifies their existence well into the future in some number, however small. This faith in nuclear weapons was inspired and sustained by a catechism instilled over many decades by a priesthood who spoke with assurance and authority. I was for many years among the most avid of these keepers of the faith, and for that I make no apology....

The moment I entered the nuclear arena, I knew I had been thrust into a world beset with tidal forces, towering egos, maddening contradictions, alien constructs, and insane risks. Its arcane vocabulary and apocalyptic calculus defied comprehension. Its stage was global and its antagonists locked in a deadly spiral of deepening rivalry. In every respect, it was a modern-day holy war.

The opposing forces created vast enterprises that gave rise to a culture of messianic believers infused with a sense of historic mission and schooled in unshakable articles of faith. As my career progressed, I was immersed in the work of all of these cultures, either directly in those of the Western world or through the study of communist organizations, teachings, and practices.

My responsibilities ranged from the highly subjective, such as assessing the values and motivations of Soviet leadership, to the critically objective, such as preparing weapons for operational launch. I became steeped in the art of intelligence estimates, the psychology of negotiations, the interplay of bureaucracies and the impulses of industry.

I was engaged in the labyrinthine conjecture of the strategist, the exacting routines of the target planner, and the demanding skills of the air crew and the missileer. I was a party to their history, shared their triumphs and tragedies, witnessed heroic sacrifice and catastrophic failure of both men and machines. And in the end, I came away from it all with profound misgivings. Ultimately, as I examined the course of this journey, I came to these unsettling judgments:

• From the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed by those who brandish them.
• The stakes of nuclear war engage not just the survival of the antagonists but the fate of mankind.
• The likely consequences of nuclear war have no political, military, or moral justification.
• The threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible....

Only now are the dimensions, the costs, and the risks of these nuclear nether worlds coming to light. What must now be better understood are the root causes and the belief systems that brought them into existence. They must be challenged, refuted. But most important, they must be let go. The era that gave them credence, accepted their dominion, and yielded to their excesses is fast receding.

But it is not yet over. The Cold War lives on in the minds of those who cannot let go the fears, the beliefs, and the enmities born of the nuclear age. They cling to deterrence and shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new or imagined ones.

What better illustration of misplaced faith in nuclear deterrence is there than the persistent belief that retaliation with nuclear weapons is a legitimate and appropriate response to post-Cold War threats posed by weapons of mass destruction? What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn?...

We cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it. We cannot hold hostage to sovereign gridlock the keys to final deliverance from the nuclear nightmare. We cannot withhold the resources essential to break its grip, to reduce its dangers. We cannot sit in silent acquiescence to the faded homilies of the nuclear priesthood.

It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason, and the rightful interests of humanity."