Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World sets out to examine one of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century: the future of nuclear weapons. Acknowledging the growing consensus that pushing nuclear weapons to the margins of world politics would represent the wisest political and moral choice for the United States, a stellar group of scholars has been assembled in this volume to analyze one solution to the problem: virtual nuclear arsenals.

First proposed by Jonathan Schell in his 1984 book The Abolition, this option involves removing all nuclear weapons from operational status and placing them in a dismantled, "virtual" condition. Essays by many of the world's top experts on arms control and international relations combine to offer the first detailed assessment of what may be the most promising and provocative idea in the field today.