Nuclear Weapons

So what could make the nations of the world give up their nuclear weapons?  In the realist' opinion of class, we determined that nuclear disarmament is at best a fantasy.  While moving away from the "minutemen" is a great idea, it would require a trust between powers that does not exist.  Could it possibly exist?  I'm thinking not.  The world politic seems to me to be based upon a system of smoke and mirrors, deception and double-talk.  While we'd like to believe that we trust our allies, this is not true because we also spy on our allies.  The international stage is one that is fraught with subterfuge.  Frankly, the whole time that we were discussing the idea of nuclear weapons and taking them away from our arsenal all I could think of was Star Wars.  It seems to me that the issue of retaliatory strikes could eventually be turned into a debate of who shot first - America or Russia?  Han or Greedo?  From a certain point of view, if one were to be the victim of a nuclear strike, they would want to be able to retaliate very quickly.

Now, that being said, the other article which raises the ideas of terrorists being able to hack into country's nuclear programs and trigger a nuclear strike is frankly terrifying and quite possibly the best argument for disarmament.  However, even as we have states with plenty of nuclear weapons at hand, there are still others who are building their arsenal looking toward them being a "deterrent" for their enemies to use nukes on them.  Is that reasoning sound?  Perhaps.  I was struck by the mention about America and Russia during the cold war sharing information on safety switches and the like.  Interesting that nuclear weapons could inspire cooperation by the two powers at the head of the arms race.  Perhaps the world being full of nuclear weapons would be the push toward cooperation that would be needed for us to move to a more integrated, less sovereign world.  Perhaps.