Although the Pugwash Conferences came into being, four decades ago, in response to the extraordinary dangers posed by thermonuclear weapons, and while the pursuit of ways to reduce those dangers has always remained at the core of Pugwash concerns, our founders recognized from the outset the seamlessness of the web of interconnections linking the nuclear danger with the dangers of other weapons of mass destruction, with conventional conflicts, and with the ultimate causes of war rooted in the human condition.