I remember watching President Obama’s speech on nuclear non-proliferation in Prague. Like so many of the President’s speeches, it was deeply moving; evoking the historical context and projecting a bold new vision of the future.

Yet something felt missing from his speech. I realized it was nothing he actually said or failed to say, but it was my own reaction: the issue, nuclear weapons, simply did not move me in the way that other issues he has addressed, such as peace in the Middle East or improving the United Nations.

I consider this strange, because I am trained in international law. If anyone should care about non-proliferation, it should be me. Yet I realized that growing up, I and my entire generation, simply don’t have the same appreciation of the issue as generations past. Horrific images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been relegated to the history books, we were not taught to duck and cover in school, we did not live through the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction, nor were subjected to the infamous Daisy ad. All of these things added to the public consciousness, and nuclear non-proliferation was an issue that mattered to all on an emotional level. While intellectually I don’t think that North Korea and Iran should have the bomb, on a deeper level, it does not particularly perturb me if they do. I believe this is the feeling which many people in my generation would have, if they thought about this honestly. Our generation, in many respects, has ‘emotionally forgotten’ this issue.

What does this mean, in practice? Ultimately, our congressional representatives do our best to represent us – it keeps them getting re-elected. So when we lack passion on a subject, chances are, they do too. I look around and see very limited activism on nuclear issues, and even less attention to them by our Congress. The President may be displaying great leadership on the issue, but it will ultimately be pointless if we don’t follow and push Congress to take action on it, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Worse still, it is far from certain that future Presidents will take as strong an approach as Obama on an issue which simply does not make a blip on the electoral radar.

Obviously this is a massive, complicated issue that can’t be solved easily. Getting people to care enough about an issue to take action is the art of the social movement, and countless books have been written on that. But there is one very important step that can, and must, be taken for this issue to remain prominent over time.

While our generation might be oblivious to the threat of nuclear weapons, we are far from disengaged on foreign policy. Thanks to globalization, the internet, etc. there are millions of young people across America who would proudly consider themselves citizens of the world. The passion is there, but it is not for a particular issue, but towards a more generalized loyalty to humanity as a whole. It comes not from a fear of nuclear war, or terrorism, or even climate change, but from the vision of a better future – without knowing the details of what it might look like, we aspire to build a more beautiful world. At the moment, this is a sentiment that foreign policy activists are, for the most part, failing to tap into.

Thus the time has come to assemble a grand foreign policy coalition in this country, pinned together on this sentiment. It would encompass groups dealing with climate change, peace and conflict, UN Reform, human rights, poverty, international financial institution reform, etc. Nuclear issues would fit squarely within it – it is not the trendy issue of the hour, but it would capitalize on the fire of this broad coalition. A coalition like this, which respected the different issues but harnessed their commonalities, would have a profound impact on this country’s foreign policy.

I am deeply optimistic that this will happen. Over my months here as an intern at Citizens for Global Solutions, I’ve come to see that this, ultimately, is what this organization is working towards. Other organizations are working towards this as well. Yet it is a process which is only just beginning. I would encourage all activists on international issues, and people who are simply sympathetic to a particular cause, to look beyond their individual issue, and realize that not only could we achieve more if we worked under a single banner, but that ultimately, we are all fighting for the same thing.