Friday, July 07, 2017
US a
No-Show as Historic Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Adopted
History was just made, but nuclear-armed states stand on the
wrong side of it.
The United States has joined a small group of global outliers on
Friday after a historic United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons was
adopted by a majority of the world's nations.
"The adoption of the nuclear weapons ban treaty marks an
historic turning point in the centuries-old battle to eliminate all weapons of
mass destruction," said Jeff Carter, executive director of Physicians for
Social Responsibility.
Ahead of its adoption, Elayne Whyte Gómez, Coasta Rica's
ambassador to the U.N. and president of the United Nations Conference to
Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, championed the
"historic"agreement, calling it "the first multilateral nuclear
disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years."
Noting that the landmark moment comes 72 years after the
atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an editorial in Japan's Mainichi said:
"The international community's firm determination not to repeat these
tragedies is the linchpin of the convention."
We have just made history!
The #nuclearban treaty
is adopted! pic.twitter.com/A08gT0E80Q
— ICAN
(@nuclearban) July 7, 2017
One hundred twenty-two nations agreed to the final draft
text after weeks of negotiations that were not attended by any
of the nine nuclear-armed states, which include the U.S., Russia, and North
Korea. (Among those signing on, however, are two of the other "axis of evil"
states: Iran and Iraq.) The Netherlands cast the sole vote against the treaty.
"The nuclear weapons states' boycott of the ban treaty
negotiations," Carter said last month, "illustrates a denial of
medical science," referring to "empirically known consequences of the
use, testing, and development of these weapons on human lives."
The treaty is based in humanitarian law and prohibits the
development, testing, production, possession, or stockpiling of nuclear weapons
or other nuclear explosive devices, the transfer of such weapons, and also bans
not only their use but the threat of their use. It also calls for states to
undertake environmental remediation for areas contaminated by nuclear weapons
use or testing, and for states to provide assistance to victims "including
medical care, rehabilitation, and psychological support, as well as provide for
their social and economic inclusion."
As John Loretz, program director at International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War, explained Friday:
The nuclear-armed and
nuclear-dependent states have been provided with practical and flexible ways to
comply with those prohibitions once they decide to join. If they persist in
defying the norms established by the treaty, they will be outlaw states.
The treaty refutes the claim made
by a handful of states that they need nuclear weapons to ensure their own
security, and that humanitarian consequences must somehow be balanced with
those needs. Not only does the treaty insist that the dangers posed by nuclear
weapons "concern the security of all humanity," but it also calls the
long-overdue elimination of nuclear weapons "a global public good of the
highest order, serving both national and collective security interests."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
said Thursday it was "overwhelmingly positive about the draft
treaty," adding: "We are on the cusp of a truly historic moment—when
the international community declares, unambiguously, for the first time, that
nuclear weapons are not only immoral, but also illegal. There
should be no doubt that the draft before us establishes a clear, categorical
ban on the worst weapons of mass destruction."
The New York Times writes: "The new
agreement is partly rooted in the disappointment among non-nuclear-armed
nations that the Nonproliferation Treaty's disarmament aspirations have not
worked."
Indeed, said Dr. Matthew McKinzie, Natural Resources Defense
Council Senior Scientist and director of NRDC's nuclear program, at a U.N.
media briefing last month, "Both the U.S. and Russia are modernizing their
nuclear arsenals."
"That reveals an expectation that instead of reducing and
eliminating nuclear arsenals, we will have these weapons for generations to
come. That's not the future we want," he said.
Further explaining this trend, Matt Taibbi wrote at Rolling
Stone:
This slowing of the disarmament
movement began during
Barack Obama's last term, coinciding with the collapse of relations between the
U.S. and Russia. Particularly since 2011, when the U.S. and Russia concluded
the "New START"
treaty on the reduction of each others' arsenals, dialogue has almost
completely ended on the subject.
Whatever you want to point to as
the reason—the much-condemned Russian adventurism in Ukraine,
or maybe the 2012 passage of the Magnitsky Act sanctioning
Russia for human rights abuses, a law that outraged Putin and inspired a
vicious ban on American adoption of Russian children—communication between
Russia and the United States had long ago dropped to almost nil. This was
before last summer's election, the DNC hack, or the rise of Trump.
As a result, the two countries
who maintain about 90 percent of the world's warheads have stopped talking
about nuclear reduction, and the rest of the world—which was promised
disarmament—has noticed, leading to protest moves like this new treaty ban.
"Right now," Carter added, "the U.S. government
defies its existing disarmament obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty
by planning to fund an extensive buildup of its nuclear arsenal. The ban treaty
is the start of a new worldwide movement that gives the United States an
opportunity to break from its self-destructive nuclear weapons policy."
"In the twenty-first century, we can no longer pretend that
these doomsday devices are instruments of security. The active conscience of
the American health community calls on the United States to sign the nuclear
weapons ban treaty to ensure that we safeguard our world for the next
generation. It's past time that we part from this untenable path. Prohibiting
and eliminating these weapons of mass destruction is the only responsible
course of action for U.S. nuclear weapons policy," Carter continued.
Added Jon Rainwater, executive director of Peace Action:
"Preaching temperance from a barstool never works. The U.S. can not lead
the push for nuclear non-proliferation on the Korean peninsula while it spends
billions to maintain one of the world's two biggest nuclear arsenals. It's time
for the U.S. to get off of the barstool and lead by example."
States can sign on to the treaty starting September 20, 2017.
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
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