Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
The Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the World's Future
Lawrence
Wittner
January
11, 2022
Common
Dreams
Late January of
this year
will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international
agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to
Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans
developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and
threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of
the official representatives of the world's nations at a UN conference in July
2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received
the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January
22, 2021, became international law.
Right from the
start, the world's nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China,
Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—expressed their
opposition to such a treaty. They pressed other nations to boycott the
crucial 2017 UN conference and refused to attend it when it occurred.
Indeed, three of them (the United States, Britain, and France) issued a
statement declaring that they would never ratify the treaty. Not
surprisingly, then, none of the nuclear powers has signed the
agreement or indicated any sympathy for it.
Even so, the
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has acquired considerable momentum
over the past year. During that time, an additional nine
nations ratified it, thus becoming parties to the treaty. And dozens
more, having signed it, are expected to ratify it in the near future.
Furthermore, the governments of two NATO nations, Norway and Germany, have
broken free from the U.S. government's oppositional stance to the treaty and
agreed to attend the first meeting of the countries that are parties to
it.
In nations where
public opinion on the treaty has been examined, the international agreement
enjoys considerable support. YouGov opinion polls in five NATO
countries in Europe show overwhelming backing and very little opposition, with
the same true in Iceland, another NATO participant. Polling has also
revealed large majorities in favor of the treaty in Japan, Canada,
and Australia.
In the United
States, where most of the mainstream communications media have not deigned to
mention the treaty, it remains a well-kept secret. Even so, although a
2019 YouGov poll about it drew a large "Don't Know"
response, treaty support still outweighed opposition by 49 to 32 percent.
Moreover, when the U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,400 U.S.
cities, met in August 2021, the gathering unanimously approved a
resolution praising the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, a
variety of institutions, recognizing that nuclear weapons are now illegal under
international law, have begun to change their investment policies. In
September 2021, Lansforsakringar, a Swedish insurance company with assets of
over $46 billion, cited the treaty as a major reason to avoid investing in companies
producing nuclear weapons. In December, the New York City Council adopted
a resolution telling the city comptroller to remove investments from the city's
$250 billion pension fund from companies producing or maintaining these weapons
of mass destruction. According to ICAN, 127 financial institutions
stopped investing in nuclear weapons companies during 2021.
Despite this
impressive display of respect for the landmark agreement, the nine nuclear
powers have not only continued to oppose it, but have accelerated their nuclear
arms race. Having cast off the constraints of most nuclear arms control
and disarmament agreements of the past, they are all busy
either developing or deploying new nuclear weapons systems or have
announced their intention to do so.
In this process of
nuclear "modernization," as it is politely termed, they are building
newly-designed nuclear weapons of increasing accuracy and efficiency.
These include hypersonic missiles, which travel at five times the speed of
sound and are better able than their predecessors to evade missile
defenses. Reportedly, hypersonic missiles have already been developed by
Russia and China. The United States is currently scrambling to build
them, as well, with the usual corporate weapons contractors eager to oblige.
When it comes to
"modernization" of its entire nuclear weapons complex, the U.S.
government probably has the lead. During the Obama administration, it
embarked on a massive project designed to refurbish U.S. nuclear
production facilities, enhance existing nuclear weapons, and build new
ones. This enormous nuclear venture accelerated during the Trump
administration and continues today, with a total cost estimated to
ultimately top $1.5 trillion.
Although there
remain some gestures toward nuclear arms control—such as the agreement between
U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin to extend
the New Start Treaty—the nuclear powers are now giving a much higher priority
to the nuclear arms race.
The current
build-up of their nuclear arsenals is particularly dangerous at this time of
rising conflict among them. The U.S. and Russian governments almost
certainly don't want a nuclear war over Ukraine, but they could easily
slip into one. The same is true in the case of the heightening
confrontation between the Chinese and U.S. governments over Taiwan and the
islands in the South China Sea. And what will happen when nuclear-armed
India and nuclear-armed Pakistan fight yet another war, or when
nuclear-armed national leaders like Kim Jong-un and a possibly re-elected
Donald Trump start trading insults again about their countries'
nuclear might?
At present, this
standoff between the nuclear nations, enamored with winning their global power
struggles, and the non-nuclear nations, aghast at the terrible danger of
nuclear war, seems likely to persist, resulting in the continuation of the
world's long nuclear nightmare.
In this context,
the most promising course of action for people interested in human survival
might well lie in a popular mobilization to compel the nuclear nations to
accept the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and, more broadly, to
accept a restrained role in a cooperatively-governed world.
Our
work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to
republish and share widely.
Dr. Lawrence
S. Wittner
is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of "Confronting
the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement" (2009).
Source URL: https://portside.org/2022-01-11/treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons-and-worlds-future
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
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
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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