Part 1 of 3 Parts
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has a long history. It is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons. It was originally agreed upon at the United Nations on the 7th of June 2017. Before it can enter into force, it must be ratified by at least fifty members of the U.N. Any day now, the fiftieth nation will ratify the Treaty in spite of strenuous efforts to prevent this by all the NATO countries and other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
United Kingdom representative have been stationed outside all Treaty meetings in Geneva to try to persuade countries not to sign it. Why is such a gap opening up between countries that either have their own nuclear weapons or whose safety is guaranteed by nuclear powers and countries who want to totally ban them?
Up to the present, most treaties that deal with nuclear weapons have been between countries with nuclear arsenals or in an effort to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. The Treaty is an attempt to ban all nuclear weapons and end the global dominance of nuclear powers that has endured since 1945.
The Treaty questions the moral basis of the nuclear powers’ nuclear ‘deterrence’ policy which has been claimed to have maintained the global peace since the end of World War II. It specifically bans the “use of force and the threat of the use of force.” This is the reason that NATO members and other nations with nuclear weapons as so opposed to the Treaty. For the first time in history, the deterrence stance is being called into question by politicians around the world and not just anti-nuclear activists.
Northern Hemisphere nations such as Austria, Mexico and Ireland have actively protesting against nuclear weapons for years. Many nations in the Southern Hemisphere have signed treaties and conventions establishing Nuclear Free Weapon Zoneas. Six of the main Zones include sixty percent of the one hundred and ninety five nations states in the world. This includes almost sixty percent of the land in the world and thirty nine percent of the world’s population. The nations in these Zones do not allow the transportation of nuclear weapons or their supply chains in their territories. They will not even allow such ships in their harbors. The political attitudes of the citizens of nations in these Zones is quite different than the attitudes that can be found in the U.K. and the U.S.
Until quite recently, nations with nuclear weapons have been setting the international agenda. Conversations about limiting nuclear proliferation in countries like Iran and North Korea have focused on excluding them from the ‘nuclear’ club.
With the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the countries that have banned nuclear weapons on their own territories have taken over global leadership on the issue of nuclear weapons. They have established a new legal standard and are building the moral case that nuclear weapons must be totally eliminated. Their reasoning is that their Treaty is useless if one or more nuclear powers sets off nuclear warheads either deliberately or unintentionally and brings about a nuclear winter that could be the end of human civilization.
Please read Part 2 next