Image by The Official Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Photostream – flickr.com

By Sergio Duarte
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2017 (IPS)

The nine possessors of nuclear weapons and most of their allies chose to ignore the negotiations on a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

This unprecedented initiative resulted from a proposal by South Africa, Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico and Nigeria and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2016 by an overwhelming majority.

The first Session, from 27 to 31 March, ended on an optimistic tone. There was wide convergence of views on the core prohibitions relating to stockpiling, use, deployment, acquisition, development and production of nuclear weapons.

Sergio Duarte

It is clear that these negotiations will not bring about a sudden shift in the mindsets of the nine governments that threaten the rest of the world with the willingness to use the most cruel, indiscriminate and destructive weapon ever invented.

It is undeniable, however, that even at this early stage public opinion in many countries have begun to pay attention to the potential impact of a prohibition treaty through press articles and analyses in specialized publications.

The mantra “a world free of nuclear weapons” has become the stated and uncontroverted objective of the community of nations.

Opponents of a ban argue that such an agreement would impede or at least render more difficult efforts for reductions of atomic arsenals under the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and that a treaty to which the current nuclear powers choose not to adhere would not bring about any tangible results in reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons.

They consider that negotiating a prohibition is “premature” and even counterproductive as it risks unraveling the disarmament architecture put together over the past decades.

Supporters, for their part, contend that a ban treaty would establish a clear legal standard rejecting nuclear weapons on humanitarian grounds and would enable States to formalize such a rejection besides enhancing the stigma against those weapons.

They add that it would reaffirm their unacceptability and incompatibility with universally recognized principles of international law and would re-state and strengthen commitments assumed under other treaties. It would enhance, not detract from such commitments.

They hope that it will set into motion a trend toward further specific agreements on nuclear disarmament.

In fact, one of the major challenges for the universality and full effectiveness of a ban treaty is precisely how to design a mechanism that will ensure the possibility, in a second stage, of adherence of States currently under the “umbrella” of nuclear-armed powers and ultimately the adherence of the latter themselves.

Before we can hail a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons as a worthwhile accomplishment or dismiss it as futile, the two sets of arguments must be checked against the results that the treaty may bring about in the short, medium and long run.

If the ban proves at least to be a positive ingredient to infuse life and energy into the moribund multilateral disarmament machinery or to create viable alternative, but not conflicting paths we may consider it useful and justifiable. If not, it will simply fall into oblivion or at best remain as a monument to human fallibility.

The push for negotiations on a nuclear arms ban treaty grew out of years of mounting frustration over the lack of progress in efforts under the NPT regime.

Whether or not parties to that instrument, possessors of nuclear weapons have displayed little or no inclination to fulfill the commitment enshrined in its Article VI, which requires all its Parties “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”.

Possessors are currently engaged in a new round of the nuclear arms race as they seek to enhance the destructive power, accuracy and range of their weapons. As a result, confidence in their real motives and intentions waned in recent years.

In the recent past, a new and powerful force helped to propel forward the drive to finalize a treaty banning nuclear weapons and brought this matter to the forefront of the preoccupations of a large majority of States.

The collective conscience of humankind has increasingly taken to heart the unanimous concern expressed at the 2010 Review Conference of Parties to the NPT over the catastrophic consequences of nuclear detonations as well as the conclusions of three international Conferences held in 2013 and 2014 on such consequences.

In 2015 a large majority of States supported the humanitarian pledge to “stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate” nuclear armament. Civil society organizations contributed studies and discussion forums that helped shape specific, realistic proposals.

The thrust of the movement to ban nuclear weapons is not directed against any State in particular, but against the inhuman nature of nuclear weapons themselves and their disastrous effects on populations and the environment.

The movement does not advocate unilateral disarmament but rather good faith compliance with treaty commitments and with imperatives dictated by humanitarian international law and the universal principles of civilized behavior.

Accordingly, it does not discriminate against “good” or “bad” possessors, whether these are States or non-State actors. No country should be allowed to possess the means to annihilate whole populations and render the planet uninhabitable under the pretense that this would somehow protect their own security.

In his vote in the legal suit brought last year before the International Court of Justice by the Marshall Islands against the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons Judge Cançado Trindade stated: “A world with arsenals of nuclear weapons, like ours, is bound to destroy its past, dangerously threatens the present, and has no future at all. Nuclear weapons pave the way into nothingness”.

It is time for mankind as a whole to act decisively in defense of its own survival.

This article originally appeared Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 April 2017: TMS: A Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons Is in the Making.

Excerpt:

The crisis that started a few years ago with the collapse of major financial institutions in the United States is now centred in Europe and threatens other parts of the world. Many emerging countries in Asia and Latin America that had thus far avoided contamination because of their sound economic and fiscal policies and their timely adoption of domestic consumption stimulus packages are now beginning to experience secondary effects.

Despite the current financial turmoil and uncertainty, hundreds of millions of dollars continue to be spent each day on military operations without any apparent success in solving the problems they were supposed to. Other disquieting signs loom large. Although combat operations in some troubled areas are being discontinued, the root causes of tension remain unaddressed, with unpredictable consequences. As formerly all-powerful war-bent nations feel constrained to pull back into their own territories, new financial resources are nevertheless earmarked in their budgets for designing, testing, and eventually producing and deploying new generations of deadly weapons in the name of maintaining their national security. By the same token, a few others seem determined to devote a considerable percentage of their scarce national resources to achieve means of destruction to counter real or imagined threats from abroad.

The “contagious doctrine of deterrence”, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon once described it, is no longer an exclusive feature of the two antagonists of the Cold War. If some nations feel entitled to possess a nuclear “insurance policy” ­ as a former prime minister described his country’s atomic arsenal- there is no reason to expect that others will not follow suit if they deem it necessary.

Sergio Duarte

It is unfortunate that the days when international conferences could succeed in hammering out bilateral or multilateral arms control agreements seem to be over. Even if past agreements did not bring about effective disarmament, at least they preserved a degree of sanity by curbing some of the most dangerous aspects of the arms race and by signalling the possibility of further progress toward disarmament. For over fifteen years now the multilateral machinery put together by the United Nations over many decades has been unable to achieve the slightest headway towards any significant agreement on both nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Mankind seems to have lost the ability or the will to follow up on the progress previously achieved in banning other types of weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological arms.

Despite important reductions in the number of nuclear weapons since Cold War peaks, there has been little, if any, progress towards their actual elimination or even the reduction of their importance in the military doctrines of the countries that hold them. The world continues to devote increasing resources to the production of conventional weapons, a large number of which find their way to illegal brokers to feed conflicts in the least developed areas, severely jeopardising chances of improving the lot of their populations.

At last count, world expenditures on armaments reached some 1.7 trillion dollars ­ possibly as much as the industrialised nations have already spent to prop up their financial situation.

All is not lost, however – at least not yet. Analysts have remarked that every real advance in the interaction among nations has been the product a deep crisis in international relations. In recent history, landmark international achievements have been preceded by major conflicts, immense destruction, and severe strife. That was the case of the Hague Conferences, the creation of the ill-fated League of Nations, and the successful establishment of the United Nations.

But mankind does not have to wait for a major war or a similar catastrophe to occur. Whatever progress has been achieved in the past few decades came as a result of the timely perception that something had to be done before real disaster struck. That was the case of the realisation that the insane buildup of ever more deadly nuclear arsenals by the two superpowers had to cease, that proliferation had to be curbed, that at least the most harmful and indiscriminate conventional weapons had to be banned, and that ways must be found to ensure that the power of the atom is used exclusively for peaceful purposes ­ to name just a few examples.

The combined effect of the current financial crisis and of the deadlock in international structures dealing with security, disarmament, development, and the environment can yet lead to new realisations. Wealthy nations, for instance, are already well aware that their own prosperity and well-being, just like natural resources, may not last forever. They should therefore join forces with poorer ones to find wise solutions for the benefit of all. The most heavily armed nations should realise that converting their territories into fortresses while building ever more sophisticated means of destruction will not enhance their security but rather endanger it.

Sterner fiscal policies could trigger significant reductions in military budgets worldwide. Perhaps most importantly, all nations, regardless of their wealth and political or military might, should finally understand that any crisis can be defused if they are able to work together in an international system that recognises that World War II and the Cold War are definitively over. It is not too late. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Sergio Duarte, Brasilian ambassador and former United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org

The crisis that started a few years ago with the collapse of major financial institutions in the United States is now centred in Europe and threatens other parts of the world. Many emerging countries in Asia and Latin America that had thus far avoided contamination because of their sound economic and fiscal policies and their timely adoption of domestic consumption stimulus packages are now beginning to experience secondary effects.

Despite the current financial turmoil and uncertainty, hundreds of millions of dollars continue to be spent each day on military operations without any apparent success in solving the problems they were supposed to. Other disquieting signs loom large. Although combat operations in some troubled areas are being discontinued, the root causes of tension remain unaddressed, with unpredictable consequences. As formerly all-powerful war-bent nations feel constrained to pull back into their own territories, new financial resources are nevertheless earmarked in their budgets for designing, testing, and eventually producing and deploying new generations of deadly weapons in the name of maintaining their national security. By the same token, a few others seem determined to devote a considerable percentage of their scarce national resources to achieve means of destruction to counter real or imagined threats from abroad.

The “contagious doctrine of deterrence”, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon once described it, is no longer an exclusive feature of the two antagonists of the Cold War. If some nations feel entitled to possess a nuclear “insurance policy” ­ as a former prime minister described his country’s atomic arsenal- there is no reason to expect that others will not follow suit if they deem it necessary.

It is unfortunate that the days when international conferences could succeed in hammering out bilateral or multilateral arms control agreements seem to be over. Even if past agreements did not bring about effective disarmament, at least they preserved a degree of sanity by curbing some of the most dangerous aspects of the arms race and by signalling the possibility of further progress toward disarmament. For over fifteen years now the multilateral machinery put together by the United Nations over many decades has been unable to achieve the slightest headway towards any significant agreement on both nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Mankind seems to have lost the ability or the will to follow up on the progress previously achieved in banning other types of weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological arms.

Despite important reductions in the number of nuclear weapons since Cold War peaks, there has been little, if any, progress towards their actual elimination or even the reduction of their importance in the military doctrines of the countries that hold them. The world continues to devote increasing resources to the production of conventional weapons, a large number of which find their way to illegal brokers to feed conflicts in the least developed areas, severely jeopardising chances of improving the lot of their populations.

At last count, world expenditures on armaments reached some 1.7 trillion dollars ­ possibly as much as the industrialised nations have already spent to prop up their financial situation.

All is not lost, however – at least not yet. Analysts have remarked that every real advance in the interaction among nations has been the product a deep crisis in international relations. In recent history, landmark international achievements have been preceded by major conflicts, immense destruction, and severe strife. That was the case of the Hague Conferences, the creation of the ill-fated League of Nations, and the successful establishment of the United Nations.

But mankind does not have to wait for a major war or a similar catastrophe to occur. Whatever progress has been achieved in the past few decades came as a result of the timely perception that something had to be done before real disaster struck. That was the case of the realisation that the insane buildup of ever more deadly nuclear arsenals by the two superpowers had to cease, that proliferation had to be curbed, that at least the most harmful and indiscriminate conventional weapons had to be banned, and that ways must be found to ensure that the power of the atom is used exclusively for peaceful purposes ­ to name just a few examples.

The combined effect of the current financial crisis and of the deadlock in international structures dealing with security, disarmament, development, and the environment can yet lead to new realisations. Wealthy nations, for instance, are already well aware that their own prosperity and well-being, just like natural resources, may not last forever. They should therefore join forces with poorer ones to find wise solutions for the benefit of all. The most heavily armed nations should realise that converting their territories into fortresses while building ever more sophisticated means of destruction will not enhance their security but rather endanger it.

Sterner fiscal policies could trigger significant reductions in military budgets worldwide. Perhaps most importantly, all nations, regardless of their wealth and political or military might, should finally understand that any crisis can be defused if they are able to work together in an international system that recognises that World War II and the Cold War are definitively over. It is not too late. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Sergio Duarte, Brasilian ambassador and former United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.