They are no longer generally considered to be the best means to ensure national security. Deterrence and mutually-assured destruction have become outdated concepts in a world now more concerned with other questions and challenges, including widespread poverty, climate change, a worldwide economic and financial meltdown, and other threats such as the recent alarm over the pandemic outbreak of a new kind of influenza virus.
Above all, the motivation for seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons now seems to be a fear of the further proliferation of these weapons to other States and possibly to the so-called non-State actors, including terrorist groups.
There is the rub. Nuclear weapons are intrinsically dangerous and pose an unparalleled threat to the very existence of humankind. They do not enhance a country's security but, rather, imperil the survival of all nations, which should be the point of departure of nuclear disarmament efforts.
To dwell on the potential danger that they may fall into the wrong hands is to misconstrue the argument for their elimination. They should be banned because they are immoral -- and probably illegal -- tools of destruction. Since their use would likely be fatal for all, they cannot even be considered instruments of war.
The twin questions of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy have been on the agenda of the United Nations since its beginning: the dawn of the atomic age coincided with its birth. The UN Charter, however, makes no mention of nuclear weapons for the simple reason that it was adopted at the San Francisco conference three weeks before the first test and six weeks before their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The transcendental nature of the discovery of atomic energy prompted the delegates to the UN General Assembly's first session to address the issue immediately. In its very first resolution -- 1 I of 24 January -- the Assembly established the Atomic Energy Commission, composed of the Security Council members and Canada, and requested that it submit specific proposals for ensuring the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes only, for the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction and for the establishment of a system of safeguards, including inspections, to prevent violations and evasions.
A number of specific proposals followed, including one by the United States in June These were contained in what became known as the Baruch Plan, which was based largely on the United States government publication A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, issued in March of that year.
The US, which still held an unchallenged nuclear monopoly, called for an open exchange among all nations of basic scientific information for peaceful ends; control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction from national arsenals; and the establishment of effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions.
Though forward-thinking in many aspects, the Baruch Plan had several drawbacks. The most controversial one was probably its insistence that the United States retain its nuclear stockpile which then consisted of nine weapons until it was satisfied with the effectiveness of the international control system.
One will never know if the world might have returned in to its nuclear-weapons-free status. What we do know is that there followed four decades of an unbridled nuclear arms race between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR and the acquisition of those weapons and their delivery systems by other nations.
Israel also acquired nuclear weapons as did South Africa, which later surrendered its stockpile. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has also tested a nuclear device. In addition, there are many countries that possess the scientific know-how, technology and fissile material that would allow them to play the nuclear card in a relatively short time.
In the US achieved a qualitative leap in the nuclear-arms race when it detonated its first thermonuclear device. A year later the USSR followed suit. The development of nuclear-weapons delivery systems -- bombers, missiles and submarines -- is another chapter of the arms race. However, the testing of nuclear weapons and the rockets to transport them would eventually rally public opinion at least momentarily in favour of nuclear disarmament measures.
Despite repeated and sometimes intense efforts to put disarmament efforts on track, the United Nations was unable to devise negotiating schemes that would bring the different parties together. Deep-rooted suspicion of the rival's motives and the absence of political will ensured a negotiating stalemate for almost two decades. Calls for an end to nuclear tests, especially in the atmosphere, and a stop to further horizontal proliferation were instrumental in getting the endc going in Not surprisingly, the first order of business was a treaty to ban nuclear-weapons tests in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space.
The Partial Test-Ban Treaty was agreed upon rather quickly. It did not contain verification measures and it prohibited activities which the endc's three participating nuclear-weapon States -- the UK, the US and the USSR France refused to take its seat at the table -- were ready to forego. Underground testing would continue for over 30 years.
The next item on the endc's agenda was a multilateral legal agreement to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons to other nations horizontal proliferation. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons NPT has become the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament efforts since its entry into force in By the late s, the possible spread of nuclear weapons to more countries horizontal proliferation had become a source of increasing concern. A comprehensive nuclear disarmament treaty could, for example, require parties to enact laws obligating citizens to report any information about possible violation of the treaty to the international inspection agency and make it illegal for states to retaliate against whistle blowers.
Such measures could be particularly valuable in uncovering activities that are difficult to detect, such as the concealment of nuclear weapons or weapons materials. At least some individuals involved in a covert illegal national program might be expected to report such activities. As long as nuclear power and other peaceful nuclear activities continue, there will be a risk that associated materials and facilities could be diverted to military purposes.
The proper management and structure of civilian nuclear activities therefore will be of central importance in a nuclear disarmed world. The first nuclear disarmament proposal, the Baruch Plan, proposed by the United States in , envisioned the creation of an "International Atomic Development Authority" that would control all mining, refining, and distribution of uranium; own all facilities capable of producing fissile materials; and inspect and license all other nuclear activities.
Stocks of weapons-usable fissile materials, 6 as well as facilities that produce or use such materials particularly enrichment and reprocessing , could be managed by an international agency. In addition, fuel cycles could be modified to increase barriers to the diversion of these materials and to decrease or possibly eliminate the production and use of fissile materials in forms directly usable in nuclear weapons.
Although the committee did not examine verification issues in detail, two points seem obvious. First, no conceivable verification regime could, by technical means alone, obtain high confidence that it had accounted for every nuclear weapon or every kilogram of fissile material that had been produced.
It could not be ruled out that a former nuclear weapons state had kept a few "bombs in the basement" or enough fissile material to build a few weapons. Second, the inherent capability of many states to build nuclear weapons would make it difficult to provide timely warning of an attempt to do so, particularly if fissile materials were diverted from civilian facilities.
It is possible that these considerations would prove to be relatively unimportant. For example, if relations among all major states were as cooperative as are today's relations among the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, one might not worry about the possibility of "bombs in the basement" or breakout.
Moreover, if the decision making processes of these governments were sufficiently transparent, states might judge that the probability that bombs or weapons-grade fissile materials could be hidden from inspectors for many years was negligible.
It seems more likely that the potential for cheating or breakout would be regarded as cause for significant concern, in which case the disarmament regime would have to incorporate safeguards to deter and deal with these possibilities. Safeguards might include security guarantees that pledge states to aid victims of nuclear attack or to punish nations that attempt to build, brandish, or use nuclear weapons; international nuclear or conventional forces of sufficient strength to deter, prevent, or punish the use of nuclear weapons; or preparations to rebuild national nuclear forces should the verification system detect violations.
If collective security arrangements were strong, as measured by political will and military ability to punish violators, or if states believed that any advantage that could be obtained by violating the agreement would be short lived e. As noted above, assessing the establishment of robust and comprehensive collective security arrangements or international military forces is beyond the scope of this report.
The committee will, however, elaborate on one possible type of safeguard that has received considerable attention: maintaining the ability to rebuild national nuclear arsenals. Any agreement prohibiting nuclear weapons would have to specify what constitutes a nuclear weapon, and which activities related to nuclear weapons would be permissible and which would not.
A continuous spectrum of weapons-related activities is possible under a prohibition, ranging from theoretical and experimental work on nuclear problems, to the construction and operation of civilian nuclear facilities, to sustaining an ability to design and fabricate nuclear weapons, preserving facilities for this purpose, and, in the extreme case, retaining stockpiles of weapons components. There are advantages and disadvantages to setting the demarcation line near either end of this spectrum.
Several authors have argued that allowing countries to maintain a capability to build nuclear weapons in a short period of time would strengthen the nuclear deterrent effect, thereby permitting nuclear weapons to be prohibited without requiring major changes in the international order.
An attempt by any state to retrieve these components or use these facilities would trigger alarms in other nuclear-capable countries, leading them to assemble and disperse their nuclear weapons.
The knowledge that any attempt to break out of the disarmament agreement would produce a rapid and offsetting response by other states would deter cheating in the first place, because cheating could produce no lasting advantage.
Allowing states to maintain. Under the regime of permitted activities, it might be necessary to protect the weapons-building capacity of each state against preemptive attack by other states, through a combination of multiple sites, deep burial, or provisions for rapid dispersal.
There are two potential problems with this type of arrangement, however. First, allowing states to maintain the capability to build nuclear weapons on short notice would make it easier for a state to cheat while at the same time making it more difficult to detect cheating. Permitted weapons-related activities would be of great value for a clandestine program and would create a background of legal activity against which it would be more difficult to detect illegal activities.
Second, having states poised to resume manufacture and deployment of nuclear weapons could create dangerous instabilities in which states might rush to rearm during a crisis, thereby worsening the crisis. Drawing the demarcation line closer to the other end of the spectrum would simplify verification, allow more time to respond to signs of breakout, and build a larger firebreak to nuclear rearmament. This discussion illustrates the importance of ensuring the stability of a comprehensive nuclear disarmament regime.
If, in a crisis or other foreseeable circumstances, a prohibition on the possession of nuclear weapons created incentives to cheat or strong pressures to rearm, the risk of nuclear war could be higher under disarmament than with small national arsenals. In order for the balance of risks to favor moving to comprehensive nuclear disarmament, the three factors mentioned above—international politics, verification, and safeguards—must interact in ways that do not create such perverse incentives or pressures.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to be much more specific without knowing more about the political and technical circumstances in which comprehensive nuclear disarmament would be pursued. The risks and benefits of comprehensive nuclear disarmament also would be affected by the way in which the transition away from small national arsenals is implemented.
The committee has considered a number of possible means to achieve a prohibition on the possession of nuclear weapons and does not mean to suggest that these approaches are the best or only ways to deal with the challenge. Any such proposal would require extensive study by the states themselves and intensive negotiations among them over an extended period.
When the time came, the nuclear weapons states and other states might find some other arrangement more appropriate to the conditions and norms of international politics then in existence. The committee's treatment of possible routes to prohibition is thus necessarily exploratory, in contrast to the analysis in previous chapters that resulted in specific recommendations.
Any option for achieving a durable prohibition on nuclear weapons must address a number of fundamental questions about how the transition from small national nuclear arsenals to total prohibition would be managed and how such a regime would operate:. Who owns nuclear weapons during the transition? Would they be controlled by the existing nuclear weapons states? Might the nuclear weapons states create a multilateral organization?
Or would a truly international organization be responsible for these residual capabilities? Who controls nuclear weapons during the transition? Would nuclear weapons remain under the operational control, however circumscribed, of the current nuclear weapons states? Would some joint or cooperative arrangements be developed to share responsibility? If control would pass to an international body, who would belong to that body and how would decisions be made?
Would the authority to use nuclear weapons be part of the regime's mandate? If so, under what circumstances might they be used? How would decisions to use nuclear weapons be made? How would the possibility of use be made credible? Who would maintain nuclear weapons capabilities? Who would oversee the cadre of technically knowledgeable people charged with maintaining the safety and reliability of the remaining weapons?
In what sequence would warheads and delivery vehicles be dismantled? If survivability remained a critical factor during the transition, how would the balance be struck between that and the need for reassurance and verification? Very broadly, the committee notes two major approaches to managing the transition to complete nuclear disarmament, each of which has a number of possible variants.
One possible path for managing the transition to comprehensive nuclear disarmament would involve having an international agency assume joint or full custody of the arsenals remaining during the transition to prohibition. Alternatively, nations might find it preferable to bypass the intermediate step involving an international agency and proceed directly to negotiations to prohibit nuclear weapons either globally in a single agreement or in steps involving successive expansions in the number and geographical scope of nuclear weapon free zones.
In their current conceptual state, neither option can provide convincing responses to all of the questions posed above. Each tries to address a particular set of problems among the many that would have to be resolved if the world were to embark on an effort to prohibit nuclear weapons. Together they illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, as well as the amount of effort and creativity that would be needed to make comprehensive nuclear disarmament a practical enterprise.
A transition to comprehensive nuclear disarmament could be managed by having an international agency assume full or joint custody of remaining nuclear stockpiles. A new agency could be created for this purpose, or the IAEA could be expanded and given this mission. This approach would be designed to ensure that the remaining nuclear weapons would no longer be instruments of national policy. During the transition, nuclear weapons under international custody would serve the core function of deterring the threat or use of nuclear weapons that might be retained or acquired by renegade states.
The membership of the agency, and the mechanisms by which it would reach decisions, would be the subject of much study and negotiation. The current nuclear weapons states undoubtedly would want a major role in the operation of the agency in return for agreeing to its creation. A key issue would be the degree of consensus that would be needed to take action. A balance would have to be achieved between ensuring that decisions regarding nuclear weapons enjoyed very broad support, and giving particular states or a small group of states veto privileges.
After the agreement establishing the agency entered into force, the agency would assume custody of all remaining nuclear weapons as well as all nuclear weapons-usable materials. Note that custody implies a legal responsibility but not necessarily physical possession, operational control, or ownership. In fact, custody of the weapons and materials could be managed in several ways. In addition, 37 States have signed the Treaty but not yet ratified it, and some 40 States have expressed support for the Treaty in the UN but so far neither signed nor ratified.
And our work will not be done until all States have joined this Treaty. The entry into force of the nuclear ban treaty — or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it is officially called — bans the use, threat of use, development, testing, production, manufacturing, acquisition, possession or stockpiling of nuclear weapons.
It also makes it illegal to assist, encourage or induce anyone, in any way, to engage in any activity prohibited by the Treaty. From 22 January , the Treaty is legally binding for the 51 States that have ratified or acceded to it, and in the future will bind other States when they join it.
The Treaty is the first instrument of international law to help mitigate the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using and testing nuclear weapons, notably by requiring states to help victims of nuclear testing and use and clearing contaminated areas. It formalizes into law a strong international understanding, by States and civil society alike, that any use of nuclear weapons, regardless of its rationale is unacceptable. By explicitly and unequivocally prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons , the TPNW sends a powerful signal that such use would not only be unacceptable from a moral and humanitarian perspective, but also illegal under international humanitarian law IHL.
Yes and no. The entry into force of the TPNW means that the treaty's provisions will be legally binding for the states that have ratified or acceded to it. States with nuclear weapons would either have to destroy their nuclear weapons before joining the Treaty, or commit to doing so according to a "legally binding, time-bound plan" that will eliminate their nuclear weapon programme in a verifiable and irreversible way.
However, for this to take effect, the nuclear weapons possessors will have to join the Treaty, which they have not yet done. There is already a strong international rejection of the potential use of nuclear weapons.
This taboo has stigmatized nuclear weapons as unacceptable means of warfare, from a moral, humanitarian and now also a legal point of view. Partly because of this, nuclear weapons have not been used since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in But as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a risk that they may be used again, by accident, miscalculation or intent.
And today, we see that the risk of use of nuclear weapons is growing. Make no mistake: the entry into force of the TPNW is a momentous achievement and a significant victory, but it marks a new beginning — and not the end — of our efforts to strengthen the taboo against nuclear use.
It would therefore be illusory to expect the TPNW to deliver a world without nuclear weapons tomorrow. Rather, the TPNW should be viewed as the humanitarian, moral and legal starting point of a long-term effort to achieve nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This is how international law works. This said, the norms established by previous weapons prohibitions in the past have impacted the policies of governments, companies and banks in countries that had not joined such treaties.
The prohibitions of the TPNW establish a clear standard—a benchmark against which all efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons will be judged.
The nuclear ban treaty strengthens the taboo against use of nuclear weapons. As such, the treaty increases the pressure on the nuclear-armed States to reduce and eliminate their nuclear arsenals, in line with their international commitments and obligations, notably those under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT.
The Treaty also gives actors advocating the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons a powerful tool of influence. Regardless of the time frame one believes is needed to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, an unambiguous norm establishing the illegality of such weapons will be needed.
Given the humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions that any use of nuclear weapons is likely to generate, a nuclear attack would be met with widespread international condemnation and horror.
Their devastating and unmanageable consequences are an important reason why nuclear weapons haven't been used in 75 years. As concluded by the ICRC, their catastrophic humanitarian consequences render it extremely doubtful that nuclear weapons could ever be used in line with international humanitarian law. This is also the reason why we must act now to prevent a nuclear explosion from happening in the first place, by removing any use and testing of nuclear weapons from the realm of possibility.
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