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A
playground is seen in the deserted town of Pripyat, some 3 kilometers from the
Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, Nov. 29, 2016. (AP/Efrem Lukatsky)
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By Ramesh Thakur
Co-convener
of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and
Disarmament
On March 27, more than
100 countries gathered at the United Nations in New York to commence
negotiations on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons,
leading towards their total elimination.” They will hope to conclude talks and
sign a treaty after a second session on June 15 to July 7.
The
conferences are based on Resolution L.41 adopted on Oct. 27, 2016 by the First
Committee of the UN General Assembly by a landslide 123-38 vote, followed by a
vote in the full General Assembly on Dec. 23 passed by an equally solid 113-35
majority.
The
resulting treaty will partly fulfil the 127-nation humanitarian pledge “to
stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.” The US and allies that
shelter under its nuclear umbrella — Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea,
etc. — voted against and most have chosen to boycott the talks, putting
themselves on the wrong side of humanity, history and geography as almost all
Asia-Pacific countries support a ban.
The
negotiations hold the promise of being the most significant multilateral
development in nuclear arms control since the indefinite extension of the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 and the adoption of the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.
Revived
for a shining moment by President Barack Obama in Prague in 2009, the dream of
a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons has steadily faded since then
with ongoing nuclear modernization in all nine countries with the bomb, growing
nuclear arsenals in China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, continued testing
by North Korea, and rising geopolitical tensions in several high-risk theaters
involving nuclear powers in eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, the
Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea.
The
impetus behind the ban talks is growing consciousness of this rise in nuclear
dangers, frustration at stalled nuclear disarmament and exasperation at the
dismissive attitude of the nuclear-armed states toward their legal disarmament
obligations.
For
nuclear peace to hold, deterrence and fail-safe mechanisms must work every
single time. For nuclear armageddon, deterrence or fail-safe mechanisms need to
break down only once. Deterrence depends on rational decision-makers at a time
when two of the leaders with fingers on the nuclear button are US President
Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Nuclear
peace depends also on no rogue launch, human error, or system malfunction. As
more states acquire nuclear weapons, the risks multiply exponentially with
requirements for robust command and control systems in all, 100 percent
reliable failsafe mechanisms and procedures against accidental or unauthorized
launch of nuclear weapons and unbreachable security measures against terrorists
getting nuclear weapons. This is an impossibly high bar.
Nine
countries possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons altogether. Their arsenals,
modernization plans, doctrines and deployment practices contradict the NPT
Article VI obligation to eliminate nuclear weapons through negotiations. The UN
talks will aim to give practical expression to the disarmament obligation.
Those refusing to attend may be in breach of their NPT obligations.
Opposition
to the talks is based on self-serving and disingenuous arguments that the time
is not right (It hasn’t been right for 49 years!). And that the treaty will be
unverifiable, unenforceable, ineffective, divisive and damaging to the NPT.
Such recalcitrance is a failed tactic to delay abolition indefinitely.
Tactically, by refusing to take a seat at the negotiating table, Australia and
Japan are also rejecting the opportunity to influence the debate and shape the
text of the eventual treaty.
A
ban treaty will be a useful building block for an eventual nuclear weapons
convention. The forward-looking nuclear disarmament agenda includes five
components. Of these, three can be implemented only by the nuclear-armed
states: the capping and containment of nuclear arsenals, reducing warhead
numbers, reliance on nuclear doctrines, deployment and provocative postures
like launch-on-warning; and the elimination of nuclear weapons entirely.
But
the remaining two can be pursued by non-nuclear weapon states: stigmatizing and
delegitimizing the bomb and the prohibition of its use or possession through a
new, unequivocal legal framework like an international treaty.
Such
a ban treaty would have an enormous normative impact and hence the strong
opposition to it by the nuclear powers. It would reinforce the boundary between
conventional and nuclear weapons that is being blurred by technological
advances, strengthen the norm of non-use of nuclear weapons and make nuclear
planning more problematic and reaffirm the non-proliferation, disarmament and
international humanitarian law norms.
In
the face of the nuclear powers’ endless excuses, a ban treaty has become
urgent, essential and, in current circumstances, the only practical way forward
for achieving real disarmament.
***
The writer, a professor at
the Australian National University, is co-convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership
Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
Source: The Jakarta Post
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