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treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
Why Isn’t the Nuclear Threat a 2024 Campaign Issue?
Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris has volunteered positions on nuclear arsenals or nuclear abolition, due to either not wanting to appear weak or a lack of understanding of the risks of their continued existence.
Sep 27, 2024
Thursday was the United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This day was initially declared in 2013 as a way to heighten awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons in an attempt to educate the world community and reaffirm its commitment to global nuclear disarmament. Next year is the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only use of nuclear weapons, immediately killing an estimated 210,000 men, women, and children with scores dying in the ensuing years from cancers, burns, injuries, and other lethal effects of the bombs.
Following World War II, nuclear disarmament has been one of the highest priorities of the United Nations and was the subject of the first General Assembly resolution in 1946. Unfortunately, the aftermath of WWII also saw the Cold War and the first nuclear arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union. By 1986 this armed the world with 70,300 nuclear weapons. Through arms reduction treaties over the years that number has been reduced to approximately 12,100 weapons this year.
While the significant reductions in nuclear weapons is notable, the knowledge of the humanitarian consequences following the use of nuclear weapons from only a single weapon or a limited or full-scale nuclear war confirms the insanity of the very existence of any number of these weapons.
With the passing of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, let us ensure that future generations look back on our time here and realize that we saw the threat to our existence and took the necessary actions to eliminate that possibility.
Yet today we remain as close or closer to nuclear war than at any time since the dropping of the first nuclear weapons. The world is full of potential nuclear hot spots: the current war in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening the use of battlefield nuclear weapons and more, the war raging in Israel against Gaza, the constant tensions between India and Pakistan, the tensions between China and Taiwan, and finally ongoing tensions with North Korea.
These flash points, in addition to the growing catastrophic effects of climate change resulting in further international conflict, as well as disruptive technologies, including cyber attacks and the potential use of AI, caused the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move their infamous Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight for the second year in a row.
In this setting, and in the midst of the current U.S. presidential campaign, mainstream media has largely been oblivious to or unaware of the growing national and international nuclear abolition movement and efforts therein. The presidential campaign has seen no discussion of nuclear weapons or abolition, and only candidate Trump has mentioned them in vague reference to deterrence or World War III. Neither candidate has volunteered positions during this campaign on nuclear arsenals or nuclear abolition, due to either not wanting to appear weak or a lack of understanding of the risks of their continued existence.
Certainly the awareness and understanding of the consequences of nuclear weapons and their use can be overwhelming, paralyzing, and often daunting to address. Yet we must be aware of the risks they pose and the opportunities before us. This past year has seen significant increased awareness of nuclear weapons following the Oppenheimer film; the subsequent New York Times series, “At The Brink,” covering our nuclear world; and finally Annie Jacobsen’s New York Times best-selling book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, which describes in graphic detail the end of civilization playing out in 24 minutes, following a hypothetical nuclear attack by North Korea on the United States and the self-fulfilling prophecy of the reflexive apocalyptic response. This book should be mandatory reading for any presidential candidate or member of Congress, requiring their response for how they plan to prevent this scenario.
On this week of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, there is much happening, both internationally and here in the United States. As people are made aware of the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, they are demanding abolition of these weapons and for our leaders to take action immediately. Internationally, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has three new nations ratifying the treaty this week, bringing the total to 73—with 25 additional signatory nations awaiting ratification.
This movement has been spearheaded by ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons. In the United States there is an intersectional grassroots movement that is rapidly growing called “Back From the Brink.” Supporting the TPNW, this movement calls on the United States to take a leadership role in convening the nine nuclear nations for a verifiable, time bound effort to abolish all nuclear weapons. In addition, it includes the actionable precautionary measures until abolition has been realized. These include a no-first-use policy, eliminating the authority of any president to initiate nuclear war, removing our weapons from hair trigger alert, and finally canceling the plan to replace all of our nuclear weapons with new, enhanced nuclear weapons.
Back From the Brink has the support of 490 organizations, 77 cities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 44 members of Congress, and 428 municipal and state officials. It also has a U.S. House of Representatives resolution, H. Res 77, sponsored by Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern and supported by 44 members of Congress. Back From the Brink can be endorsed by all, and currently there are 19 local hubs across the nation working collaboratively and in coalition with their communities to build support for this effort.
With the passing of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, let us ensure that future generations look back on our time here and realize that we saw the threat to our existence and took the necessary actions to eliminate that possibility. Each of us has a role to play in making this a reality.
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Hiroshima Survivors Warn Against Nuclear War 79 Years After US Bombing
"The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," said one hibakusha. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they?"
Aug 06, 2024
As the number of people who survived the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rapidly dwindles 79 years after the attacks, hibakusha—the Japanese word for the survivors—and others are imploring humanity to do everything possible to avert another nuclear war.
"People still don't get it. The atomic bomb isn't a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," Shigeaki Mori, who was an 8-year-old boy on his way to school on the morning of August 6, 1945,
toldThe New York Times. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that."
Keiko Aguro was also 8 years old and standing on a road near her home in Hiroshima when a U.S. B-29 Superfortress dropped one bomb over Hiroshima that exploded with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT. The explosion destroyed nearly everything and everyone within about a 1-mile (1.62 km) radius. As many as 90,000 people died from the heat, blast wave, and ensuing inferno. Tens of thousands of others were injured, many of them mortally. Tens of thousands more would perish from radiation over the following weeks, months, and years.
"As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story," Aguro said. "'For we shall not repeat the evil'—this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."
"Now what survivors worry about is to die and meet our family in heaven," Aguro added. "I heard many survivors say, 'What shall I do? On this planet there are still many many nuclear weapons, and then I'll meet my daughter I couldn't save. I'll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons?' There is no answer I can tell them."
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was obliterated in a 20-kiloton air burst that killed as many as 75,000 people that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.
The authors of the Times piece—Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen—wrote that "as another anniversary of August 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans—and the globe, really—to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again."
However, they note that "countries like the United States, China, and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles," while "many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening."
"The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history," the trio wrote. But they added that nearly eight decades later, many Americans still hail the bombings as "necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end."
But the prevailing U.S. historical narrative—which portrays the bombings as critical to ending the war—ignores the lack of consensus and grave misgivings among senior military commanders about dropping the bombs. Seven of the eight five-star generals and admirals at the time opposed its use. One of them, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said as president that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—marked this year's ignominious anniversary with a report focusing on how children are affected by nuclear war and the threat thereof.
The report contains graphic descriptions of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and of nuclear weapons testing on children around the world. It also explains how fear of thermonuclear annihilation affected children during the Cold War and how humanity can protect children by disarming.
"Today, several thousand nuclear weapons still exist in the arsenals of nine countries, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere, especially children. Many have vastly greater explosive yields than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," the ICAN report states.
"To protect humanity from the catastrophic harm that nuclear weapons are designed to inflict, governments must act with urgency to eliminate them completely—the only guarantee against their further use and testing," the publication continues. "This would be a great service to the current generation of children and to all future generations, who would grow up free from the threat of nuclear war."
"The alternative is to pass on to them a world still teetering on the brink of catastrophe," ICAN added. "Or, quite unthinkable, a world reeling from the horrors of another nuclear attack, perhaps with a death toll orders of magnitude greater than that of the atomic bombings of 1945."
Echoing ICAN, Hiroshima Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki said during the annual commemoration of the bombing at Hiroshima Peace Park that "as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely be used again someday."
"Nuclear weapons abolition is not an ideal to achieve far in the future," Yuzaki stressed. "Instead, it is a pressing and real issue that we should desperately engage in at this moment since nuclear problems involve an imminent risk to human survival."
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Honor the Victims of the Nuclear Age by Bringing It to an End
Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all state parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Jul 23, 2024
The following speech was delivered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee on July 23, 2024 at the United Nations in Geneva.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) state parties are meeting for a third year in a row in the shadow of the devastating war in Ukraine, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed key infrastructure in Ukraine and elsewhere, and turned friends and family members into enemies. In the past 10 months, the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza have shattered all who have dared to confront the enormous civilian toll, the ongoing justifications of violations of international humanitarian law, and the divisiveness that the conflict has brought to environs from university campuses around the world to the halls of the United Nations.
The human suffering we witness on repeat is unfathomable, and yet, the fact that both of these conflicts involve—directly and indirectly—states that possess nuclear weapons is a stark reminder that things could be far worse. Whether deliberately, as has been threatened by Russian and Israeli politicians, or by accident, and especially if the current conflicts widen to regional wars, the use of nuclear weapons is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. This is so as long as nuclear weapons exist, and most especially as long as current policies not only allow but call for their instantaneous use to defend interests of states.
The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs.
Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all state parties to the NPT. The Nuclear-Weapon States—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have a special responsibility. According to Article Six of this treaty, they are mandated to negotiate in good faith toward nuclear disarmament, something that they have ostensibly not been doing. This must change.
All other NPT state parties must move away from threats of nuclear annihilation as a strategy for conducting international affairs. The stationing of U.S. and Russian weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye in the case of the U.S. and Belarus in the case of Russia must end imminently. So must the so-called nuclear umbrella promise. Nuclear weapons don’t make anyone safer—they put all of us, all of humanity, and all of life on the planet at risk of extinction. To state that this is unacceptable is to state the obvious.
What should be done?
Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. The Nuclear-Weapon States should use this and next year’s Preparatory Committee to chart a path that includes signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in conjunction with the other four nuclear-weapon possessors: India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Doing so by 2035 would allocate 10 years to make history. Once all possessors have ratified the TPNW, all nuclear weapons should be eliminated by 2045.
As we look toward a future in which nuclear weapons are abolished, eliminated, and no longer threaten to extinguish human civilization, we also must look to the past and present in order to address the suffering of communities that were impacted by nuclear weapons use and testing. The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs. The evidence of harm is all too real, and the scars are more than visible.
In Algeria, the radioactive equipment from the French nuclear testing program remains buried in the Saharan sands. In the Marshall Islands, the food on the famous Bikini Island, after which the swimsuit was named by the French designer who wanted his design to be explosive, still brims with cesium-137 left over from the U.S. nuclear testing. On Kiritimati Island in Kiribati, the local population has yet to receive an acknowledgment and assistance for harms done by the U.K. and the U.S. during their nuclear weapon testing programs. And in Kazakhstan, too many of the victims of the Soviet nuclear testing program need far more help than they have received so far. This is despite the earnest efforts of the Kazakhstan government, which has taken serious steps toward environmental remediation and victim assistance in the affected region. The stories go on and on and circle the globe.
The states responsible for these heinous acts must begin by issuing an apology. Next, they should come together with the international community to right these historical wrongs and to promise never to commit such crimes ever again.
Here too, the TPNW paves the way forward through its humanitarian provisions, spelled out in Articles six and seven. We furthermore call on all states, including the nine that abstained or voted last December against the resolution in the U.N. General Assembly to address the legacy of nuclear testing; the resolution provides an opportunity for a wide-reaching conversation about nuclear justice, which has been elusive for far too many and for far too long. Every state must come to the nuclear justice table.
There is work to be done. Statements and gatherings must be followed by real action and by concrete and time-bound steps.
We must honor the victims of the nuclear age by bringing about its end and by helping them earnestly and wholeheartedly. But beyond these tasks, we must recommit to the promise of the U.N. Charter in which states address their differences through negotiations; engage in peaceful cooperation and competition; and reject all threats, including those of nuclear Armageddon, as not just an enormous risk to humanity, but as an insult to our humanity. We are better than that.
The work and ideas of Mozart, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, Franklin, Allende, and so many others blaze the path forward. This path does not include nuclear weapons.
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