Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear-armed States Panic as Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty Becomes International Law

Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf *

“Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat,

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,

Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom gods lead to destruction.”

VIENNA (IDN) -– On 22 January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) becomes international law in accordance with international legal principles underpinned by the United Nations Charter and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Dreading this eventuality, the nuclear-armed States and the “captive nations” in alliances backed by nuclear weapons are panicking and resorting to unhinged arguments against this treaty adopted by 122 of 193 UN Member States on 7 July 2017 – it has been signed by 84 and ratified by 50 States.

The Promise of the Treaty on Prevention of Nuclear Weapons

Viewpoint by Dr Joseph Gerson*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The Treaty on the Prevention of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has received its 50th ratification and will go into force in 90 days – January 22, 2021. Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb survivors, activists from ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and the diplomats are celebrating this contribution to the long struggle for a nuclear-weapons-free world.

The next and most critical step will be winning the signing and ratification by one or more of the nuclear weapons umbrella states, a European NATO member or one of the newly christened, “quad”, envisioned as an Asia-Pacific NATO: Japan, Australia and India. (The U.S. is the fourth member of the quad.)

Photo: The exhibition for the International Day Against Nuclear Tests displayed at the CTBTO, based in Vienna, August 29 included winning artworks from a children’s art campaign launched in 2019 by CTBTO and the Spanish NGO Paz y Cooperación. The treaty, which has not entered into force, bans nuclear explosions by everyone everywhere. Credit: CTBTO.

Precarious Multilateralism Seizes CTBTO Nuclear-Test-Ban Organization

By Stephanie Liechtenstein*, Passblue

VIENNA (IDN) – For the first time in its 24-year history, state parties to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a multilateral agreement that bans all nuclear testing worldwide, have taken a controversial decision by a two-thirds majority. Decisions in the treaty’s body are usually taken by consensus.

The majority decision on October 19 was focused on whether countries with unpaid dues could vote in the election of the next executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. (The body is not part of the United Nations but has a cooperative agreement with it.)

Photo (left to right): Alyn Ware (World Future Council, PNND), Vanda Proskova (PragueVision) and Saber Chowdhury (PNND, IPU).

2045: A New Rallying Call for Nuclear Abolition

Viewpoint by Alyn Ware, Vanda Proskova and Saber Chowdhury*

NEW YORK (IDN) – On October 2, 2020, 77 Heads of State and Government Ministers addressed a United Nations High-Level meeting on the elimination of nuclear weapons, along with the UN Secretary-General, the President of the UN General Assembly and two representatives of civil society.

One of the proposals highlighted by some of the governments and supported by the two civil society representatives was an appeal to UN member states to commit to the elimination of nuclear weapons by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations.

Photo: Virtual International Forum.Credit: The writer.

Forum Calls for New Approach to NE Asian Denuclearization and Economic Development

By Alan Gua

ULAANBAATAR (IDN) – Former Mongolian Ambassador to the United Nations and Chairman of Blue Banner NGO of Mongolia, Dr Jargalsaikhany Enkhsaikhan, believes that “establishing a Northeast Asian nuclear-weapon-free zone (NEA-NWFZ) and providing North Korea with a joint, credible mini-Marshall Plan might be a win-win solution for the Korean Peninsula as well as for overall regional security and development”.

Both the U.S. and North Korea need to adopt “bold conceptual approaches to resolve security threats on the Korean peninsula, including deterrence that excludes nuclear weapons,” he told an international forum.

Photo: Signing and ratification of Nuclear Ban Treaty ceremony on 26 September 2019 with participants and speakers. Credit: ICAN.

UN Chief Concerned About Standstill in Arms Control Talks

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – "We need a strengthened, inclusive and renewed multilateralism built on trust and based on international law that can guide us to our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, commemorating the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on September 26.

He was reiterating the resolve adoption of the General Assembly resolution in 1946, which committed the UN to the goal of ridding the planet of nuclear weapons. Because of these, "the world continues to live in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe".

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Manila, Philippines on August 6, 2017. (Photo credit: U.S. Department of State/Public Domain)

U.S. Shifts Arms Control Strategy with Russia

By Kingston Reif and Shannon Bugos

While Kingston Reif is the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy, Shannon Bugos is research assistant at the Arms Control Association.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) – The Trump administration has softened its demand that China immediately participate in trilateral nuclear arms control talks with the United States and Russia and says it is now seeking an interim step of a politically binding framework with Moscow.

But the administration continues to reject Russia’s offer of a clean five-year extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and has said that President Trump will not consider an extension until several conditions are met.

Collage of photos of the author in his IAEA capacity at the Semipalatinsk “polygon” on 29 August 2011, with ‘Stronger than Death’ monument in Semey in the centre. It was erected in 2001 in memory of the victims of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk. Photos by Tariq Rauf.

Extinguishing Prometheus’ Nuclear Flame: International Day Against Nuclear Tests

By Tariq Rauf*

VIENNA (IDN) – The first nuclear explosive device was detonated at the Alamogordo Test Range in the New Mexico desert in the United States of America on July 16, 1945, and then on August 6 and 9 the US carried out the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the next seven decades, nine additional countries carried out some 2060 nuclear explosions, spreading radioactive contamination in the air, lands and space, and in the world's oceans, leading to long-lasting catastrophic consequences for the health and well-being of millions of innocent people.

Photo: UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Photo courtesy the UN.

Nuclear Testing Should Have No Place in the 21st Century

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – UN Secretary-General António Guterres has in a message for the International Day against Nuclear Tests warned of resurgent nuclear menace and called for a complete ban on testing. Following is the full text of his message.

Commemorated annually since 2010 on the anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, the International Day against Nuclear Tests takes on special meaning in 2020 in also marking 75 years since the first-ever nuclear test, code named “Trinity”, was undertaken in July 1945 in the United States.

Map: Soviet Invasion of Manchuria (1945), based on Glantz's maps in Levenworth Paper No 7 - Feb 1983. CC BY-SA 3.0

Soviet Advance Not U.S. Atomic Bombings Forced Japan To Surrender

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Seventy-five years ago the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 9 was premeditated mass murder.

President Harry Truman had a workable alternative to using the atom bomb – to cooperate with Stalin, as Roosevelt and Churchill had done on the Western front, in the Soviet advance on Japan, rather than making it a race for control.

Indeed, it was the Soviet advance that convinced Japan to surrender.** Although unaware of each other’s thinking both Truman and the Japanese leadership shared a common cause – they both wanted to pre-empt the possibility of the Soviet Union occupying parts of Japan before the U.S. had got its boots on Japanese ground. Truman did not want to be compelled to concede Soviet participation in the government of post-surrender, occupied, Japan.