By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN | 11 August 2024 (IDN) — The United States deserves unequivocal accolades for joining Egypt and Qatar in exerting its diplomatic weight to avert a wider war in the Middle East. It is regretful, however, that such zeal was missing at the Second Session of the Preparatory Committee for the Eleventh Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference at the UN in Geneva. Ambassador Akan Rakhmetullin of Kazakhstan, which has a track record of unflinching commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons, chaired the PrepCom.
The Conference concluded in Geneva on 2 August, adopting the chair’s summary as a working paper. But as in the previous two NPT Review Conferences in 2015 and 2022, the States parties failed to agree on an outcome.
This is a blow to the NPT process, which has taken place against the menacing backdrop of an all-time high risk of nuclear-weapons use, with heightened international tensions exacerbated by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the nuclear-arms race in full swing. 2023 has not only seen an escalation of explicit nuclear threats, the banalisation of strident nuclear rhetoric and show of force, but also new nuclear sharing arrangements.
Nuclear arms race
The five nuclear-weapon states in the NPT—China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US—are engaging in a new nuclear arms race, spending $86 billion last year alone on modernising and in some cases expanding their arsenals. Yet throughout the meeting, they and their allies appeared keen to ignore their own contributions to the current nuclear arms race with disastrous consequences for our planet.
Along with Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea, the nine nuclear-weapon states possess roughly 12,100 nuclear warheads, with over 9,500 in active military stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists’ 2024 State of the Worlds Nuclear Forces.
While this is a significant decline from the approximately 70,000 warheads owned by the nuclear-armed states during the Cold War, nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decade and today’s nuclear forces’ potential of a nuclear Armageddon is much greater.
A single nuclear warhead could kill hundreds of thousands of people, with lasting and devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences. Detonating just one nuclear weapon alone over New York would cause an estimated 583,160 fatalities.
Besides, the modern nuclear forces are many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Thirty-two other states are also part of the problem, with six nations—Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey—hosting nuclear weapons, and a further 28 endorsing their use on their behalf as part of defence alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
As the 2017 Nobel Peace laureate ICAN points out, “nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons. A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate, causing widespread famine”.
The five nuclear-weapon states, which are not only parties to the NPT, but also permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been involved in nuclear sharing—contrary to Article VI of the NPT, which includes the only legally binding treaty-based obligation requiring States to pursue in good faith effective measures related to nuclear disarmament.
Under the Treaty, the nuclear-weapon states are obliged not to transfer possession or control to any recipient nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, and not in any way to assist, encourage or induce non-nuclear-weapon States to manufacture, acquire or control over such weapons or devices.
Understandably, states and civil society organisations have been raising concerns about risks of nuclear sharing. Kazakhstan, for example, stated that “the sharing of nuclear weapons is a dangerous and outdated practice that brings us closer to war. A number of countries still hold arsenals from other countries. They are far smaller than those once stockpiled, but still enough to cause catastrophic consequences and irreparable damage”.
ICAN in a statement to the NPT also highlighted the global risks, lack of transparency and hypocrisy of this practice: “The practice of nuclear sharing has been allowed to continue for far too long, and now it is spreading. How will the governments currently defending the practice feel when weapons start to appear in countries outside of Europe? There are proposals out there that would spread nuclear weapons around the world—the very antithesis of the treaty we’re here to discuss. Nuclear sharing is unacceptable”.
Nevertheless, the response from nuclear weapons states and their allies was to bristle, deflect responsibility and point at each other. NATO members in particular, relentlessly repeated that nuclear sharing has always been accepted by NPT states parties, and that it was not until very recently that anyone objected to it, something which was effectively debunked by reviewing historical records, as done by Reaching Critical Will here.
Nuclear deterrence
This NPT Prepcom also saw a stronger pushback against the nuclear-weapon states’ nuclear deterrence doctrine. In a particularly strong statement, the states parties and signatories to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) bashed “the continued and increasing salience of and emphasis on nuclear weapons in military postures and doctrines”.
They also challenged attempts by nuclear-armed states and their allies to justify nuclear deterrence as a legitimate security doctrine: “The perpetuation and implementation of nuclear deterrence in military and security concepts, doctrines and policies not only erode and contradict non-proliferation but also obstruct progress towards nuclear disarmament. These are real challenges to the full and effective implementation of the NPT.”
More than 80 faith-based organizations and an additional 190 faith and values-based leaders and individuals endorsed a joint Inter-faith and Values Appeal to the 2024 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Prep Com, presented to the governments meeting at the UN in Geneva.
A separate appeal—Turn Back the Doomsday Clock—sanctioned by more than 80 parliamentarians from 35 countries, asks States Parties to the NPT to “elevate cooperative leadership and the rule of law in order to prevent nuclear war, resolve international conflicts peacefully and protect the climate for current and future generations”.
More than 80 parliamentarians from 35 legislatures endorsed the appeal, including members of foreign affairs and defence committees; parliamentary delegates to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, NATO Parliamentary Assembly and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly; former Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Disarmament; and others.
The appeal calls for halting the modernisation and production of nuclear weapons; affirming that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible, as was agreed by G20 leaders at their Summit in Bali, and that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal as declared by the International Court of Justice; and commit to phase out the role of nuclear weapons in security policies starting with no-first-use policies.
The parliamentarians further want nuclear-weapon states to pledge to achieve the complete elimination of nuclear weapons no later than the 75th anniversary of the NPT, commence a collective process for the global elimination of nuclear weapons; affirm the important role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ); affirm the current regional nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) and support the establishment of additional NWFZs including a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction and a North-East Asia NWFZ. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Image: Collage of the exterior of UN Geneva (UN) with a picture (UNODA) of Kazakh Ambassador Akan Rakhmetullin who chaired the conference.
