The destiny of nuclear weapons after the ban treaty

Abstract

122 of the 193 Member States of the United Nations on 7 July 2017, at the plenary meeting adopted a multilateral Treaty banning nuclear weapons (Text of Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), https://www.iaea.org/publications/documents/treaties/npt.). None of the nine possessors of nuclear weapons: USA, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel—did participate in the negotiations on the text of the Treaty and vote. Japan, the main victim of nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear weapons members of NATO refrain from participation at negotiation. Without questioning the good intention of the initiators of the Ban Treaty, a critical review of historical events indicates the following straight forward conclusion: The Ban Treaty prohibits the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the same as the NPT did. It does not include legally binding obligations for elimination of nuclear weapons within certain definite timeline. Therefore, the same historical mistake made during negotiation of the NPT, lacking any definite dead line for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, in its article VI, is repeated now. This shall leave the hands of the nuclear weapons possessor opened, as the NPT did, for almost had half a century. It has to be recalled the NPT was the initiative of the weapons states. The tremendous pressure augmented on weapon states during decades, due to public awareness and their concern of humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, was a great opportunity to push for a “Nuclear Weapon Convention”, for total elimination of nuclear weapons. The Ban Treaty, however, with step by step voluntary mild approach, practically postponed the realization of legitimate urgent demand of peace loving people, for decades if not indefinitely. The opponents of the Ban Treaty, specifically the weapon sates are therefore, satisfied by the “Nuclear Ban Treaty” initiative, though they oppose to possibly mislead the public. In a nutshell, the security threat of thousands of nuclear arsenals, global threat, will remain for decades.