The delegitimisation of nuclear weapons must begin, given that even if not exploded nuclear weapons present hazards at every step in their production, testing, storage and transportation”. Rebecca Johnson makes this point well: “Nuclear threats and effects must be understood as humanitarian problems,”
If all aspects of nuclear weapons are grossly immoral and potentially disastrous, we are left with a basic question: are they illegal? This needs refining. Does it mean that just possessing them is illegal? Or that actually deploying the warheads linked to rockets and submarines is illegal – on the assumption that you have openly stated that you might be prepared to use them one day. It probably is, but it is rather a roundabout message for public consumption.
So let’s try this. Would it be unlawful actually to use a nuclear weapon? This is more straightforward and the answer is certainly that it is. In 1996 the International Court of Justice went nearly this far, but pointed out that it did not have enough information about actual nuclear weapons at its disposal. But we do have that information. We know that Trident is eight times as powerful as the Hiroshima Bomb. It could never be used without incinerating and irradiating huge numbers of civilians.
So Britain and the other nuclear-armed states are deploying a weapon which it could never be legal to use.
A Shadow-Play
The skill and knowledge of the NGO representatives at the Review Conference was impressive. This was not the case with many of the diplomats and much of the media. One diplomat’s response, when asked if the urgency of the situation was appreciated in the light of the Red Cross report, first spoke of Katrina and then likened the earthquake in Haiti to a nuclear disaster, in other words she had no concept of the dangers facing us. This turns out to be a common misuse of language giving rise to a dangerous and widespread complacency. In a recent broadcast of “Politics Today” the presenter described a site as looking “as if hit by a nuclear bomb.”
The outcome of the NPT in New York was predictably weak given that the main five countries with nuclear weapons are part of an unbalanced system based on double standards. Just as with the climate change summit in Copenhagen the vested interests of the wealthier more powerful nations to maintain the status quo as far as possible belies the global, interdependent and urgent nature of the threats humanity is facing.
The trouble with the NPT is that it represents a set of worn-out tools which cannot do the job of abolishing nuclear weapons. The same is true of the Conference on Disarmament (CD.) Here, state representatives are supposed to negotiate steps towards disarmament. This is not happening. For years the CD has achieved practically nothing. Much of the time it is bogged down in procedural wrangles. There have been some slightly optimistic developments recently though – the Committee has agreement on a detailed schedule of activities and this outcome may well be due to the moderate success of the Review Conference.
These international gatherings represent states, not people. The so-called security and short-term “interests” of states, especially the dominant ones, are the main driving motor. The trouble we had in drawing the attention of diplomats to our Flame of Hope dossier, reflecting the hopes of people, not states.
