A global ban on nuclear weapons: the people’s choice

ICAN Australia campaign director Tim Wright (pictured) reflects on the rising momentum around the world for a treaty abolishing nuclear weapons and argues that such a treaty is the common sense option for achieving disarmament.
 

 
A global ban on nuclear weapons: the people’s choice
 
A nuclear abolition treaty is the most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world. It is also the approach most likely to galvanise widespread public support. We can hardly expect to see people demonstrating in the streets for modest steps like a fissile materials cut-off treaty or joint declaration of no first use.

The simple and unassailable logic of pursuing a comprehensive ban has already attracted broad endorsement from governments and citizens alike.

Opinion polls show that a majority of people in all nuclear-armed nations would support an international legally binding agreement outlawing and eliminating nuclear weapons,1 as do more than 140 nations.2

The Non-Aligned Movement, comprising 118 states, has called for negotiations on a convention to begin ‘at the earliest possible date’, with the treaty entering into force between 2015 and 2020 and nuclear weapons to be eliminated by 2025.3 Among western nations, Austria, Switzerland and Norway are key allies.

Opponents have derided the idea as a utopian dream, labelling it ‘impractical’, ‘unrealistic’, ‘naïve’, ‘idealistic’ and ‘premature’. Lord David Howell told the British parliament in June 2010 that ‘the idea of a nuclear weapons convention is a fine one’, but ‘a whole series of things need to be done before one comes to the happy situation where the nuclear world is disarmed, and a convention could then get full support’.4

His suggestion that a convention would be useful only to maintain a nuclear-weapon-free world, rather than to achieve it, is novel (to say the least) considering that no other category of weapon has ever been eliminated and subsequently outlawed.

The United States has shown similar contempt for the concept of a convention, despite the rhetoric of President Obama. At the United Nations, the US has warned that combining all the issues into a single negotiation would be ‘a formula for deadlock’, distracting energy and attention from ‘practical and achievable steps’. The US thus prefers ‘a pragmatic step-by-step approach’ to taking ‘the impractical leap of seeking to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention’.5

Of course, criticisms like these can readily be flipped on their head. Is a nuclear abolition treaty ‘impractical’, or is it impractical to rely on the same old approach of arms control and incrementalism and expect that it will yield positive results when it has largely failed to do so for the last 40 years?

Is a nuclear weapons convention ‘unrealistic’, or is it unrealistic to expect that we can halt the spread of nuclear weapons while not challenging those few nations that continue to attach great value to them? Is a global ban ‘naïve’, or is it naïve to think that governments can retain their nuclear forces forevermore without them being used again?

Is all this discussion about outlawing nuclear weapons ‘premature’, or is it premature for us to conclude that the world cannot change? Either we accept the dangerously unambitious incrementalist agenda set by a few powerful states — and its near certain failure — or we take action and set the agenda ourselves.
 
Is there public support for a nuclear weapons convention?

Nation......Support %....Oppose %
US..............77...................20......
Russia..........69..................14......
UK..............81...................17......
France.........86...................12......
China...........83..................14......
India............62..................20......
Pakistan.......46..................41......
Israel...........67..................25......
 
Source: World Public Opinion 2008
 
How many governments support a nuclear weapons convention?

142 – supportive
21 – neutral
29 – opposed

Source: ICAN October 2010
 
References:

1 World Public Opinion, ‘Publics around the World Favor International Agreement to Eliminate All Nuclear Weapons’, 9 December 2008: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org.

2 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Government Position on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, October 2010: http://www.icanw.org.

3 ‘Elements for a Plan of Action for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons’, working paper submitted by the Group of the Non-Aligned States Parties to the NPT, 28 April 2010, NPT/CONF.2010/WP.47.

4 Responses to questions by Baroness Williams of Crosby on 9 June 2010.

5 Statement by the United States in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, New York, 5 October 2010.