Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says passin' a treaty is one thing - gettin' ever'body to abide by it is sumpin' else...

Over 120 countries approved the first-ever legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons
Saturday 8th July, 2017 - In what became a historic moment across the globe, 122 countries have approved the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons at a UN meeting on Friday.

The meeting that was boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations saw the negotiation and ultimate voting of the legally binding treaty that was announced to a loud applause by president of the UN conference, Elayne Whyte Gomez. While 122 nations voted in favor, the Netherlands opposed it, and Singapore abstained from voting. Gomez said, "The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years," since the use of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of World War II. She added that the treaty is "the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years.” Gomez further announced that it will be opened for signatures in September and will come into force when 50 countries have ratified it.

Earlier in December last year, UN member states overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for negotiations on a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons. Despite strong opposition from nuclear-armed nations and their allies, who have refused to participate in the talks, Gomez said 129 countries signed up to take part in drafting the treaty. This, she said, represents two-thirds of the 193 member states. While all nuclear states and NATO members boycotted the negotiations, the Netherlands, which currently has U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory, was urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the negotiations. Gomez explained that the treaty requires of all ratifying countries "never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." It also reportedly bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons.

Earlier this week, Retired British Royal Navy Cmdr. Rob Green, who flew nuclear strike aircraft and is now co-director of the Peace Foundation's Disarmament and Security Center, said that "the heart of this treaty" is the prohibition on threatening to use nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Richard Moyes, managing director of Article 36, a British-based organization that works to prevent harm from nuclear and other weapons, said it isn't plausible to think the world can maintain security based on mutually threatening to incinerate hundreds of thousands of people with nuclear weapons "when we know there have been near-misses, errors of judgment — there's been accidents — and there's a degree of instability in the political leadership in the world." The treaty has meanwhile seen no support from nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons, including the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

According to reports, the U.S. and other nuclear powers are instead hoping to strengthen and reaffirm the nearly half-century-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that is considered the cornerstone of global nonproliferation efforts. That pact sought to prevent the spread of atomic arms beyond the five original weapons powers — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China and requires non-nuclear signatory nations to not pursue atomic weapons in exchange for a commitment by the five powers to move toward nuclear disarmament and to guarantee non-nuclear states access to peaceful nuclear technology for producing energy. Commenting on North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile tests, including its ICBM launch earlier this month, Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said 15,000 nuclear weapons around the world have not managed to deter Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

Fihn is seeking a new approach, starting with prohibition, as the first step to eliminate nuclear arms. On March 27, when talks began on the nuclear weapons ban treaty, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that "there is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons, but we have to be realistic." She reportedly asked if anyone thought North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons, stressing that North Koreans would be "cheering" a nuclear ban treaty — and Americans and others would be at risk.

Over 120 countries approved the first-ever legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons

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Nations take a step away from the threat of nuclear annihilation
Sunday 9th July, 2017 - A majority of the world's nations have just joined together to call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Authors: If the US is serious about keeping the world safe from a nuclear attack, then it should have voted yes to the ban

A majority of the world's nations have just joined together to call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We should listen. The United States government opposed the historic UN vote for a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, but that was a knee-jerk response, grounded in last century's reflexes. Today, the path forward to total abolition of these weapons is open — even as, ironically, the danger of nuclear war is greater than it has been since the worst days of the Cold War. The United States and Russia hold more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, with about 7,000 each. The other nuclear-armed states have smaller arsenals by comparison. None of the nuclear-armed states were among the 120 nations who voted to declare these weapons illegal. But if the United States is serious about seeking the security of a world free of nuclear weapons, then it should have been the first to vote "yes" on the ban.

For decades the US has instead based its security policy on the theory of nuclear deterrence — an untested belief that nuclear weapons are so terrible that they keep one nuclear-armed country from attacking any other, for fear of mutual destruction. Perhaps. Then again, the same was said of machine guns in the 1800s — weapons of such awesome destructive power, they were predicted to end war. "They are peace-producing and peace-retaining terrors,". The New York Times wrote in 1897 of the new Maxim machine guns, adding that "their devastating effects have made nations and rulers give greater thought to the outcome of war before entering." Is there any reason to believe such tragically flawed logic from the 19th century will work out better in the 21st? More likely, nuclear weapons, those "peace-producing and peace-retaining terrors," are simply another horror that given time will grow mundane and familiar — until eventually they are used, this time perhaps in a war that destroys humankind.

That is not hyperbole. New data suggest that a war involving just 100 nuclear weapons, or less than 1% of the world's arsenals — say, for example, a regional war between India and Pakistan — would cause abrupt severe climate disruption, worldwide food shortages, hundreds of millions of starvation deaths, and probably a total collapse of civilization. And yet we continue to base our security on these "peace-retaining terrors." A core assumption of this deterrence theory is that the nuclear-armed states will be led by calm, collected, and well-informed people, who will infallibly respond to crises in a rational fashion. Perhaps. Then again, as it does after every presidential election, the US has now handed control of some 6,800 warheads to a single individual. How does the current President fit with the idealized model of a world run by grownups? After all, according to a signed letter from 50 leading Republican national security experts, "He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood ... lacks self-control and acts impetuously ... has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior" and overall exhibits "dangerous qualities in an individual ... with command of the US nuclear arsenal."

It is not enough, however, to get this particularly unqualified finger off the button. We need to get rid of the button itself. Just consider whether anyone could be calm, collected, and reasonable after, say, a nuclear explosion destroys Moscow. It might not be clear for days whether such a disaster was caused by a terrorist, a foreign power, or a domestic accident. As this was being investigated, would the world likely be dealing with a calm, matter-of-fact Russian nation? How quickly might things spin out of control? In the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the US government responded in part by invading and occupying the completely unrelated nation of Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of unjustified deaths and creating the vacuum now filled by ISIS and other extremist groups. Is there any reason to believe that we would do better in the future if New York was vaporized?

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[yiostheoy]

Now, to bomb and kill Kim, J.U. into the stone age so that he can't do any more nuclear or missile testing.

THEN then Asia and the Pacific will be more safe.

Need to do the same thing to Iran for the Middle East to be more safe too.

 

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Now, to bomb and kill Kim, J.U. into the stone age so that he can't do any more nuclear or missile testing.

THEN then Asia and the Pacific will be more safe.

Need to do the same thing to Iran for the Middle East to be more safe too.

 

[pismoe]

only when they pry it from my cold dead hands or wherever i keep my 'launch da nukes' red button .