{"id":79665,"date":"2016-09-19T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=79665"},"modified":"2016-09-15T17:01:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T16:01:45","slug":"isnt-it-time-to-ban-the-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/isnt-it-time-to-ban-the-bomb\/","title":{"rendered":"Isn\u2019t It Time to Ban the Bomb?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lawrence-s-wittner\"<\/a>12 Sep 2016 – <\/em>Although the mass media failed to report it, a landmark event occurred recently in connection with resolving the long-discussed problem of what to do about nuclear weapons.\u00a0 On August 19, 2016, a UN committee, the innocuously-named Open-Ended Working Group, voted to recommend<\/a> to the UN General Assembly that it mandate the opening of negotiations in 2017 on a treaty to ban them.<\/p>\n

For most people, this recommendation makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever created.\u00a0 If they are used\u2015as two of them were used in 1945 to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki\u2015the more than 15,000 nuclear weapons<\/a> currently in existence would destroy the world.\u00a0 Given their enormous blast, fire, and radioactivity, their explosion would bring an end to virtually all life on earth.\u00a0 The few human survivors would be left to wander, slowly and painfully, in a charred, radioactive wasteland.\u00a0 Even the explosion of a small number of nuclear weapons through war, terrorism, or accident would constitute a catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude.<\/p>\n

Every President of the United States since 1945, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, has warned the world of the horrors of nuclear war.\u00a0 Even Ronald Reagan<\/a>\u2015perhaps the most military-minded among them\u2015declared again and again:\u00a0 \u201cA nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there is no technical problem in disposing of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 Through negotiated treaties and unilateral action, nuclear disarmament, with verification, has already taken place<\/a> quite successfully, eliminating roughly 55,000 nuclear weapons of the 70,000 in existence at the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Also, the world\u2019s other agents of mass destruction, biological<\/a> and chemical<\/a> weapons, have already been banned by international agreements.<\/p>\n

Naturally, then, most people think that creating a nuclear weapons-free world is a good idea.\u00a0 A 2008 poll<\/a> in 21 nations around the globe found that 76 percent of respondents favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and only 16 percent opposed it.\u00a0 This included 77 percent of the respondents in the United States.<\/p>\n

But government officials from the nine nuclear-armed nations are inclined to view nuclear weapons\u2015or at least their<\/em> nuclear weapons\u2015quite differently.\u00a0 For centuries, competing nations have leaned heavily upon military might to secure what they consider their \u201cnational interests.\u201d\u00a0 Not surprisingly, then, national leaders have gravitated toward developing powerful military forces, armed with the most powerful weaponry.\u00a0 The fact that, with the advent of nuclear weapons, this traditional behavior has become counter-productive has only begun to penetrate their consciousness, usually helped along on such occasions by massive public pressure.<\/p>\n

Consequently, officials of the superpowers and assorted wannabes, while paying lip service to nuclear disarmament, continue to regard it as a risky project.\u00a0 They are much more comfortable with maintaining nuclear arsenals and preparing for nuclear war.\u00a0 Thus, by signing the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty<\/a> of 1968, officials from the nuclear powers pledged to \u201cpursue negotiations in good faith on . . . a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.\u201d\u00a0 And today, nearly a half-century later, they have yet to begin negotiations on such a treaty.\u00a0 Instead, they are currently launching yet another round<\/a> in the nuclear arms race.\u00a0 The U.S. government alone is planning to spend $1 trillion<\/a> over the next 30 years to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons production complex, as well as to build new air-, sea-, and ground-launched nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Of course, this enormous expenditure\u2015plus the ongoing danger of nuclear disaster\u2015could provide statesmen with a powerful incentive to end 71 years of playing with their doomsday weapons and, instead, get down to the business of finally ending the grim prospect of nuclear annihilation.\u00a0 In short, they could follow the lead of the UN committee and actually negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons as the first step toward abolishing them.<\/p>\n

But, to judge from what happened in the UN Open-Ended Working Group, a negotiated nuclear weapons ban is not likely to occur.\u00a0 Uneasy about what might emerge from the committee\u2019s deliberations, the nuclear powers pointedly boycotted<\/a> them.\u00a0 Moreover, the final vote<\/a> in that committee on pursuing negotiations for a ban was 68 in favor and 22 opposed, with 13 abstentions.\u00a0 The strong majority in favor of negotiations was comprised of African, Latin American, Caribbean, Southeast Asian, and Pacific nations, with several European nations joining them.\u00a0 The minority came primarily from nations under the nuclear umbrellas of the superpowers.\u00a0 Consequently, the same split seems likely to occur in the UN General Assembly, where the nuclear powers will do everything possible to head off UN action.<\/p>\n

Overall, then, there is a growing division between the nuclear powers and their dependent allies, on the one hand, and a larger group of nations, fed up with the repeated evasions of the nuclear powers in dealing with the nuclear disaster that threatens to engulf the world.\u00a0 In this contest, the nuclear powers have the advantage, for, when all is said and done, they have the option of clinging to their nuclear weapons, even if that means ignoring a treaty adopted by a clear majority of nations around the world.\u00a0 Only an unusually firm stand by the non-nuclear nations, coupled with an uprising by an aroused public, seems likely to awaken the officials of the nuclear powers from their long sleepwalk toward catastrophe.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Dr. Lawrence Wittner<\/em><\/a>, syndicated by <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/em><\/a>, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY\/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, <\/em>What\u2019s Going On at UAardvark?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever created. If they are used\u2015as two of them were used in 1945 to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki\u2015the more than 15,000 nuclear weapons currently in existence would destroy the world. Only an unusually firm stand by the non-nuclear nations, coupled with an uprising by an aroused public, seems likely to awaken the officials of the nuclear powers from their long sleepwalk toward catastrophe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}