{"id":95628,"date":"2017-07-17T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=95628"},"modified":"2017-07-16T16:56:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-16T15:56:03","slug":"nukes-and-the-global-schism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/nukes-and-the-global-schism\/","title":{"rendered":"Nukes and the Global Schism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>12 Jul 2017 – <\/em>The United States boycotted the U.N. negotiations to ban \u2014 everywhere across Planet Earth \u2014 nuclear weapons. So did a few other countries. Guess which ones?<\/p>\n

The international debate over this historic treaty, which became reality a week ago by a margin of 122 to 1, revealed how deeply split the nations of the world are \u2014 not by borders or language or religion or political ideology or control of wealth, but by possession of nuclear weapons and the accompanying belief in their absolute necessity for national security, despite the absolute insecurity they inflict on the whole planet.<\/p>\n

Armed equals scared. (And scared equals profitable.)<\/p>\n

The nations that wanted no part of this treaty are, of course, the nuclear-armed ones and their allies: the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and . . . what was that other one? Oh yeah, North Korea. Most NATO members also opted out. Bizarrely, these countries and their short-sighted \u201cinterests\u201d are all on the same side, even though each one\u2019s possession of nuclear weapons justifies the others\u2019 possession of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

None of these countries took part in the discussion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, even to oppose it, seeming to indicate that a nuke-free world isn\u2019t anywhere in their vision.<\/p>\n

As Robert Dodge<\/a> of Physicians for Social Responsibility wrote: \u201cThey have remained oblivious and hostage themselves to this mythological deterrence argument that has been the principal driver of the arms race since its inception, including the current new arms race initiated by the United States with a proposal to spend $1 trillion in the next three decades to rebuild our nuclear arsenals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the nations \u2014 the rest of the planet \u2014 that did participate in the creation of the treaty, the single vote against it was cast by the Netherlands, which, coincidentally, has stored U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory since the Cold War era, to the befuddlement even of its own leaders. (\u201cI think they are an absolutely pointless part of a tradition in military thinking,\u201d former Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers<\/a> has said.)<\/p>\n

The treaty<\/a> reads, in part: \u201c. . .each State Party that owns, possesses or controls nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices shall immediately remove them from operational status and destroy them, as soon as possible . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

This is serious. I have no doubt that something historic has happened: A wish, a hope, a determination the size of humanity itself has found international language. \u201cProlonged applause broke out as the president of the negotiating conference, Costa Rican ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez, gaveled through the landmark accord,\u201d according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/a>. \u201c\u2018We have managed to sow the first seeds of a world free of nuclear weapons,\u2019 she said.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nonetheless, I feel a sense of cynicism and hopelessness activated as well. Does this treaty sow any real<\/em> seeds, that is to say, does it put nuclear disarmament into motion in the real world, or are her words just another pretty metaphor? And are metaphors all we get?<\/p>\n

Nikki Haley, the Trump administration\u2019s U.N. ambassador, said last March, according to CNN<\/a>, as she announced that the U.S. would boycott the talks, that as a mom and daughter, \u201cThere is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

How nice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d she said, \u201cwe have to be realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In years gone by, the diplomat\u2019s finger would then have pointed to the Russians (or the Soviets) or the Chinese. But Haley said: \u201cIs there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?\u201d<\/p>\n

So this is the \u201crealism\u201d that is presently justifying America\u2019s grip on its nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons, along with its trillion-dollar modernization program: tiny North Korea, our enemy du jour, which, as we all know, just tested a ballistic missile and is portrayed in the U.S. media as a wildly irrational little nation with a world-conquest agenda and no legitimate concern about its own security. So, sorry Mom, sorry kids, we have no choice.<\/p>\n

The point being, any enemy will do. The realism Haley was summoning was economic and political in nature far more than it had anything to do with real national security \u2014 which would have to acknowledge the legitimacy of a planetary concern about nuclear war and honor previous treaty commitments to work toward disarmament. Mutually Assured Destruction is not realism; it\u2019s a suicidal standoff, with the certainty that eventually something\u2019s going to give.<\/p>\n

How can the realism manifest in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons penetrate the consciousness of the nuclear-armed nine? A change of mind or heart \u2014 a jettisoning of the fear that these insanely destructive weapons are crucial to national security \u2014 is, presumably, the only way global nuclear disarmament will happen. I don\u2019t believe it can happen by force or coercion.<\/p>\n

I therefore pay homage to South Africa, which played a crucial role in the treaty\u2019s passage, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports, and happens to be one of the few countries on Earth that once possessed nuclear weapons and no longer does. It dismantled its nukes just as it went through its extraordinary transition, in the early\u201990s, from a nation of institutionalized racism to one of full rights for all. Is that the change of national consciousness that\u2019s necessary?<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking hand in hand with civil society, (we) took an extraordinary step (today) to save humanity from the frightful specter of nuclear weapons,\u201d said South Africa\u2019s U.N. ambassador, Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko.<\/p>\n

And then we have the realism of Setsuko Thurlow<\/a>, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 1945. Recounting the aftermath of this horror recently, which she experienced as a young girl, she said of the people she saw: \u201cTheir hair was standing on end \u2014 I don\u2019t know why \u2014 and their eyes were swollen shut from the burns. Some peoples\u2019 eyeballs were hanging out of the sockets. Some were holding their own eyes in their hands. Nobody was running. Nobody was yelling. It was totally silent, totally still. All you could hear were the whispers for \u2018water, water.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After the treaty\u2019s passage last week, she spoke with an awareness I can only hope defines the future for all of us: \u201cI have been waiting for this day for seven decades and I am overjoyed that it has finally arrived. This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him <\/em>at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Jul 2017 – The United States boycotted the U.N. negotiations to ban \u2014 everywhere across Planet Earth \u2014 nuclear weapons. So did a few other countries. Guess which ones? Armed equals scared. (And scared equals profitable.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95628","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=95628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}