Melissa Parke is Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. She formerly worked for the United Nations in Gaza, Kosovo, New York and Lebanon and served as Australia’s Minister for International Development.
The recent expiry of the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia has made an accelerated arms race and nuclear war more likely.
That is a frightening prospect and the end of New START has focused headline writers’ minds on the reality that there are still more than 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world and that the risk they could be used is higher than it has ever been.
The danger has been underlined by the decision of the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists at the end of last month to move their Doomsday Clock the closest it has been to midnight – the moment signifying the destruction of human civilisation.
The irresponsible actions of both the US and Russia have brought us to this moment. Russia with its nuclear threats against Ukraine and the countries supporting it, and the US with its threats against adversaries, like Iran, or against allies like Denmark, have triggered debates in many countries currently under the so-called US nuclear umbrella about the need to develop their own nuclear weapons or find a new nuclear protector, such as France or the UK.
The debate in these countries – ranging from Norway to South Korea and including Germany and Japan – is driven by an unthinking faith in the theory of nuclear deterrence; an unproveable assertion that demonstrating the capacity and willingness to commit mass murder will deter enemies from attacking. Their argument is that they can no longer rely on the US to ignite a nuclear war on their behalf. Instead they are looking to others to rattle the nuclear sabre for them, be that Russia in Europe or North Korea and/or China in East Asia.
This is a perfect example of how nuclear deterrence doctrine encourages proliferation.
We see this in how nuclear weapons spread to South Asia. Following India’s first nuclear test in 1974, Pakistan decided it too had to have nuclear weapons to deter a future Indian attack. Pakistan’s then Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made a striking remark, “We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will have our own”.
The problem with this theory is that it is based on a balance of terror maintained by consistent, credible and calculated threats of annihilation. When, not if, things go wrong, it means the end of life as we know it. There have been dozens of nuclear accidents and near-misses over the decades where the world has survived because of luck, not deterrence. As the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has said, when it comes to nuclear weapons ‘luck is not a strategy’.
The tug of war between deterrence theory and measures to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons has been inherent to nuclear politics since the US lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons in 1949 when the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear bomb.
The dynamic was clear. Once one country had the bomb, others wanted it because they believed if they had nuclear weapons they would not be attacked.
This belief has been the main driver of proliferation ever since.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that came into force in 1970, was aimed at preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons. It was a grand bargain. Countries that did not yet have nuclear weapons, some of whom had nuclear weapons programmes like Sweden and Switzerland, agreed to never develop them. In return, those who had already detonated nuclear weapons, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, agreed to pursue disarmament negotiations in good faith. They have never honoured this because, they argue, as long as anyone else has nuclear weapons they need them for – you guessed it – deterrence.
Pakistan and India, along with Israel, never signed the NPT. North Korea left the NPT before developing itsarsenal. So today there are nine nuclear-armed countries – all of whom pay lip service to the aim of a world free of nuclear weapons and the need to prevent further proliferation, but who refuse to disarm and remove the incentive for others not to acquire their own.
Recognising that as long as nuclear weapons were considered legitimate security tools, the incentive to proliferate would always be there, as well as concern that use of the weapons would cause catastrophic consequences far from the the battlefield, countries came together to negotiate the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017.
The TPNW denies any role for nuclear weapons for any country, and sets forth a path for their elimination. As of today, a majority of countries have already signed or ratified it. India and Pakistan’s regional neighbours, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka have all joined the treaty and Nepal has signed it. These countries rightly see deterrence as a threat to all and an obstacle to disarmament.
We are faced with the highest risks from nuclear weapons for more than a generation. With the prospect of a new nuclear arms race and a new wave of proliferation driven by misplaced faith in deterrence theory, step by step agreements that refuse to tackle the root of the problem are no longer sufficient. As the TPNW gains support, it is clear the treaty is the way to get the world out of the cul de sac deterrence has led us into, and to deliver the world without nuclear weapons we need for humanity’s survival.
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