2/19/2023 0 Comments Nuclear time![]() ![]() It contains the only treaty-based commitments undertaken by the five largest nuclear-armed countries to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons and imposes verifiable obligations not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. Next year, the United Nations will host the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), one of the most successful international security agreements. Its extension for five years would buy time to negotiate new agreements, including by potentially bringing in other countries possessing nuclear weapons. The “New START” treaty retains verifiable caps. The United States and the Russian Federation, as the possessors of some 90 per cent of nuclear weapons, are expected to lead the way. It is time to return to the shared understanding that a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought, to the collective agreement that we should work towards a world free of nuclear weapons, and to the spirit of cooperation that enabled historic progress towards their elimination. Any use would precipitate a humanitarian disaster of unimaginable proportions. Most of the roughly 13,000 nuclear arms currently in global arsenals are vastly more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has proven its worth, yet some States have still to sign or ratify the treaty, preventing it from fulfilling its full potential as an essential element in the framework to eliminate nuclear weapons.Īlong with climate change, nuclear weapons represent an existential threat to our societies. Only a legally-binding, verifiable prohibition on all nuclear testing can achieve this. This relic of a former age should be confined there forever. As governments lean heavily on nuclear weapons for security, politicians are trading heated rhetoric about their possible use and devoting vast sums of money to improving their lethality, money that would be much better spent on peaceful, sustainable development.įor decades, nuclear testing led to horrific human and environmental consequences. The potential that nuclear weapons will be used – intentionally, accidentally or as a result of miscalculation – is dangerously high.įuelled by mounting international tensions and the dissolution of trust, relations between countries that possess nuclear weapons are devolving into dangerous and destabilizing confrontations. But that framework has idled for decades and is starting to erode. Yet the nuclear threat is growing once more.Ī web of agreements and instruments has been constructed to prevent the use of these uniquely destructive weapons and ultimately to eliminate them. They have shared their stories so the horror experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be forgotten. The lingering suffering caused to the survivors, the hibakusha, should give us daily motivation to eliminate all nuclear arms. ![]()
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