Abstract
122 of the 193 Member States of the United Nations on 7 July 2017, at the plenary meeting adopted a multilateral Treaty banning nuclear weapons (Text of Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), https://www.iaea.org/publications/documents/treaties/npt.). None of the nine possessors of nuclear weapons: USA, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel—did participate in the negotiations on the text of the Treaty and vote. Japan, the main victim of nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear weapons members of NATO refrain from participation at negotiation. Without questioning the good intention of the initiators of the Ban Treaty, a critical review of historical events indicates the following straight forward conclusion: The Ban Treaty prohibits the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the same as the NPT did. It does not include legally binding obligations for elimination of nuclear weapons within certain definite timeline. Therefore, the same historical mistake made during negotiation of the NPT, lacking any definite dead line for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, in its article VI, is repeated now. This shall leave the hands of the nuclear weapons possessor opened, as the NPT did, for almost had half a century. It has to be recalled the NPT was the initiative of the weapons states. The tremendous pressure augmented on weapon states during decades, due to public awareness and their concern of humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, was a great opportunity to push for a “Nuclear Weapon Convention”, for total elimination of nuclear weapons. The Ban Treaty, however, with step by step voluntary mild approach, practically postponed the realization of legitimate urgent demand of peace loving people, for decades if not indefinitely. The opponents of the Ban Treaty, specifically the weapon sates are therefore, satisfied by the “Nuclear Ban Treaty” initiative, though they oppose to possibly mislead the public. In a nutshell, the security threat of thousands of nuclear arsenals, global threat, will remain for decades.
Cross-Cultural Dialogue as a Conflict Management Strategy. Edited by J. Martin Ramirez, and Gracia Abad. © 2018 Springer International. Submitted: November, 6 2017; Accepted: January, 17 2018.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Manhattan Project available online at https://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing.
- 2.
Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, so called Ban Treaty, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57139#.WgEHUbpFzIU.
References
Documents of USSR-US, Russia-US bilateral agreements. (2013). The guardian archive (May 27, 2013).
Einstein, A. (1945). Letter from Albert Einstein to FDR, 3/25/45. Available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexper…y-resources/truman-ein45/.
Einstein, A., & Russel, B. (1955). Manifesto text of Einstein-Russel Manifesto. http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.co.at/.
Eisenhower, D. D. (1953). President of the United States of America, to the 47th Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly “Atoms for Peace Speech” on December 8, 1953. Available online at https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech.
Report of the Conference on Disarmament to the General Assembly of the United Nations (2017). Conference on Disarmament, CD/2112, September 22, 2017. https://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/4C940C4CB4AF2D5AC12581AA004B7826/$file/2112E.pdf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Soltanieh, A.A. (2018). The Destiny of Nuclear Weapons After the Ban Treaty. In: Ramírez, J., Abad-Quintanal, G. (eds) Cross-Cultural Dialogue as a Conflict Management Strategy. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77231-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77231-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77230-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77231-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)