Cause for hope

James Yeoman writes about possibilities of a safer world

On 7 July countries meeting at a United Nations conference in New York adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, announced by the UN as ‘the first multilateral legally-binding instrument for nuclear disarmament to have been negotiated in twenty years’.

Although it can only be beneficial for the issue of disarmament to stay in the public eye, sadly this treaty is unlikely to lead to much actual disarmament. While it is true that 122 UN members voted for the treaty, seventy-one did not. The 122 governments, that voted in favour, I believe, are only responsible for roughly forty per cent of the world’s populations, nineteen per cent of the world’s GDP, seventeen per cent of global military spending… and none of the nuclear weapons. The nine countries generally recognised as possessing nuclear weapons – the United Stares Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – were absent from the negotiations.

Targets

A closer look at the result reveals an altogether more disturbing picture. For simplicity’s sake, we can divide the UN into two groups: those who are likely to be targeted by nuclear weapons in the event of nuclear war, and those who are not. The former group consists of nuclear-armed states and their close allies (such as the UK and Norway). The latter group includes a modest number of countries that would suffer greatly due to fallout from their neighbours (for example Sweden and Switzerland), but it is principally composed of countries that would not be directly affected by nuclear weapons.

The last assertion may sound strange, and requires explanation. One would think that in a global nuclear war, there would be no countries that would avoid devastation. However, in an all-out NATO-Russia exchange (perhaps the worst imaginable scenario), almost all the targets would be located in the mid-to-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

In such a situation, some southern hemisphere countries (because they would not be the primary target of a nuclear strike, unlike their northern neighbours) would probably avoid most of the lethal consequences.

Looking again at the result, we see that it is almost exclusively the countries of the first category that have not supported the treaty. The very countries that are most at risk are the ones that are fighting the ban. It seems absurd, but there is logic behind their decision, and I believe that this is the key to achieving actual disarmament.

National interest

Contrary to their stereotype, military leaders are mostly intelligent, rational people. Furthermore, they are not, I think, normally warmongers. They want as much of the world as possible to live in peace; not always for humanitarian reasons, but because it is in their nation’s interest. However, they fear and distrust foreigners’ deployment of nuclear weapons. Also, they do tend towards nationalism. The ideal for them is a reasonably peaceful world, but their duty is to follow the government, and if the immediate ‘national interest’ involves killing foreigners, then that’s what they’ll do.

These leaders (and the politicians they advise) perform a cost/benefit analysis and conclude that, given the countries they do not trust have nuclear weapons, they – the ‘good guys’ – had better reduce the risk of attack by deterring the ‘bad guys’ with nuclear arms. Fear must be fought with fear.

Much as Quakers abhor this line of thinking, it does have a certain cold logic to it. Small wonder that this attitude is also found in a large section of the general population.

A coalition of mostly small countries announcing a ‘ban’ at the UN is unlikely to change this situation, as it does not change the underlying problem: fear and distrust.

Three ways

I believe there are only three ways to rid the world of anything that is morally wrong, but which many want to have anyway:

1. Ban it, then enforce the ban militarily/economically. The Royal Navy contributed in this way to the fight against the transatlantic slave trade, and disinvestment might have helped the end apartheid. But the conditions do not exist to ban nuclear weapons by this method; the nuclear/NATO states are too strong.

2. Deploy a technology that makes the undesirable thing obsolete. Increasing industrialisation may have helped to end slavery in many parts of the world, as modern machinery could do the work of thousands of slaves, at lower cost, without the risk of revolt. Anti-ballistic missile systems have been suggested, but have problems of cost, technical challenges, ownership and unintended consequences. We will probably have to wait a long time for nuclear weapons to become obsolete, and the technology that takes over might be even more terrifying.

3. Persuasion, in this case by building trust between the peoples of nuclear-armed states.

The final way is the only option open to us. It might sound impossibly utopian and naïve, but I would claim that the process is happening before our very eyes.

Nordic gathering

This summer, Quakers from all over the Nordic countries gathered in the Swedish town of Kungälv for a common Yearly Meeting. Kungälv is dominated by Bohus Castle, built by the Norwegians to defend what was their border with Sweden. The thought of Norway and Sweden fighting a war today is ridiculous; we trust each other far too much for that to happen.

So it is with Britain and France, or Austria and Italy. Some other parts of the world seems to be going in that direction. The people of America and Russia seem less afraid of each other than they were in the 1950s and 60s, even though both countries are actually more able to destroy the other now than then. It will take time, but there is cause for hope, and it may well happen within the lifetime of some of the people reading this article.

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