Almost 40 states, including the US, the UK, France and Russia, have boycotted the UN talks to ban nuclear weapons.
Photo: Independent / Rex
The international community currently does not have an opportunity to renounce nuclear weapons due to the actions of North Korea, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said on Monday. According to her, almost 40 countries refused to participate in the first-ever talks on an international treaty to ban nuclear weapons. As the Reuters news agency noted, the statements were made before the opening of the conference of the UN General Assembly on the elaboration of a convention on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons.
“In this day and time we can’t honestly that say we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them [nuclear weapons] and those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety, not to have them,” Haley said.
The US diplomat stressed that her greatest desire is to allow her family to live in a world without nuclear weapons.
“There is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons. But we have to be realistic. Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?” Reuters quoted her words.
The US Ambassador to the UN added that almost 40 countries, including the US, the UK and France do not take part in the conference. Representatives of Russia and China also do not attend the talks. According to Haley, these countries would like to have a ban on nuclear weapons, but recognize that today they cannot protect their citizens without it.
US President Donald Trump believes that Washington needs to build up its nuclear capabilities. In an interview with Reuters in late February, Trump stressed that he wants to increase the number of nuclear weapons that are in the arsenal of the US Army. “I am the first one that would like to see … nobody have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country, we’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power,” the US President said.
Earlier, on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia was ready to discuss reduction of the nuclear arsenal. At the same time, the minister noted that such negotiations should be conducted “taking into account all factors.” Moscow boycotted the negotiations at the UN General Assembly, as considers them untimely.
Unfortunately once the technology was made available I don’t think there’s any going back. They are world-ending weapons but they also do prevent war by acting as a deterrent. If you have nukes, the chances of another country attacking you go way down. Of course, if you act as a bully, other countries will eventually lose their patience on you and decide to act.
Everything seams to just get more stupid for every day. It is very stupid to not even discuss the possibility of universally prohibiting a weapon which actually has an inherent capacity of destroying habitat for every organism on earth on the premise such as keeping the ability to defend a particular geography or impossibility to truly trusting those others. We are talking about a very expensive and resource demanding weapon that some decades ago was handy to intimidate those not in possession of but that nowadays everyone hope never to use simply because of fear those in possession of the same weapon using it back.To put it briefly it is just stupid to keep producing an resource demanding, very expensive, inherently disaster prone and completely useless unusable weapon. To produce this dangerous weapons in the hope of keeping us war prone stupid humans at bay is just as stupid. All of it is just beyond any logic, just STUPID!
The SALT treaties between US and Russia has greatly reduced their numbers over the years. Not sure on the current status of the agreements. Please share info on this if you have it.
I do not have any information on this topic.
No progress. Contrary to what the USA diplomat has said in this article the greatest reason for the lack of advance on nuclear disarmament is USA, the encirclement of Russia with military bases and the deployent of ABM missile in eastern europe, the development of drone warfare and high precision prompt global strike weapons makes sure that Russia will never give up on the MAD doctrine, it is the only thing stopping western aggressive actions against Russia and China. Even more, the last agreement to burn nuclear fuel on civilian reactors was broken by USA in the Obama administration, Russia did its part, but muricans instead of burning the fuel have decided to just dilute it “because making a reactor for that purpose was too expensive”. Russia can’t trust USA, if they make such agreement is very much probable that russians will disarm themselves while muricans will just hide the nukes and then use them as coercitive weapons later.
Nuclear war isn’t the only thing that can destroy modern civilization, conventional wars takes longer but have a similar effect, look at the state of Syria, look at what happened in Europe during WW2, Koreas, Vietnam, Irak and so many others! Without MAD most of the planet would be in ruins now as it is impossible for civilizations to develop themselves while being blown to pieces over and over again… Of course, perhaps it would be a good deal to some countries… You know, those which are constantly profiting with conflicts!
I am not sure if I understand what you mean. Did you mean that nuclear weapon has in any positive way been protecting oss humans against each other?
I ask you back: haven’t them?
On the 20th century we had the WW1 that brught terrible destruction in Europe, then just 20 years later we had WW2 with even more powerfull weapons that brought even more catastrophic destruction on Europe and Asia, those 20 years were just the time to countries rearm themselves and raise a new generation of soldiers! Do you have any doubt there wouldn’t WW3 in the 60s, WW4 on the 80s and WW5 on the 2000s? The only thing that stopped that vicious circle is the MAD doctrine, because nukes won’t kill only soldiers and poor civilians, they will kill the elite too, that is what is stopping them to make more wars. The problem is human beings have high technology, but we still have the nature of cavemen,
In my view absolutely no positive verifiable effect has been coming from nuclear weapon. In my experience only nuclear ‘protected’ people in the world speak of those positive effectS as you describing. Death and destruction has never left the planet earth since ww2, it just has not have been happening in the west. Ask anybody from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria … to just name few presently in war … visit those countries and you will see ww2 live …
I completely agree with you that we humans are not as intelligent as we believe and governments act more on emotions than active thinking. But that speaks more to abolishment of this weapon than otherwise. And yes, I agree with you that wars and destructions probably will not go anywhere. But to say that nuclear weapon is good because otherwise it would have been even worse, then I would ask FOR WHOM. Also, it is not wise to measure the reality in absentia of something worse otherwise we are going to argue a long time without any conclusion.
Finally one should ask himself what he PERSONALLY get out of nuclear weapon, if anything it certainly cost a lot of money.
Have a nice time!
My country doesn’t have nukes if that’s what you’re saying. You named a lot of countries that were victims of imperialist wars of aggression, however your exemples prove that you’re wrong! All those countries didn’t had nukes to defend themselves, that’s why they were attacked! Name one country with nuclear weapons that has been targeted by military action from other countries… Yeah, that’s right, no nuclear armed countrie has ever been targeted by military operations… I wonder why… Why do you think nuclear armed nations harass do not want other countries to have nukes? Why do you think israelis do not want Iran with nukes? They want to continue acting as rogue states without punishment, that’s why.
It seems that we’re talking past each other.
The hypothesis you state reads: Since the nuclear-weapon states have not attacked each other, no country would ever be attacked if all countries acquired nuclear weapons. As you can see, this is not a valid argument because nobody can predict the consequence of a world full of nuclear weapons. [With valid argument, I do not mean strict validity, but acceptable empirical reasoning is enough. For example “every day the sun has gone up therefore the sun will also go up tomorrow” is an empirically acceptable argument]
However, what I think you mean is: During past 70 years that nuclear weapon have had existed, none of current nuclear-weapon states have been attacked, hence these countries will never be attacked in the future or for as long as they have nukes. [is 70 years empirically long enough to predict the future?] Since the current nuclear-weapon states will never be attacked, hence no nuclear-weapon newcomer states will ever be attacked either. [no empirical evidence] Since nuclear-weapon countries will never be attacked, then there will not be any wars anymore when all countries have acquired nuclear weapons. [simply entirely based on fiction]
Nuclear-weapon states also use cheap incomplete circular argument, such as recently stated ‘as a mother I wished that we could have had a nuclear-free planet, but we must unfortunately continue to produce nuclear weapons because there are other untrustworthy nuclear-weapon states’. You see that a simplified but complete circular argument suggestion of the same argument is: ‘we need to continue the production of nuclear weapons, because other countries produce nuclear weapons and other countries produce nuclear weapons because we produce nuclear weapons’. You never hear this argument in its simplicity and entirety because the assumptions cancel each other out and easily becomes laughable.
Finally as I am not fluent in English, I am certain some of my statements sound really odd.
(This is actually not relevant and I regret to have mentioned it. With nuclear weapons ‘protected’ countries, I meant not only countries with self-produced nuclear weapons, but all countries which by treaty, union or other agreements are included under the umbrella of nuclear-weapon states. These countries often harbor other countries’ nuclear weapons. NATO countries are exemplary of this.)
It seems that we’re talking past each other.
The hypothesis you state reads: Since the nuclear-weapon states have not attacked each other, no country would ever be attacked if all countries acquired nuclear weapons. As you can see, this is not a valid argument and nobody can predict the consequence of a world with nuclear weapons in every country. [With valid argument, I do not mean strict validity, but acceptable empirical reasoning is enough. For example “every day the sun has gone up therefore the sun will also go up tomorrow” is an empirically acceptable argument]
However, what I think you mean is: During past 70 years that nuclear weapon have had existed, none of current nuclear-weapon states have been attacked, hence these countries will never be attacked in the future or for as long as they have nukes. [is 70 years empirically long enough to predict the future?] Since the current nuclear-weapon states will never be attacked, hence no nuclear-weapon newcomer states will ever be attacked either. [no empirical evidence] Since nuclear-weapon countries will never be attacked, then there will not be any wars anymore when all countries have acquired nuclear weapons. [simply entirely based on fiction]
Nuclear-weapon states also use cheap incomplete circular argument, such as recently stated ‘I as a mother wished that we could have had a nuclear-free planet, but we must unfortunately continue to produce nuclear weapons because there are other nuclear-weapon states not to be trusted’. You see that a simplified but complete circular argument suggestion of the same argument is: ‘we need to continue the production of nuclear weapons, because other countries produce nuclear weapons and other countries produce nuclear weapons because we produce nuclear weapons’. You never hear this argument in its simplicity and entirety because the assumptions cancel each other out and easily becomes laughable.
Finally as I am not fluent in English, I am certain some of my statements sound really odd.
(This is actually not relevant and I regret to have mentioned it. With nuclear weapons ‘protected’ countries, I meant not only countries with self-produced nuclear weapons, but all countries which by treaty, union or other agreements are included under the umbrella of nuclear-weapon states. These countries often harbor other countries’ nuclear weapons. NATO countries are exemplary of this.)
My country is in a nuclear free continent(some people here think I am portuguese because I’ve said Castro is a portuguese family, but in fact I am brazilian and descend from portuguese). So yes, I am in latin america, a nuclear free continent. However Brazil could easily make a nuke, we have the technologysince the 70s, but at the time the military junta decided to invest te money on Itaipu dam(world’s greatest energy output hydroeletric) because it is worst then a nuke, our historical enemies are Uruguay and Argentina are below the water flux of the dam, in the remote case they decided some sort of invasion in the south we only need to let the water flow and both the capitals of such countries would be washed away to the atlantic ocean… Brazil has military supremacy in South America, and we don’t abuse our neighbours, that is why we have a relatively peacefull continent.
About your argument, that there is no way to know that nukes won’t be used, well, mathematicaly I risk to say the chance of them being used is 100%, we just don’t know when or if it will be so called nuclear armaggedon. But then I return to my originial argument, nukes aren’t the only way we humans destroy each other, if not for nukes we would be plagued by widespread never endingglobal conflict, it would be conventional armaggedon with the exception the elites would never be in danger.
Quite funny description of the clever Itaipu dam solution, and wow, impressive (I just saw a picture of it). Yes, we are quite ingenious to find ways to destroy ourselves but I hesitate whether we can invent something more destructive as nuclear weapons. I always wanted to travel to Latin America, one day I will. Have a nice day
If want to go to Itaipu dam it is probably one the best places to go in the continent, there you have Iguaçu falls relatively close, the huge Pantanal and the triple border with Argentina and Paraguay, from there you can choose various destinations on South America..
I hate nukes, or any weapons of mass destruction. Personally armies should be forced to go back to sword and spear fighting, not even arrows should be allowed. (I know this will not happen, because 90% of the world are cowards). But I can dream can’t I. I believe nukes should be banned, however I know that Israel would never get rid of theirs, or they would lie and cheat to become the only state left with nukes, then we will all be hopelessly enslaved by them. Truth be told, as long as Israel has nukes, everyone else needs them as well. Sad but true. – My biggest hope is that the US can bring their stock pile of nukes down to 100 and Russia bring theirs down to 100. China should bring theirs down to 20 and India brings theirs down to 6 and Pakistan down to 4. Israel should have 0 since Iran also has 0. Saudi Arabia should have to return their 4 back to Pakistan to be dismantled. And the UK should just surrender all of theirs to the US/Russia to be dismantled. The US should leave Korea and in return N. Korea get rid of all of theirs. And no one else should ever pursue them ever again. This makes the most sense and is more likely then trying to trust and get rid of all of them.