By Lawrence S. Wittner
Will the world ever be free of the menace of nuclear annihilation?
There was a promising start along these lines during the late twentieth century, when―pressed by a popular upsurge against nuclear weapons―the nations of the world adopted a succession of nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. Starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, these agreements helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war.
But the tide gradually turned during the final years of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. As international conflict heightened and the nuclear disarmament movement waned, additional nations became nuclear powers, the U.S. and Russian governments abandoned most of their nuclear disarmament agreements, and all nine nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) revived the nuclear arms race. Some of their leaders―Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin―even issued public threats of nuclear war. Recently, the hands of the famous “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight―the most dangerous setting in its history.
Deeply disturbed by the slide toward disaster, the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), composed of hundreds of organizations, teamed up with the governments of many of the world’s non-nuclear nations to foster a series of UN conferences focused on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. Eventually, a UN conference drawing representatives from some 130 governments and dozens of civil society organizations met in March 2017 and began negotiations for a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. In July, the delegates adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) by a vote of 122 in favor, 1 opposed, and 1 abstention. The treaty banned the use, threatened use, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, and installation of nuclear weapons.
After its ratification by the requisite 50 nations, this landmark agreement went into force on January 22, 2021.
A serious problem remained, however, for the nine nuclear weapons nations were determined to sabotage the TPNW. All of them boycotted the treaty negotiations, as did many of their allies. On the first day of treaty negotiations, Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the UN, hosted a press conference outside the negotiations room that sharply criticized pursuit of a treaty. As the treaty neared the necessary ratifications for implementation, the Trump administration urged nations to rescind their ratifications. Meanwhile, at international gatherings, the governments of China, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States issued joint statements disparaging the TPNW.
Most tellingly, none of the nuclear powers signed or ratified the treaty. This hardline rejectionist stance meant that, whatever the non-nuclear nations did, the nuclear powers would continue their nuclear buildups as they prepared for nuclear war.
Even so, public agitation for the TPNW was far from dead. Although the campaign to ban nuclear weapons didn’t blossom into an enormous mass movement comparable to that of the 1980s, it had sufficient strength to press the issue. ICAN, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its treaty leadership, launched a Cities Appeal that led hundreds of cities, local, and regional bodies all over the world to speak out in support of the TPNW. In addition to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they included Berlin, Paris, Sidney, Oslo, Geneva, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and New York.
In 2024, ICAN’s campaign continued to advance. In Switzerland, it launched an alliance of organizations to establish a popular vote on joining the TPNW. Gathering momentum, its Cities Appeal reached over 100 cities each in Spain and Italy (including Rome).
Campaigners from around the world engaged in a week of action, sponsoring rallies, signature drives, teach-ins, social media collaborations, webinars, protests at banks, and media campaigns. ICAN published a report on the $91.4 billion in annual nuclear weapons spending by the nuclear powers, generating news coverage in some of the major communications media, including ABC, NBC, Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, The Times, Radio France, Le Figaro, and BFM TV. Addressing the opening of the UN General Assembly, Brazilian President Luis Inácio da Silva cited ICAN’s figures.
In the United States, the campaign made some small but symbolic progress. In April 2019, Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced H.Res. 302, a bill calling for the United States to embrace the goals and provisions of the TPNW. Furthermore, when the U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,400 U.S. cities, met in August 2021, the gathering unanimously approved a resolution praising the treaty.
In December of that year, the New York City Council adopted a resolution instructing the city comptroller to remove investments by the city’s $250 billion pension fund in companies producing or maintaining nuclear weapons. And in January 2023, McGovern introduced another resolution (H.Res. 77) to embrace the goals and provisions of TPNW. By 2024, it had 44 co-sponsors.
In general, the treaty enjoys broad popularity. Opinion surveys found a high level of support for the TPNW in numerous countries that had resisted signing it, including Finland (84 percent), Australia (79 percent), Sweden (79 percent), Norway (78 percent), Japan (75 percent), Italy (70 percent), Germany (68 percent), France (67 percent), the United States (65 percent), and Belgium (64 percent).
Meanwhile, nations continue to become states parties to the TPNW. As of today, 94 nations have signed it and 73 have followed up by ratifying it.
Yet the nuclear powers are not among them, for they remain stubbornly committed to maintaining their nuclear arsenals and opposing the treaty. And while they remain outside the TPNW, it will not end the nuclear menace.
Given the weapons-obsession of a small group of nations, the current prospect for an effective ban on nuclear weapons is bleak. But, longer-term, the revival of a massive antinuclear movement, combined with pressure from an empowered United Nations, could bring the holdouts into the treaty and, thereby, avert nuclear catastrophe.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
