After Oslo: Humanitarian perspectives and the changing nuclear weapons discourse (original) (raw)
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The Humanitarian Initiative on Nuclear Weapons: An Introduction to Global Policy's Special Section
Global Policy
The dominant paradigm of international relations theory has long seen influence over nuclear arsenals as the preserve of presidents, premiers and generals of the world's great powers, not underfunded activists, feminist campaigners, radical nuns or even diplomats of small states. The approach of this special section could not be more different. In fact, we have intentionally curated a collection of articles that try to ‘de-center’ the academic conversation about nuclear weapons. The inspiration for our approach comes from the Humanitarian Initiative on Nuclear Weapons, which since its emergence after the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has dramatically reshaped the diplomatic discussions on nuclear disarmament, led by small states and middle powers. The shift in discourse has been accelerated by revitalized civil society action, represented by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a global NGO coalition, as well as renewed calls for disarmament from religious leaders – most notably Pope Francis. This special section, written from the perspective of scholars and practitioners associated with the Humanitarian Initiative, examines its dimensions and its potential impact on global policy making.
The Story so Far : The Humanitarian Initiative on the Impacts of Nuclear Weapons
2014
In 1968 the international community signed the NPT to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and kick-start the process of nuclear disarmament. The NPT’s starting point is ‘the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the danger of such a war’.4 During the cold war the United States and Soviet Union made progress in slowing the nuclear arms race, and after it ended a significant opportunity emerged to rethink the role of nuclear weapons in international politics. The NPT’s five nuclear-weapon states (China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States) committed themselves to:
The traditional arms control approach is slow in dismantling nuclear arsenals. It is also a statecentered approach, and does not enthuse public opinion as it is rather technical and complex. The recent interest in the so-called humanitarian approach of nuclear disarmament can be explained by a growing frustration with traditional arms control. The humanitarian approach points to the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for individual human beings, and recommends forbidding nuclear weapons. The step-by-step approach is replaced by a principled approach, which holds that nuclear weapons are too destructive to be used, just like chemical and biological weapons. A ban on nuclear weapons will turn the tables. The burden of proof will shift from the non-nuclear weapon states to the nuclear weapon states. Those nuclear weapon states that are not eager to eliminate their nuclear weapons will come under growing pressure from worldwide public opinion as well as their own public opinion. It is this stigmatizing effect of nuclear weapons as inhumane and therefore unusable that may bring all states to pursue Global Zero.
The Treaty is Out of the Bottle: The Power and Logic of Nuclear Disarmament
Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, 2019
The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, manifesting as nuclear proliferation. Efforts to contain it have generated another genie whose agenda is to establish a verifiable nuclear disarmament regime. Despite several achievements and remarkable stability, the limits of the nuclear arms control and non-proliferation regime have become evident. In the mid-1990s, therefore, civil society, in cooperation with governments and international organizations, launched a concerted effort to promote nuclear abolition. Immediate results included the 1996 International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons and the 1997 Model Nuclear Weapons Convention (Model NWC). Two decades later the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Ban Treaty) creates a legal framework and provides a platform to develop a negotiating process and norm-building instruments for a nuclear-weapon-free world. Drawing on international legal theory and international relations theory (and their critiques of each other), this article examines the normative value, logic and power of nuclear disarmament. Taking the existing regime as a reference point, we compare the elements and implications of the Ban Treaty and Model NWC, and draw conclusions across various dimensions, including elements of the treaties and their approaches to elimination, verification, compliance and organization.
Fordham International Law Journal, 2011
This Essay proceeds in three Parts. Part I describes the effects of nuclear weapons and the many calls in recent years from across the political spectrum for the abolition of nuclear weapons, including such calls by President Obama both as presidential candidate and as president. Part II describes the Obama NPR and the many respects in which it backs away from the avowed objective of abolition by continuing the United States' Cold War posture, which was premised on the putative legitimacy of nuclear weapons and deterrence and in defiance of international law. Part III suggests how a nuclear posture committed to abolition and compliance with international law might differ from the Obama NPR and highlights fundamental inconsistencies between the NPR and the Action Plan of the 2010 NPT Conference supported by the United States.
Viewing Nuclear Weapons through a Humanitarian Lens
is renewed and deep international concern about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the detonation of nuclear weapons in populated areas. Yet 25 years after the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence remain central to the security doctrines of a significant number of states. Drawing on a range of perspectives, this volume explores what viewing nuclear weapons through a humanitarian lens entails, and why it is of value. Recent developments in this respect are also examined, as well as what these could mean for nuclear arms control in the near future.
Oslo’s “new track”: Norwegian nuclear disarmament diplomacy, 2005–2013
Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
Adopted by 122 non-nuclear-weapon states in July 2017, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was promoted by a transnational network of government agencies, international organizations, and civil society actors. Now, as the agreement creeps towards entry into force, a debate about the history of the TPNW has begun. While supporters of the TPNW argue that the adoption of the treaty was a reasoned response to diplomatic impasse and the pileup of empirical evidence on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear detonations, revisionists have argued that the humanitarian initiative was never about banning nuclear weapons, but was hijacked by radicals eager to shame the Western nuclear powers or discredit the NPT. Reading the TPNW as a manifestation of "frustration" with lacking progress on disarmament in other forums, observers have framed the adoption of the TPNW as an irrational outburst of emotions. In this article, I investigate Norway's nuclear disarmament diplomacy in the period from 2005 to 2013. Against the revisionists, I argue that the goal of negotiating a new legal instrument outlawing nuclear weapons provided a key aim for the Norwegian centre-left coalition government from 2010 onwards. Drawing on elite interviews, internal MFA documents released on freedom of information requests, and official statements by foreign policy officials, I maintain that the humanitarian initiative, including the pursuit of a new legal instrument, were products of a carefully deliberated policy of strategic social construction.
Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament: A Global Debate
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010
Shared, But Not Equal Responsibilities Mohamed I. Shaker 40 CHAPTER 8 Shared Responsibilities, Shared Rights Achilles Zaluar 45 CONTRIBUTORS INTRODUCTION The pursuit of nuclear disarmament has been a central component of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, starting with the initial signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. The inclusion under Article VI of the NPT of a commitment to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" reflected the desire of the non-nuclear-weapons states (NNWS) not to create a regime that would allow nuclear-weapons states (NWS) to retain their weapons in perpetuity. Governments in Washington, Moscow, and London-representing the only three nuclear powers that signed the NPT in 1968-insisted, however, that no precise standards and no time-bound guarantees about when disarmament would be achieved were possible. The interest and emphasis given to nuclear disarmament by the leaders of the nuclear weapons powers have waxed and waned throughout the history of the NPT, and for much of the past decade, many governments in NNWS have complained that the disarmament goal has been given short shrift by those with nuclear weapons. Renewed interest in arms control and restated commitments to the longterm goal of nuclear disarmament have clearly increased over recent years, most dramatically with President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech in Prague. With that change in focus comes an opportunity for the international community to rethink how Article VI of the NPT is traditionally interpreted and to move beyond the cycle of repeated complaints from the "have-nots" that the "haves" are not doing enough to disarm themselves and repeated retorts by the "haves" that they are already taking every step that is realistic or prudent. The promise of a different approach to the commitments made under the NPT forms the basis of the Scott Sagan's valuable article-"Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament"-which was the concluding essay in the Fall 2009 special issue of Daedalus that focused on the global nuclear future. Sagan's paper, and its call for rethinking the balance of responsibilities and the relationship between different articles in the NPT, now provides the basis for a series of invited response papers from seven distinguished authors. These international scholars and diplomats present their interpretations of the commitments made under the NPT regime and suggest new ways in which shared responsibilities for nuclear disarmament may or may not be realized in practice. Their contributions serve to expand the discussion that was started by the original Daedalus article-and together they are intended to spark renewed policy debates about how best to pursue global disarmament, debates that will be prominent at the May 2010 NPT Review Conference in New York City and in the years following that important meeting. The distinguished authors in this American Academy of Arts and Sciences Occasional Paper come from a diverse set of countries and reflect a diverse and crosscutting set of perspectives on the disarmament debate. With respect to nuclear arsenals, Scott Sagan (United States) and James Acton (United Kingdom) are from NWS; Harald Müller (Germany), Jayantha Dhanapala (Sri Lanka), Mustafa Kibaroglu (Turkey), Yukio Satoh (Japan), Mohamed Shaker (Egypt), and Achilles Zaluar (Brazil) are leading specialists from NNWS. Three of these states-Germany, Turkey, and Japan-are U.S. allies and come under extended nuclear deterrence guarantees; Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Brazil, however, do not. With respect to the use of nuclear energy today, Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom all maintain nuclear power plants. Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Turkey are aspirant nuclear energy states and have not yet constructed the power plants that they hope to use in the future. The differences in national perspectives and the differences in individual opinions about appropriate disarmament steps among the authors should not mask a commitment they all share. The contributors to this volume agree that new thinking and continued debate about how best to maintain momentum toward nuclear disarmament is to be welcomed. Only by seeking out, and taking into consideration, a cross section of views can progress toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world continue. We hope that this Occasional Paper may therefore serve as an important contribution to a global disarmament debate that has become increasingly prominent over the past couple of years. This Occasional Paper is part of the American Academy's Global Nuclear Future Initiative, which is guided by the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies. The Initiative examines the safety, security, and nonproliferation implications of the global spread of nuclear energy and is developing pragmatic recommendations for managing the emerging nuclear order. The Global Nuclear Future Initiative is supported by generous grants from Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr.; the S.D. Bechtel Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Flora Family Foundation; and the Kavli Foundation. We thank these funders for their support. The Academy is grateful to the principal investigators of the Global Nuclear Future Initiative-Steven E. Miller, Scott D. Sagan, Robert Rosner, and Thomas Isaacs-along with expert members of the project's advisory committee-John W. Rowe, Richard A. Meserve, and Albert Carnesale-for contributing their time, experience, and expertise to the work of the Initiative. We would also like to thank the authors for bringing their knowledge and insight to bear on these important issues.