HOW TO GET RID OF ALL* NUCLEAR WEAPONS

ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, is a tiny organization with just three full-time staff. But it has a network of 468 partner organizations in 101countries. The vast majority of people working with ICAN around the world are young. They are energized, enthusiastic, positive. They don’t take ‘no’ for an answer and they don’t believe in the word ‘impossible’.

ICAN very deservedly won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize because they achieved ‘the impossible,’ a new international treaty banning nuclear weapons. And they did that by going against the advice and counsel of seasoned anti-nuclear activists who kept claiming their campaign was foolhardy, the wrong strategy, a non-starter.

ICAN did not buy into the limited mentality of defining beforehand what is possible and what is not possible. Instead, they steadfastly pursued the ‘impossible’ goal of abolishing all nuclear weapons. It took ten years of campaigning to get a Nuclear Ban Treaty. However long it takes to get the nuclear-armed states to sign the Treaty, it will happen because people are prepared to hold firmly to that goal and to accept nothing less.

One of the most important paradigm shifts that must take place in the minds of Americans is the recognition that “The United States” is not “The World,” that 95% of the earth’s population lives elsewhere, and that we cannot solve any of the world’s problems without working with the rest of the world. That includes our own security: the United States will never feel secure unless and until the rest of the world feels secure.

We also have to recognize that it’s getting us nowhere to wait until the rest of the world has agreed to disarm before we disarm. That is the strategy the US government has supposedly followed for 70 years and it has failed.

Of the 40 or so countries who are currently refusing to sign the Nuclear Ban Treaty, more than 30 of them are members of NATO or other nuclear alliances with the United States. These countries are under enormous pressure from the US government not to sign this Treaty, because to do so would expose the fallacy that these weapons are somehow protecting them.

Public pressure in these countries will eventually lead them to the Treaty. And that will add further pressure on the US to sign too.

In Germany, for instance, 93% of the public want to remove the US nuclear weapons still deployed in their country. In Japan, there is overwhelming opposition to nuclear weapons (they should know) and the pressure on the government is growing. And in countries like Australia and Canada, the Nobel Peace Prize is giving ICAN a level of media coverage never before seen in those countries.

Many countries will, sooner or later, sign and ratify the Nuclear Ban Treaty because of their own public pressure to do so. But they will sign it even sooner if they see public pressure to sign the Treaty is resolute, fierce, and well-organized even in the United States.

Campaigners around the world have already achieved the impossible without much support from the United States. But getting to the next step is going to be much more difficult without us. Because the US plays such a key role in the nuclear weapons business, knowing that campaigners in the US are working to turn this around is hugely important for global morale and motivation.

As well as supporting the grassroots campaigns in other countries, a US campaign will directly affect the thinking of politicians and diplomats in those countries, as they assess the extent to which they are backing the right horse when it comes to the inevitability of nuclear weapons elimination.

What goes on in the US will also have a direct effect on some of the other 8 nuclear- armed nations. Scotland, for instance, is overwhelmingly opposed to nuclear weapons, and by moving to be Treaty Compliant, that country could vastly increase the pressure on the United Kingdom as a whole.

How will campaigning in the US make it more likely that they will also come on board? What most Americans do not know is that the United States has always taken the lead in developing, improving, upgrading and modernizing its nuclear weapons. All throughout the Cold War, the US set the pace and the Soviet Union tried to keep up.

These countries have nuclear weapons for one primary reason – because we have them. And that has always been the case, although there are other complexities to the security concerns of these countries, for sure. For example, North Korea wants nuclear weapons that can strike the United States because it doesn’t want to be attacked by the United States with nuclear or conventional weapons. Russia is maintaining its stockpile of nuclear weapons because it also does not want to be attacked by a conventionally much more powerful NATO at its borders.

However, none of these countries can afford a new nuclear arms race. They have other pressing concerns besides the threat of an invasion by the United States. And in a world that is demonstrably moving towards the elimination of all nuclear weapons, even in the United States, these countries will jump at the opportunity to be on the right side of history.

In any case, there are many possible routes to the final step in this process. Growing political and economic pressures from all over the world could force one or more nuclear-armed nations to announce they are giving up their weapons unilaterally. Alternatively, those pressures could convince the nuclear-armed nations to get together and agree to eliminate all their weapons at the same time – or to negotiate a separate agreement that spells out a different process for getting rid of the weapons.

It doesn’t matter which route they take as long as we get the end result of a world without nuclear weapons. But the existing nuclear-armed nations are unlikely to make any move in that direction until the US does.

It is here in the US that we have to really pile on the pressure and build an unstoppable movement. And in any case it is only here that we, as citizens of the United States, have any direct influence or control.