Context: On October 24, 2020, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons reached the required 50 states parties for its entry into force, after Honduras ratified just one day after Jamaica and Nauru submitted their ratifications. In 90 days, the treaty will enter into force, cementing a categorical ban on nuclear weapons, 75 years after their first use.
Key Points

• The 50 countries that ratify this Treaty are showing true leadership in setting a new international norm that nuclear weapons are not just immoral but illegal.
• The 50th ratification came on the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the UN Charter which officially established the United Nations and is celebrated as UN Day.
• The United Nations was formed to promote peace with a goal of the abolition of nuclear weapons and this treaty is the UN at its best working closely with civil society to bring democracy to disarmament.

Background

• The mayor of Hiroshima urged Japan to sign a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons as the city marked 74 years (on 6th August 1945) since being targeted in the world’s first atomic attack. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, to end World War II.
• Earlier, the NWPT is the most significant multilateral development on nuclear arms control since the adoption of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. It has to be ratified by 50 countries to come into force.

ONGOING THREAT

• The ongoing threat from atomic weapons was demonstrated as nuclear-armed North Korea fired off two “unidentified projectiles” off its eastern coast — the latest in a series of tests.
• The US and Russia failed to renew a Cold War-era nuclear pact.
• This will also be triggering renewed fears of an arms race.
• Japan remains the only country to have experienced an atomic attack — against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

TREATY ON THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS (TPNW)

• The Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty is the first legally binding international agreement.
• The treaty comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal towards their total elimination.
• TPNW includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities.
• These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.
• The Treaty also prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons on national territory and the provision of assistance to any State in the conduct of prohibited activities.
• The nuclear weapon ban treaty passed on 7 July 2017.

Importance of the treaty

• The treaty requires that all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances ... develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” 
• It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons -- and requires parties to promote the treaty to other countries.
• Once it enters into force all countries that have ratified it will be bound by those requirements.

What’s missing in the treaty?

• It does not offer a practical approach on how to prod nuclear weapons states to join it.
• It contains no mechanism to verify the reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons.
• It also does not provide a solution to the risk of nuclear weapons being used by accident or miscalculation, or by terrorists.

Why a total ban is being demanded?

• Disarmament and deterrence are usually advocated by the nuclear weapons states. But, the failure of this policy is never discussed. 
• If a nuclear-armed nation was attacked, either by intention or error, the expected response would be retaliation with a bevy of nuclear weapons. 
• These weapons are indiscriminate and would invariably kill and wound millions. There is unimaginable suffering among the survivors. Operational infrastructure is gone. 
• The North Korea crisis is a prime example of why these weapons do not belong in human hands. 
• The only fail-safe way to prevent a catastrophe is to eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons; any number above zero should be unacceptable.

Ethical imperatives for nuclear disarmament:

• Nuclear weapons obliterate the distinction between combatants and civilians that is central to every moral code in all cultures and civilizations. 
• Most countries have chosen nuclear abstinence because people overwhelmingly abhor the bomb as deeply immoral. 
• It is the most indiscriminately inhumane weapon ever invented. Its primary intended deterrent effect relies on the threat to kill millions of innocent civilians. 
• Accurately called the balance of terror, deterrence is a euphemism for state-sanctioned nuclear terrorism.
• The preamble of the NWPT explicitly acknowledges “the ethical imperatives for nuclear disarmament” and describes a nuclear weapon-free world as “a global public good of the highest order, serving both national and collective security interests.”

The new treaty has challenged the following myths on which the NPT is based:

• First, that nuclear weapons are an entitlement bestowed upon only a handful of countries that had tested a nuclear weapon before the treaty entered into force in 1970.
• Second, that the security of most of the world’s nations—indeed world order itself—is based on the possession of or protection by nuclear weapons.
• Third, that nuclear weapons cannot be banned and nuclear disarmament was only possible as part of a process of “general and complete disarmament”, implying that nuclear weapons might be the last to be disarmed.

How is the new treaty different from Nuclear Non- proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

• The new NPT challenges the old NPT’s myth of entitlement by holding states that after 7 July “owned, possessed or controlled nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices” responsible for “verifying the irreversible elimination of its nuclear-weapon programme” if they become parties to the treaty. In doing so, nuclear weapons have been devalued and are reduced to a liability rather than being treated as an asset.
• Similarly, the fact that the majority of the 193 UN members voted for the treaty, including nearly a third of the Group of Twenty, nearly three-fourths of the Non-Aligned, and old NPT members, reflects that most countries do not depend on nuclear weapons for their security. In fact, the entire southern hemisphere is free of nuclear weapons.

Road Ahead

• The desire for peace emanating from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nothing other than the desire that no other country become the target or perpetrator of a nuclear attack. A convention to prohibit nuclear weapons would establish this as humanity’s shared norm, and Japan’s mission lies in doing everything it can to achieve this. So long as arsenals of nuclear weapons continue to exist on our planet, we will be forced to live with the threat that hair-trigger situations like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis may again arise.
• A convention prohibiting nuclear weapons will serve as a crucial impetus for fulfilling the disarmament obligations of the NPT. Its adoption will generate decisive momentum for nuclear weapons abolition, and it is thus vital that this be achieved. Irrespective of its future prospects, the passing of the new NPT has already challenged the very basis of nuclear deterrence and the nuclear order based on the old NPT. India and other nuclear weapon states would do well to track its progress—the future of their nuclear arsenals might depend on it.

Also Read: https://abhipedia.abhimanu.com/Article/IAS/MTU3MTI5/Comprehensive-Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty-Security-Issues-IAS

Also Read: https://abhipedia.abhimanu.com/Article/IAS/MjAxMTIy/The-claim-on-Nuclear-deterrence-is-misleading-Security-Issues-IAS