View in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
This article discusses the 2014 Austria Pledge as part of the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.
The article begins as follows:
At the end of the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December, the Austrian government announced a new pledge that recognizes the risks posed by nuclear weapons and calls on any interested parties, including national governments, to join it in committing to the fight to reduce them. While not perfect, the pledge is smart and timely, and all nations and citizens should support it. Indeed, it has potential to be a major development in addressing nuclear weapon risks.
The Austrian pledge grows out of a broader initiative on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, which has not emerged without controversy. The Vienna Conference is the latest event in this process, which has now spanned about five years. The initiative is motivated largely by the perceived failure of nuclear weapon states to disarm. This perception of failure, held by many non-nuclear weapon states and non-governmental organizations, has created a sharp divide—some call it a crisis—in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), currently the main international institution addressing nuclear disarmament. The NPT is seen as successful at nonproliferation, given that relatively few new countries have built nuclear weapons since it entered into force in 1970. However, the NPT is seen as a failure at disarmament, as the five designated NPT nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) still collectively possess thousands of warheads, with no end to their nuclear weapon programs in sight. Some interpret the humanitarian impacts initiative as an effort by certain parties to take nuclear disarmament into their own hands given the failings of the NPT. This interpretation isn’t completely accurate, though, as in addition to pressuring for disarmament from outside the NPT, the initiative also often seeks to support disarmament within it.
The humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons initiative follows in the footsteps of successful recent campaigns to ban landmines and cluster munitions, both of which also had their basis in the weapons’ humanitarian consequences. While nuclear weapons play a very different military and political role, all three types of weapons violate international humanitarian law by imposing large, indiscriminate harm on civilian populations. The disarmament campaigns for each of these weapons focused attention on their severe humanitarian consequences to stigmatize their use and possession and build political support for banning them. In contrast, traditional nuclear weapons discourse discusses nuclear weapons in military and security terms.
The remainder of the article is available in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Image credit: Ank Kumar
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This blog post was published on 28 July 2020 as part of a website overhaul and backdated to reflect the time of the publication of the work referenced here.