nuclear-news

Once the treaty is in effect, elimination will become the center of a contentious worldwide debate. The majority of the world will have a new legal argument for pushing toward global zero, but the nine nuclear-armed states are sure to resist. So it makes sense to think a little about whether eliminating nuclear weapons is even possible.

Nuclear weapons are both weapons and symbols…….

Weapons are essentially tools to achieve a particular task. The effectiveness of a tool is objective and quantifiable—how well does it get the job done?

Symbols, on the other hand, are psychological. They can inspire and change beliefs. ……

Nuclear weapons are, in some ways, like these ceremonial swords. Their symbolic value is more important than their military utility. For example, one of the roles of nuclear weapons is as a symbol of prestige. ………

The people who make nuclear weapons policy seem to believe that they have enormous power, conflating their symbolic meaning with their practical usefulness.

But in reality, nuclear weapons are not terribly valuable as weapons. They have not been used in war for more than 75 years. And although numerous occasions have arisen since 1945 when their use was considered, each time, decision makers declined………

Once the symbolic layer has been peeled away, the remaining task will be to evaluate the military utility of nuclear weapons objectively. If it becomes clear that nuclear weapons are dangerous and have almost no military uses, it may be much easier to take [them] off.  https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/the-hidden-stumbling-block-to-progress-on-nuclear-weapons/