Putting the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle

CounterPunch, BY KARL GROSSMAN 18 July 23

With the film Oppenheimer opening in theatres on Friday and being widely heralded by media, and this past Sunday the 78th anniversary noted of the first explosion of a nuclear device, and, so importantly, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons becoming international law, the time for putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle has arrived with great timeliness and strength.

Can it be done? Can nuclear weapons be abolished?

Yes.

Consider what the world did in the wake of World War I when the terrible impacts of poison gas had been tragically demonstrated. Mustard gas, chlorine gas, phosphene gas killed thousands on both sides of the conflict. Thereafter, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare, and to a large degree the prohibition has held.

This month The New York Time ran a front-page story headlined: “Toxic Arsenal Nears Its End, Decades Later.” The July 6^th article began: “In a sealed room behind…armed guards and three rows of high barbed wire at the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, a team of robotic arms was busily disassembling some of the last of the United States’ vast and ghastly stockpile of chemical weapons. In went artillery shells filled with deadly mustard agent that the Army had been storing for 70 years. The bright yellow robots pierced, drained and washed each shell, then baked it at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Out came inert a harmless scrap metal, falling off a conveyer belt into an ordinary brown dumpster with a resounding clank.”

The article continued: “’That’s the sound of a chemical weapon dying,’ said Kingston Rief, who spent years pushing for disarmament outside government and is now deputy assistant secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control. He smiled as another shell clanked into the dumpster. The destruction of the stockpile has taken decades, and the Army says the work is just about finished.”

“They were a class of weapons deemed so inhumane that their use was condemned after World War I, but even so, the United States and other powers continued to develop and amass them,” said the piece.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the United Nations in 2017—with 122 nations in favor—and entered into force in January 2021 can be the nuclear counterpart to the chemical weapons genie being, at long last, put back in the bottle.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………. “Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, at the conclusion last year of a “Political Declaration and Action Plan” for implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—“important steps,” he said, “toward our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.” Guterres said that with 13,000 nuclear weapons still held across the globe, “the once unthinkable prospect of nuclear conflict is now back within the realm of possibility.”

“In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We cannot allow the nuclear weapons wielded by a handful of States to jeopardize all life on our planet,” he said. “We must stop knocking at doomsday’s door.”

Recently I did a TV program with Seth Shelden, a professor of law, an attorney, and UN liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed at the UN that year much due to the work of ICAN……………………………………. You can view the program by visiting www.envirovideo.com

The treaty declares that because of the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons, and recognizing the consequent need to completely eliminate such weapons, which remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances,” nations agree not to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons.” Further, no country may “threaten to use” them.

Asked about the lack of coverage by media of the treaty creating a nuclear weapons-free world, and thus so few people being aware of it, Shelden points to “myopic framing” by media. He cites how long it took “for journalists to accept that there were not two sides to the climate crisis.” The horrendous impacts of nuclear weapons, “like the climate crisis, even more so, is a very black-and-white issue,” he says. Shelden notes that the abolition of nuclear weapons has been a focus of the UN since its formation, the subject of its first resolution. He discusses the years of work that have led to the treaty.

ICAN says: “The release of the Oppenheimer film, and the wave of (media) attention surrounding it, creates an opportunity to spark public attention on the risks of nuclear weapons and invite new audiences to get involved in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons. We can educate about the risks, and share a much-needed message of hope and resistance: Oppenheimer is about how nuclear weapons began, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is how we end them. That is why we have put together some resources for all ICAN campaigners—or anyone who is willing to take action—to use at local theatres around the world or to join the conversation online!”

Shelden of ICAN on my Envirovideo TV program also has many suggestions for action.

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