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I believe that there is more to it than he suggests. The Labour Government at the end of the Second World War could have decided not to have nuclear weapons. It initially took the option to have them largely because of status and pride. Ernest Bevin, then the Foreign Secretary, stated: “We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.” The costs of maintaining that status have become more and more expensive over the years, which has led to the UK becoming more and more reliant upon the US for technical support at a cost. The theory must be that it is better to have a nuclear deterrent sort of independent rather than not have such deterrent at all.

I also believe that status still has a large part to play in the UK’s position today, albeit we are far removed from the circumstances prevailing at the end of the Second World War. It is interesting that all five permanent members of the UN Security Council are nuclear powers: China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. The UK, no doubt, places great value upon that status and is likely to regard being a nuclear power as helping to sustain it. The original idea was that the five would progressively disarm in exchange for other states not acquiring nuclear weapon facilities. That idea has gone well, hasn’t it? Look at India and Pakistan and the likelihood of some others.

Brexit Britain is clinging on to its belief that it can regain and retain its place at the centre of the world. But the irony is that many of the nations that it wants to trade with as it turns its back on Europe are in the Nuclear Weapon Free Zones and have been part of developing and signing the treaty banning nuclear weapons.

The Brexiters’ love of patriotic militarism with navy ships and flags spearheading trade missions are likely to have the opposite effect than expected. These nuclear-free nations might be no match for the military might of NATO and the other nuclear powers but they do have complete control of their own trade.

“The ground is moving under the UK’s feet,” says Ben Donaldson, head of campaigns at the United Nations Association. “Whether or not the UK supports the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the impact will be felt. The treaty is popular with states the UK is looking to strike trade deals with and the UK is finding itself increasingly diplomatically isolated on this issue. A large majority of countries have made it clear they have lived in fear of nuclear fallout for too long and want action. As well as being immoral, the UK’s current position of variously ignoring and attacking the treaty and its supporters is unsustainable and damages its influence on the world stage.”

Government Gives Arms Industry Extra Tens of Millions of Pounds During COVID-19 Pandemic

Joshua Stein

As the fiftieth nation prepares to sign the treaty, there is hope that the nations with nuclear weapons themselves are finding it harder to justify themselves to their own populations.

There have been concerns about US President Donald Trump pressing the red button in the same way he presses ‘tweet’. Even in Britain there is a backlash. Although there are not protests on the streets like at the height of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), more and more councils are signing up to be nuclear-free zones, such as Manchester City Council. In America, the whole state of California, which has the fourth largest GDP in the world, has gone down this route. Increasingly, financial institutions are divesting in companies that are part of the supply chain and manufacturing nuclear weapons in an initiative called Wall of Fame.

Hopefully this treaty will start to call time on the nuclear weapon nations and their allies ignoring the moral and ethical case for a ban, when an increasingly large part of the world wants nothing to do with these dangerous and potentially powerless ‘deterrents’.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/21/the-nuclear-treaty-dividing-the-world/