Want to fight for something? Try nuclear disarmament

If you saw a candelight vigil today, chances are it would be about something other than nuclear weapons.

Ray Acheson would like that to change. 

The Canadian, who advocates for disarmament on behalf of the organization Reaching Critical Will, says despite the Cold War being over, we should still be worried about nuclear weapons, partly because nuclear states still haven't fulfilled their disarmament promises from decades ago (and still spend money to modernize their artilleries), and partly because of the new U.S.. President. 

The good news, she says, is that a group of non-nuclear countries are gathering at the UN to negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons.  

The bad news? Canada's not one of them. 

The treaty would put nuclear weapons in the same category as internationally prohibited weapons such as land mines and cluster bombs. 

The following is an excerpt of Ray Acheson's conversation with 180 host Jim Brown. 

If none of the nuclear states are involved in the discussions about this treaty, what effect would this treaty actually have?

So the idea is, that this treaty will help transform the legal, the political, the economic, and the social landscape around nuclear weapons. We can't actually force the nuclear armed states to disarm, even though they're legally obligated to do so. And we can't go in and take their weapons, unfortunately. So the idea is, that even without the nuclear armed states participating, you could have a very strong prohibition treaty that would prevent, for example, economic investments in nuclear weapons by the states that are party to the treaty.

There's also a lot of political and social ramifications for this. One of the interesting things that we've found when we look at nuclear weapons in comparison to these other weapons systems that are banned, is that the public and the sort-of social infrastructure, sees those other weapons as being prohibited by law, and therefore they have a stigma around them. So, it's easier to draw attention to their use - for example, when cluster bombs have recently been used by Saudi Arabia in its intervention in Yemen, we've seen a lot of media attention to this, and that some of those cluster bombs have come from the U.S., or from Brazil, or from other places. And so, it's sort of a rallying point for people to identify that these are illegal weapons that are being used right now. 

It's also been interesting in terms of divestment portfolios. So, we've done a lot of calling around to, say, banks or pension funds that have ethical divestment portfolios that have already decided to divest funds from land mines, or cluster munition-producing companies. And when we ask then why we don't have a similar policy on nuclear weapons, they've said to us "it's because nuclear weapons aren't illegal." 

So we want to change that attitude, and that perception socially, and that's something that a treaty like this can do. 

Now, Canada is not actually at the table for these negotiations. Why not? 

Canada is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Association, NATO, which includes the use of nuclear weapons in its strategic security doctrine. And so, before these negotiations were set up, the United States government, under the Obama administration, sent instructions to all of their NATO allies, calling on them to reject the negotiations, and if they went forward, to not participate. 

The only NATO country so far, that has broken rank with this instruction has been the Netherlands. There was a massive civil society movement in the Netherlands, that put a lot of pressure on members of parliament, and opposition parties who ran a motion in parliament, instructing the government to attend the negotiations, and so they will be here at the UN. 

So the Dutch managed to resist the American entreaties not to participate, but Canada went along with what the U.S. said. 

That's exactly right. 

As a Canadian, how do you feel about that? 

Not so good! At all. It's shocking to me that our foreign policy could be dictated by another country. Especially a country who, we have not always gone along with when we felt like they have made poor decisions - the Iraq war is case in point. I feel that Canada has a very strong tradition of humanitarianism, concern with human security, and human rights, with peace building, with bridge building also, between various positions. 

And unfortunately, the position that Canada has taken on nuclear weapons, over recent years, has been one that is just fully in line with U.S. policy. We call for nuclear disarmament at any international meeting, of course, we give rhetorical support to the concept. But we haven't actually undertaken any initiatives that are achieving disarmament, or advancing the issue forward. Canada is a strong proponent of other nuclear weapon related issues, such a trying to prevent the production of fissile materials, for example, for nuclear weapons, but that process has been gummed up in the UN system for over 20 years now. And so, while it's great that Canada's been leading on that issue for the last 20 years, it's inconsistent for it to not  support other initiatives that have a chance of helping facilitate nuclear disarmament. 

Even if this effort succeeds, what do you do about rogue states, like North Korea? Isn't there a risk that if we leave nukes in the hands of the most unstable states, that we are in more danger? 

Well, I think that the rogue state argument has always been a little bit problematic. It assumes that, just because of a hypothetical risk, that other states, or other actors, should behave according to the worst possible standards. 

Of course we can't account for every hypothetical possibility, but the idea that we should have nuclear weapons, just because somebody else might get them, at some point in the future, I think is extremely problematic. If we started extending that type of logic to other types of behaviour, how far can we go in terms of negativity as an international community, and armed conflict. 

How worried are you, personally, about nuclear weapons actually being used? 

I am quite worried about it, I think it's inevitable at some point that nuclear weapons will be detonated, whether that's by an accident, of which we've also had many close calls in terms of accidental use of nuclear weapons, detonation of nuclear weapons. But I also think that, with rising tensions that we have currently, in the international community, we can't ignore the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. 

We've had the United States generals, and others, talking more recently about developing nuclear weapons with lower yields, that could potentially be used without creating as much catastrophic humanitarian harm. If you have those types of weapons being pursued, you're talking about creating a battlefield-ready nuclear weapon. 

And of course you have now increasing tensions between the United States and Russia, you have the volatile situation in northeast Asia, so I don't think it's a benign question about the use of nuclear weapons. And I think that the only solution, the only real solution to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them. 

The 180 team found this video from William Perry, a former US Secretary of Defence.  Like Ray Acheson, Perry worries about impending nuclear attacks and has been quoted saying he thinks the danger of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and "most people are blissfully unaware of this danger."