The new front in the campaign against nuclear weapons

UTRECHT, Netherlands — This week, the Swedish International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, launched complementary reports on the state of proliferation nuclear arsenals in the world. The SIPRI report showed that the number of operational warheads worldwide is increasing, although the total number is decreasing due to the phasing out of stockpiled warheads. The ICAN report focuses not on the number of new weapons, but on the total amount of money spent on them and the role of the nuclear industry in promoting popular belief and elites in the need for nuclear supremacy.

Taken together, this data represents not only evidence of current trends, but also a new salvo in global civil society's efforts to stigmatize nuclear weapons, this time by drawing attention to the humanitarian risks posed by their possession and use. proliferation, not to mention their use. .

It may seem contradictory that nuclear spending, nuclear saber rattling and reaffirmative nuclear policies appear to be on the rise, just five years after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force, prohibiting the use or threat of use of these weapons. But in some ways this is to be expected. The “nuclear taboo” has always been a taboo on the use, not the possession, of nuclear weapons, and it has coexisted uneasily with the acceptance of a world in which the possession of nuclear weapons – at least by some states – remains. a reality. Additionally, none of the nuclear weapon states have accepted or signed the ban treaty. As political scientist Rebecca Gibbons writes, backlash from status quo powers against emerging or consolidating norms is nothing new. It is therefore consistent with the current nuclear order that, even if a conventional norm against nuclear use strengthens, some actors – including defense companies with incentives to protect their market share – would again insist on the possession of nuclear power. nuclear weapons as a bulwark against their use.