Opening Plenary, August 4
2024 World Conference against A and H Bombs
Ambassador Alexander Kmentt
Director for Disarmament, Arms Control and Nonproliferation Dept.,
Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs
Austria
It is a pleasure and honor to send greetings to the participants of the 2024 World Conference against A and H Bombs. I thank the organisers for inviting me.
It may seem difficult to speak about nuclear disarmament today, when so many developments seem to point in the opposite direction. Of course, I am convinced that it is even more important. The entire international community needs to think and speak about nuclear weapons much more. The people of Japan and especially the hibakusha have a very important role to play in my view.
Let me first point out the negative developments.
Nuclear disarmament is in a dismal state. The disarmament obligations and promises of the Non-Proliferation treaty, the NPT, are not implemented. They are ignored. It is hard to discern any sign of progress in this direction or even intention of nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states.
What is one to conclude for example from the fact that the annual global nuclear weapons spending has surged to more than 90 bn USD/year in 2023? These are long-term investments into modernizations of nuclear weapons and the related infrastructure and the clear demonstration of intent of long-term reliance on nuclear weapons. This, and decisions to increase capabilities of nuclear forces is happening in all nuclear weapon states. Moreover, some nuclear weapon states add new or additional types of nuclear weapons to their arsenals and improve the capability to produce them. Some have increased the readiness of nuclear forces. Nuclear doctrines are being widened. We have seen the abandonment of nuclear agreements. One state has removed a nuclear ban from its constitution. We see the stationing of nuclear weapons in additional countries. We are concerned about plans to deploy new intermediate range missiles. And, we are alarmed about nuclear threats and blackmail, such as Russia’s implicit but unmistakable nuclear threats in the context of its illegal invasion of Ukraine and, more broadly, an increasingly strident nuclear rhetoric that risks to “normalize” the use of nuclear weapons.
All these developments are greatly disconcerting and increase the high level of risks of nuclear conflict.
Russia’s nuclear threats and the risks of escalation to nuclear use in the war in Ukraine are arguably the most pertinent and worrying development in the nuclear field. However, as you know well in Japan, there are other very dangerous contexts, from North Korea, to the tensions in the South China Sea, the India and Pakistan and the situation in the Middle East. All of these have the potential for nuclear escalation.
This is a very dangerous situation not seen since the Cold War. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned: “We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”
For this to change, we would need a paradigm shift on the security perception around nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. Nuclear disarmament should really be a credible move away from reliance on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.
We need to have an honest and inclusive conversation about this at the international level. This is urgent and necessary since a security approach that is based on nuclear deterrence by definition concerns the entire international community, given that the risks and consequences of failure would be borne by all humanity.
Nuclear deterrence is a high-risk approach to international security. Ambiguities and risk taking are woven into the very fabric of nuclear deterrence. These risks are getting more and more pronounced by geopolitical tensions, new and disruptive technologies, proliferation pressures and the weakening of the legal and normative framework for nuclear weapons. Consequently, there is no — and never can be — any assurance that nuclear deterrence will hold in any crisis situation. It is a fragile and precarious psychological construct. Nuclear deterrence create a false sense of security. Miscalculations, misinformation, human and technical errors are always possible.
The uncertain security benefits need to be weighed against the risks inherent in nuclear deterrence and against the increasing body of scientific evidence of the catastrophic global impact that deterrence failure and nuclear weapons use would have. This security approach creates acute threats and risks for the entire international community, including for those 150 plus states that have foresworn nuclear weapons. It raises profound questions about international legitimacy and international and inter-generational justice. We all know that security cannot and should not be a zero-sum game. For the non-nuclear majority, however, nuclear weapons are the ultimate zero-sum game approach. Those who argue the value of nuclear weapons for their security should acknowledge the legitimate concerns that this very approach creates for the rest of the international community. More importantly, they should engage with these concerns.
Leadership towards such a paradigm shift from the nuclear weapon states or nuclear dependent states is regrettably lacking. Leadership, however, is coming from the non-nuclear weapon majority of states. Leadership is coming from the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
And this is the second, hopeful part of my message.
Against the bleak backdrop that I described before, the case for and the importance of the TPNW is even more pronounced. It is a significant engagement in and expression of support for the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime by its supporters. More broadly, it is an investment into multilateralism, international law and international peace and security. It strengthens the nuclear regime and supports the NPT on both, its disarmament and non-proliferation pillars.
At a time when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is under great stress, the TPNW is an important reinforcement of the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime.
In June 2022, the TPNW signatories embarked on the implementation of this new treaty at the First Meeting of States Parties in Vienna that I had the honor of chairing. Participants including many civil society organizations, scientists, and, most importantly survivors, hibakusha and representatives of communities affected by nuclear testing came to Vienna with considerable enthusiasm and commitment. The positive spirit was reflected in the meeting’s substantive and ambitious decisions.
The TPNW community of states unanimously adopted a key document?the?Vienna Action Plan?which lays out how countries will implement the treaty in the coming years and to move the treaty’s objectives forward.
Since then, TPNW States meet in New York for the 2MSPP.
The work to implement the Treaty is well underway.
TPNW states and their partners form civil society are investing time and effort to work out how to assist victims of nuclear weapons, how to universalise the Treaty — that means bringing more countries into the Treaty, how to develop the pathways provided in the treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons, to be prepared if and when nuclear-armed countries are ready to join the treaty. TPNW States have established a Scientific Advisory Group to connect the Treaty better to the scientific community. And TPNW States are addressing and countering the politically motivated arguments that are made against the TPNW by its opponents.
In short, at a time when there is no credible effort towards nuclear disarmament by the nuclear armed states, the TPNW community is showing leadership on this is and working in a concrete and practical way to move forward.
The TPNW is also of utmost importance at this very moment as it points the way out of the nuclear deterrence paradigm. This is not based on idealism but on increasingly compelling scientific evidence of the catastrophic and global consequences of nuclear weapons should the nuclear deterrence theory fail.
The TPNW highlights how nuclear deterrence theory is fraught with uncertainties and risks.
We can never know if nuclear deterrence will work but we know for sure that it can fail. Political Decision-making about nuclear weapons must therefore be based on the empirical facts about the catastrophic consequences and existential risks of nuclear weapons. It should not be based on an assumed stability due to nuclear deterrence that is based on rather shaky evidence.
TPNW members have expressed this clearly in the political declaration?adopted in Vienna: “[Far from preserving peace and security, nuclear weapons are used as instruments of policy, linked to coercion, intimidation and heightening of tensions. This highlights now more than ever the fallacy of nuclear deterrence doctrines, which are based and rely on the threat of the actual use of nuclear weapons and, hence, the risks of the destruction of countless lives, of societies, of nations, and of inflicting global catastrophic consequences.”
Proponents of nuclear deterrence will continue to disagree and draw different legal and political conclusions or actively oppose the ban treaty. However, the TPNW’s underlying arguments are profound, legitimate, and inescapable. rToday’s strong opposition to the TPNW by proponents of nuclear deterrence may be a sign of its strength and potentially transformational underlying rationale.
The TPNW is still a young treaty. Its membership is slowly growing with 93 countries that have signed the treaty and 70 having ratified it.
The ban treaty has given voice to the non-nuclear majority of countries that are largely disenfranchised by the global nuclear order. And it had given voice to the victims and survivors of nuclear weapons.
The TPNW points to an alternative approach to the problem of nuclear weapons and security. While the TPNW cannot coerce anyone to give up its nuclear weapons, it can provide a convincing rationale for the lack of legitimacy, legality, and sustainability of nuclear weapons through strong arguments and scientific evidence. The ban treaty can lay the groundwork for when nuclear-armed countries are ready to engage in concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament and away from the precarious nuclear deterrence paradigm.
When leadership of nuclear-armed countries on this issue has all but disappeared, the TPNW is an indispensable and potentially consequential ray of hope against an otherwise very bleak backdrop of currently failing leadership on nuclear disarmament.
Let me close by saluting civil society in Japan for your engagement and your commitment. Change on the nuclear weapons issue will only come through public discourse and informed citizens.
Thank you.