50 countries signed the United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The five nuclear powers, US, Russia, China, Britain and France objected. Kozin comments on the treaty and its drawbacks and why Russia objected. Their reason will surprise you.
There are positive features in the TPNW
For the first time since the NW have been invented, tested and used in 1945 the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will become an international law starting from January 22, 2021.
The TPNW is a concrete specific step forward to denuclearize the world on the global scale, and to add nuclear arms to two other international treaties on elimination of the WMD namely conventions banning biological and bacteriological weapons and chemical weapons entered into force respectively in 1975 and 1997.
The TPNW has easy provisions for enacting it: unlike the CTBT that could be enacted only after 44 specific nations on the globe will ratify it, the TPNW will become operational if only 50 unspecified states sign and ratify it, and after 3 months’ time it will be valid. In the long run the TPNW will give strong impetus to nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament.
There are some negative setbacks related to the TPNW
1. So far it has been signed and ratified by 50 states that is nearly 25 percent of the world community.
2. There are 9 NW states in the world. No country possessing NW has ever signed and ratified the TPNW.
3. The TPNW does not contain any fixed date to eliminate nuclear arms. It should have had at least preliminary target date for destruction of all nuclear arsenals, like, for example, The Global Appeal to the Nine World Governments having nuclear weapons that has collected by 26th of October 2020 nearly 10,000 signatures of various NGOs and individuals. The Appeal set up the target goal of elimination of NW by August 6th, 2045 or earlier.
4. The TPNW has not stopped the nuclear arms race that has intensified recently. The TPNW failed to stop unilateral withdrawal of the USA from the INF Treaty and Iranian nuclear deal. The TPNW does not prevent some NATO member states to violate the NPT by deployment of the U.S. nuclear forward-based weapons in Europe and to modernize the SOA by spending enormous amount of money for such purpose.
