If I was a half-decent blogger this post would have gone out last Friday when the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force but as I’m not, today will have to do.

I am firmly convinced that life on earth is a miracle and it is a gift. It is precious. It is also fragile. There are many pressures on our planet and the last thing we need is to press the self-destruct button, which is essentially what nuclear weapons are. They are a man-made self-destruct button and they are an intolerable threat to humanity.

They are immoral because they deliberately make civilians the target. As a follower of Christ, I cannot find a way to justify their use. The means, in this case, can never justify the end. So I supported and continue to support the efforts to stigmatise, prohibit & eliminate nuclear weapons.

#NuclearWeapons pose growing dangers. The world needs urgent action to ensure their elimination & prevent catastrophic human & environmental consequences. Elimination of nuclear weapons remains the highest disarmament priority for @UN.#NuclearBan Treaty enters into force today. pic.twitter.com/onpNZ5QFri

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) January 22, 2021

I’m also realistic. So the fact that 52 smaller countries with little or no global heft have signed & ratified the treaty will not make much immediate difference to the world. In other words, nuclear weapons are not disappearing anytime soon. In fact, there is more chance of the nuclear club growing (Iran) than shrinking. We see one new country join the nuclear club roughly every ten years and each new member provokes others to start the journey. And those that have weapons resist any efforts to eliminate their weapons while engaging in the hypocrisy of insisting other countries can’t be trusted. As ICAN say in their booklet Let’s be Realists debunking the most common objections:

Thus, we have the bizarre spectacle of nuclear-armed states trying to convince others that the TPNW will simultaneously have no effect and be highly dangerous and destabilising. The United States told the United Nations that a ban on nuclear weapons would “risk creating a very unstable security environment, where
misperceptions or miscalculations could escalate crises with unintended and unforeseen consequences, not excluding the possible use of a nuclear weapon.”16 Russia argued that the TPNW would risk “plunging the world into chaos and dangerous unpredictability.”17

That should only alert us to the threat they pose. The more weapons, the greater the risk. More countries, the greater the number of flashpoints. The more nuclear facilities, the greater the risk of something going wrong. So the pressure needs to be increased – and this is the first step by declaring the possession of nuclear weapons to be illegal. I encourage you to add your voice.