Furthermore, in the early twenty-first century, there have been new and important developments. The worldwide remnants of the nuclear disarmament movement regrouped as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and, joined by farsighted officials in smaller, non-nuclear nations, drew upon the United Nations to sponsor a series of antinuclear conferences. In 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1 (with 1 abstention), delegates at one of these UN conferences adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Although all nine nuclear powers strongly opposed the TPNW-- which banned the use, threatened use, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, and installation of nuclear weapons-- the treaty secured sufficient national backing to enter into force in January 2021. Thus far, it has been signed by 99 countries-- a majority of the world's nations.
In addition to the efficacy of public pressure for nuclear disarmament and the existence of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, at least one other factor points the way toward a non-nuclear future: the self-defeating nature-- indeed, the insanity-- of nuclear war. With even a single nuclear bomb capable of killing millions of people and leaving the desperate survivors crawling painfully through a burnt-out, radioactive hell, even a nuclear "victory" is a defeat. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is believed to have said, "the survivors would envy the dead". It's a lesson that most people around the world have learned, although not perhaps the lunatics.
Lunatics, of course, exist, and some of them, unfortunately, govern modern nations and ignore international law.
Even so, although we are on the road to nuclear war, there is still time to take a deep breath, think about where we are going, and turn around.
Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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