Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, under cover of repeated threats to use nuclear weapons, has resurrected the fear of nuclear weapons and headlines about possible nuclear war. Now, Christopher Nolan's re-telling of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer brings the story of nuclear weapons' creation to life courtesy of Hollywood.
But what about the next instalment of the story? How we consign nuclear weapons to the dustbin of history—the same way we have done with other weapons of mass destruction?
Fortunately, the first step in that process is already underway. As with chemical and biological weapons, an international treaty has been created at the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons and make everything to do with them illegal. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was forged by 122 countries six years ago, and became international law in 2021. At the present count, 92 countries have signed it and 68 have ratified.
Step two? Make any threat to use, or spread nuclear weapons unacceptable. Thanks to Russia's repeated threats to use nuclear weapons, along with North Korea's reckless nuclear rhetoric, that's happening.
When President Joe Biden called the deployment of Russian nukes to Belarus "absolutely irresponsible," and President Xi Jinping and Biden issued a statement that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought, it is clear that the nuclear option is only worthy of condemnation.
This sentiment that the use of nuclear weapons is taboo grew out of the use of those first atomic bombs that Nolan recounts in Oppenheimer. Back in 1945, the U.S. tried to suppress knowledge of the inhumane effects of its new weapon, but it was impossible to keep it secret. The more the world learned about what happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as people living near where the first weapons were tested, the more they recoiled in horror.
This taboo imposes a reputational cost on any country or leader threatening to use nuclear weapons, which means condemnation of threats is not just empty rhetoric. Widespread opprobrium delegitimizes state conduct and has been shown to influence the behavior of nuclear-armed states.
Any loss of legitimacy can mean loss of political support on the world stage, and makes it more difficult to pursue any other national interests. This is why Russia walked back its initial nuclear threats after its invasion of Ukraine, and also why Russia responded strongly and at length to the declaration adopted by the first meeting of states parties to the TPNW, which unequivocally condemned "any and all nuclear threats."
Following the TPNW states' declaration, the stigmatizing effect of condemning nuclear weapons has spread, like the effects of a nuclear bomb would, into the unlikeliest corners of Earth. Those echoing the words of the declaration include not only President Biden and President Xi, but also the G20 and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The last chapter will be the elimination of existing nuclear arsenals. The TPNW lays out a clear pathway for countries to safely, verifiably, and irreversibly get rid of their arsenals (and the related infrastructure and industry necessary for their production). Treaty members led by Mexico and New Zealand, working with a Scientific Advisory Group, are elaborating pathways for the elimination of nuclear weapons by nuclear-armed states or states hosting other countries' nuclear weapons on their territories who wish to join the TPNW.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, for our "ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of [nuclear] weapons." In our Nobel lecture, we said clearly, "The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be."
As Oppenheimer makes clear at the end, the threat his creation poses is existential.
Nolan told us the story of the beginning of nuclear weapons, and it is up to us—governments, campaigners, and citizens—to choose the ending we prefer—nuclear holocaust or nuclear disarmament through the only treaty that makes these weapons of mass destruction illegal.
Daniel Högsta is ICAN's interim executive director.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
