nuclear war will be inevitable unless …

Nuclear War will be inevitable unless …..

Frank Boulton

Medact Conference

9th November 2013

Humankind under stress

• Climate change – raining in the wrong places

• Global population growth– Obesity epidemic

• Excessive use of inappropriate energy sources– Oil price rises and effects on developing world health

• Excessive water consumption

• Crisis from gross economic mismanagement

Pressure on and mal-distribution of markets in basic resources (food, water, energy) has become unsustainable.

The resulting stress, never before so extreme, gives rise to a real risk that in a moment of irrationality or panic, a nuclear war will be started

Nuclear weapons

• Have no credible use– Useless against terrorist attacks

• Are expensive to maintain

• Thinking that possession deters is deluded– proliferation, accidents, nature of the threat

• Even if not used pose unique and long-term hazards to public health– dangers of ‘low-level radiation’ misrepresented

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

• Entered into force in 1970

• Non-nuclear Weapons States have the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes

• Nuclear Weapons States are committed to disarm COMPLETELY ‘in good faith’.

Nuclear weapons modernisation

• Actively pursued by all NWS

• Missile Defense (to make nuclear war ‘winnable’)

• Trident replacement

• European scenario

Link with conventional weapon disarmament

• Although Obama is ‘committed’ to a nuclear-weapon free world, US conventional forces – already by far the most powerful – are expanding

• This is causing an imbalance – e.g. possible withdrawal of China from ‘no first use of NW’

• Negotiations for conventional weapons disarmament are also essential

(Oxford Research Group Nov 2013)

Solutions – interdependence and positive feed-back phenomenon

• Good public health

• Education

• Rebalance the global economy – eliminate greed, fear and corruption

• Achieve more equal but diverse societies

• Improve resources (low-carbon) and their distribution

• Relieve population pressures

• Remove the causes of war

International Activists

• IPPNW

• PNND

• ICAN– Oslo and Mexico governmental conferences

• UNGA

UNGA

• UN High Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament in 2018  – to review and advance the process, and – establish 26 September as the International

Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

• 129 countries voted in favour