Nuclear weapons modernised as nations prepare to ban them

Opening ceremony for the fifth IPPNW European Congress,held in Coventry Cathedral in 1990. Wikicommons/ Wellcome images. Some rights rserved.
North Korea's sixth
nuclear test, which it apparently conducted today, comes while the world's other nuclear
powers are arming up. All nine of the world’s countries with nuclear weapons
are investing massively in modernising them, according to a new report out last week by SIPRI. This is
despite a reported 3% reduction of 460 weapons in 2017.

The USA and Russia
between them hold 93% of the world’s arsenal, with thousands on hair-trigger
alert and ready to be launched within seconds of the order being given. According
to SIPRI, to take one example, the USA is due to spend up to $1 trillion over
the next 30 years.

This terrifying
statistic stands against another published by the International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), who are holding their international
congress on September 4 in the UK city of York. Their 2013 report, prepared for a conference studying the humanitarian impacts
of nuclear weapons, indicates that a limited nuclear war with the use of 100
warheads dropped on cities would lead to a nuclear winter that could end the
lives of up to 2 billion people.

These worrying numbers
have led civil society campaigns such as ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons, to heavily promote a nuclear weapons ban treaty, bringing
nuclear weapons in line with chemical and biological weapons as legally
prohibited weapons of mass destruction.

After years of
promoting efforts to get the UN to agree to such a treaty, this year in June
the text of a treaty was approved after negotiations with
over 120 states.The treaty will be opened for signing during the UN General Assembly
in September this year. With the signature and ratification of 50 States, the
treaty comes into force.

DiEM25 believes that
nuclear weapons have no place in European security doctrines and that all
nuclear weapons should be removed from European territory, be they British,
French, American or Russian. We call on all European nations to sign the Ban
Treaty as a matter of human survival.