A Treaty that Exists on Paper Only

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal being their total elimination. 

The TPNW came into force yesterday after it was ratified by 51 states in 2017, though none are nuclear powers. Of course lah, the countries against nuclear weapons are countries with zero nuclear capability! 

The world’s nine nuclear-armed states have amassed an estimated 13,400 nuclear warheads. Some 90% are owned by the US and Russia, with the rest shared among China, France, UK, Pakistan, India, North Korea and presumably Israel – an undeclared nuclear power. In fact, these states have invested a great deal into modernizing their nuclear arsenals to enhance effectiveness. Indeed, they seem more interested in modernization than disarmament. 

Know that the power of many of those warheads is far greater than those dropped in Japan in 1945, bombs that killed more than 100,000 people, including 1,924 of Hiroshima’s 2,080 doctors and nurses. This is the reality we are up against. 

But the nuclear powers were obviously unimpressed and unmoved. Even NATO's 30 member states have refused to ratify the nuclear weapon ban treaty. 

Get real! The TPNW will only make sense when those countries possessing the 13,400 nuclear weapons agree to get rid of them!