U.N. vote provides momentum to eliminate nuclear weapons

This past October I had the extraordinary opportunity to participate in a lobbying effort at the United Nations during committee debates on disarmament and international security.  Our lobbying efforts, with Physicians for Social Responsibility and a coalition of other non-governmental organizations, focused on a proposed resolution to commence negotiations in 2017 on a new international treaty to ban nuclear weapons, similar to existing treaties that ban all chemical and biological weapons.

The resolution is co-sponsored by more than 40 of the 193 member nations and is the culmination of a multi-year effort to examine recent scientific findings regarding the humanitarian consequences of a nuclear exchange. A letter authored by six Nobel Peace Prize Laureates states that “even a limited nuclear war, involving less than 0.05 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenals, would cause catastrophic climate disruption across the planet and lead to a global famine that could put up to 2 billion people at risk of starvation.  Other data shows that a large-scale war between the U.S. and Russia would cause even more profound climate disruption, producing a nuclear winter that would kill the vast majority of the human race and could cause our extinction as a species.”

On April 5, 2009, President Barack Obama stood in Hradcany Square in Prague, Czech Republic, and stated:  “As a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.  So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Contrary to the official position of the U.S., as stated by President Obama, the United States U.N. delegation used the rationale of deterrence and national security to stand in strong opposition to the nuclear ban resolution. The U.S. and other nuclear powers have failed to follow their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to move towards the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. In the weeks leading up to the election, Donald Trump stated he would not take the use of nuclear weapons off the table.

All of the non-nuclear nations who signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, except North Korea, have followed their treaty obligation not to develop nuclear weapons.  Among the U.N. delegations with whom we had contact, widespread international support for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons was evident.  These nations are committed to a world without nuclear weapons and to putting pressure on the nuclear powers to explicitly prohibit the acquisition, possession, stockpiling, development, testing, and production of nuclear weapons.

On Oct. 27, the resolution to commence negotiations for a nuclear ban treaty passed the U.N. First Committee by a 64 percent majority. IT will proceed to the General Assembly for a vote as soon as Friday. As the Nobel Laureates stated in their recent letter, the ban treaty "will create a powerful new norm about nuclear weapons, defining them not as the status symbols of great nations, but as the badges of shame of rogue nations.”

Congress has approved the expenditure of $348 billion over the next decade (that’s $34.8 billion per year or about $2.9 billion per month) to "modernize" our nuclear arsenal. These same taxpayer dollars that could be spent for health care, education, renewable energy, and job-creating infrastructure projects — endeavors that truly make us strong and secure as individuals and as a nation.

The threat of nuclear war is not a subject most of us care to dwell on, especially when it seems we have no power or vehicle for making change.  As Obama stated in his Prague address: “Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”

Assuming the treaty negotiations move forward, we have a new vehicle to move toward a more secure world without nuclear weapons. The people of the United States must seize this historic moment to raise our voices and create the political will to lead the way in negotiating for a complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

Claire Cumbie-Drake  is a Des Moines attorney in private practice with a background in public health administration. Contact: mcumbiedrake@gmail.com