Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Can Nuclear Weapons be Completely Eradicated?

Today, i.e. September 26, is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The objective of the day is to provide an opportunity to the world community to reaffirm its commitment to global nuclear disarmament as a high priority. It also aims at educating the public and the authorities about the real benefits of eliminating such weapons, and the social and economic costs of perpetuating them.
Global nuclear disarmament was the subject of United Nations General Assembly in the first resolution in 1946. However, complete disarmament was included in General Assembly’s agenda in 1959 and since then it has been one of the most crucial and urgent objectives of UN. In 1978, the General Assembly’s first Special Session on disarmament reaffirmed that effective measures for nuclear disarmament have the highest priority. And it has been supported by every United Nations Secretary-General.
However, the fact is that there is an uncontrolled race of nuclear weapons in the world and according to the UN statistics, about 15,000 nuclear weapons still exist and more than half of the world’s population still lives in countries that either have such weapons or are members of nuclear alliances. This grave situation exists largely because of prevailing economic and political conditions. The contemporary international political scenario can be well analyzed by keeping the term hypocrisy in our consideration. Basically the prevailing international politics does not function as an international integrating system; rather it functions as a catalyst to invigorate international disintegration by dividing the world into political giants and political ants. International integration, which should be a step before the first and foremost step, has been deleted from the hard disk of international politics. International integration that should be the fore-legs of civilizations has only proved to be a wheel-chair of crippled civilization that is leading it to nowhere.
Nuclear non-proliferation, as propagated by contemporary politics, seems to be a very controversial term – properly designed and masterly disguised. The most interesting fact about non-proliferation treaties is the fact that they have been controlled by those who have been responsible for most of nuclear proliferation.
There are few thinkers who believe that the current slogans of peace and tranquility and non-proliferation are new techniques by the imperialists to strengthen their dominance in the international scenario. It is necessary to consider the view and analyze it as per the contemporary settings. They believe that today’s imperialism is nothing more than an evolution of the same colonization. It has evolved in terms of both technology and technique. Today’s technology is more modern and techniques are more misleading. Imperialism has clothed its cunning incentives by beautiful slogans. It is not what it seems. Its behavior is deceptive and nuclear non-proliferation is one of the examples of its dual nature. The slogan of non-proliferation is raised because imperialism wants a solid excuse to shun the third world nations but it is important that they should start non-proliferation from the world powers that are the storerooms of nuclear arms. The world powers have the capacity to destroy the whole world several times with their weapons. When the world powers carry out some nuclear tests the world peace organizations and test ban treaties do not seem to have much power to stop them. This is really a lame and cruel justice. There is a power game and the power is always skewed towards the countries that have large economy and are militarily strength. Most of the decisions pertaining to the world order and international law are influenced by them as they are the ones who have invented them and thus finance them. 
There is no controversy about the fact that every nation has got the right of self-defense. The nations that want to guarantee complete security for their people need to acquire weapons; this is a reality that has to be accepted by everyone. If they do not acquire weapons they will be dominated by their enemies – this is how we have formed the world order and political scenario. There are many countries in the state of war and they always have certain enemies against whom they have to defend themselves.

However, from this discussion it must not be inferred that there should be uncontrolled competition of weapons. The sanctions are necessary but the most important factor is that the sanctions must be just and they should be applicable against all the countries in the world – both strong and weak. If they favor just the strong, then it means they are tools for them to further their dominance and control in world politics and that means further disorder and wars. The international bodies that are formed so as to control the arms race and save the world from nuclear weapons must be authoritative enough to make independent decisions and they should also be in a position to make the countries follow their decisions.