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E-book The Struggle for Abolition : Power and Legitimacy in Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy

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Penilaian

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What ought we do about the bomb? The official answer given by effectively all the world’s states is abolition. To be sure, the current nuclear-armed states are for all intents and purposes resolved to retain and renew their arsenals for the foreseeable future. Disarmament rhetoric has persistently been belied by enormous investments in warheads, missiles, bombers, and submarines. Yet, on the level of official policy, even the major nuclear powers agree that aboli-tion should be the long-term aim. The basic case for disarmament is threefold. First, it is widely acknowledged that the combination of nuclear armament and an international system composed of sovereign states portends eventual disaster. At some point, be it tomorrow, next year, or 200 years from now, deterrence will fail catastrophically. As put by the author Martin Amis, ‘the trouble with deterrence is that it can’t last out the necessary time-span, which is roughly between now and the death of the sun’.1 Second, nuclear weapons are of a nature to cause superfluous injury and uncontrollable, indiscriminate effects if used. The employment of nuclear arms is thus difficult or impossible to square with prevailing principles of international law and morality. And, third, abolition is widely seen as the only politically defensible long-term solution to the nuclear predicament. Few are prepared to say in public that nuclear weapons should be permanently available to some states but not oth-ers, and fewer still are prepared to maintain that they should be available to all. Accordingly, virtually all the world’s states have committed, with vary-ing degrees of sincerity, to pursuing multilateral nuclear disarmament. But in what way? How has the diplomatic pursuit of nuclear zero evolved over time? The history of the struggle for multilateral nuclear disarmament is a tale of frustrated hopes and broken promises, of backroom deals and creative diplomatic tricks, and of clashing visions of justice and security. It is also a story of how smaller states have sought to pressurise the powerful few – and of how the powerful few have sought to legitimate their power and privileges vis-à-vis the many small.This book offers an effort to make sense of the history and politics of multi-lateral nuclear disarmament diplomacy from the 1968 adoption of Treaty on the N on-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to the 2021 entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Admittedly, nuclear disarmament has been on the international community’s agenda since the beginning of the nuclear age. In its very first resolution, adopted by consensus in January 1946, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) called for proposals to advance the ‘elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruc-tion’.2 Yet it was only with the 1968 NPT that the goal of nuclear disarma-ment was elevated to the status of binding international law. Often referred to as the ‘cornerstone’ of the global nuclear order, the NPT codified a legal distinction between ‘nuclear’ and ‘non-nuclear’ powers, obliging states in the former category not to disseminate their weapons to others, committing those in the latter never to acquire nuclear arms, and requiring all parties to negotiate ‘effective measures’ for nuclear disarmament while simultane-ously guaranteeing all states an enduring right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The institutional framework for multilateral nuclear disarmament diplomacy has since evolved and expanded considerably, with new treaties, forums, actors, and practices being integrated into the existing architecture.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

320 EGE t

Penerbit

USA : Taylor & Francis., 2025

Deskripsi Fisik

222 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781003456841

Klasifikasi

320

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Political dan Government Science

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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