The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize went to the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for the group’s work on behalf of a global
ban on nuclear weapons. Just a few months earlier, two-thirds of the U.N.’s
General Assembly approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. “The
risk of nuclear war has grown exceptionally in the last few years, and that’s
why it makes this treaty and us receiving this award so important,” Beatrice
Fihn of the group said.[1]
Unfortunately, the stance to ban rather than merely limit nuclear weapons was
already being marginalized as utopian and even potentially counter-productive
even though ongoing efforts to limit the proliferation were falling short. I
submit that the international system itself had become problematic, given the
relatively new global threat of nuclear war.
Even amid “rising global alarm about a potential nuclear
conflagration” between the United States and North Korea, Nikki Haley, the U.S.
ambassador to the U.N., said that “we have to be realistic” about the spread of
nuclear weapons—meaning that a total ban could actually increase the risk of
nuclear war.[2]
Yet with Pakistan having an estimated 140 nuclear warheads and India having
130, Israel having an estimated 80, and North Korea presumably working on developing
warheads, the status-quo policy of the U.S. could be said to be insufficient to
stave off the risk of nuclear war. Put another way, as proliferation was
already underway, non-proliferation policies could be reckoned as faulty.
Why do human beings continue to hold onto a boat
that is sinking while seeking to undercut an alternative that actually could
work? The tyranny of even a deficient status quo is such that the answer may
lie with human nature itself. The risk of nuclear war has such a gigantic
downside (i.e., nuclear war) that drastic measures to eradicate the risk may be
necessary, and yet none of the nuclear powers in the U.N. would be bound by the
treaty. Why even ratify it then? The exercise could be said to evince the
impotence of the world body even in the face of such a horrible risk. Given the
propensity of human nature to ingratiate itself and the existence of grave
global risks, the very survival of the species may have already come to depend
on a reform of the nation-state system wherein nations hold a monopoly on
governmental sovereignty such that some of it is moved to the global level.
National governments face a conflict of interest in this regard, as they would
be ceding some power. Even if the survival of the species depends on
advancement from the nation-state hegemony, national governmental officials may
demur out of sordid self-interest.
1. Michael
Birnhaum of the
Washington Post, October 6, 2017.
2. Ibid.
For more on conflicts of interest that governments (and businesses) face, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest.
For more on conflicts of interest that governments (and businesses) face, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest.
