Stigmatising the nuclear bomb
Meet the woman who’s got the world’s nuclear powers running scared. Andrea Vance interviews 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winner, antinuclear campaigner Beatrice Fihn.
‘‘Donald Trump is a moron.’’
As the spectre of nuclear conflict loomed last year, with tensions escalating between North Korea and the United States, one woman said what we were all thinking.
Two days after tapping out that tweet, Beatrice Fihn was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work as director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Accepting the award, alongside Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow, the Swedish lawyer doubled down: The ‘‘deaths of millions may be one tiny tantrum away’’, she warned.
‘‘We have a choice, the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us.’’
Fears of a cataclysmic conflict were later dimmed when US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jongun met in Singapore, agreeing to work towards the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
Fihn is in nuclear-free New Zealand – but what brought her here? The 36-year-old is lobbying countries to sign and ratify a global treaty banning nuclear weapons. The campaign aims to stigmatise the arms, in the same way similar campaigns marginalised landmines and cluster munitions.
The treaty is backed by more than 100 countries but just 19 – including New Zealand – have ratified it.
There must be 50 ratifications before it comes into force.
Fihn was attending an Auckland conference aimed at promoting the treaty to Pacific nations. Fiji and Tuvalu have signed up – but are yet to ratify it to fit with their domestic laws.
‘‘This region has been exposed to nuclear weapons testing and really very much know the impact of what nuclear weapons do,’’ Fihn said.
‘‘What we are trying to get these countries to do is to really get them to be leaders on the international stage. The whole treaty is built on this idea that smaller countries can push the new laws and new norms that will have an effect on the bigger states ... we are hoping for a firm commitment from the whole region to sign and ratify the treaty as soon as possible so that it can enter into force.’’
United Nations talks on the treaty were boycotted by the world’s nine known nuclear powers and they refused to sign it. They argued it would undermine nuclear deterrence, which they credit with preventing conventional war.
Fihn talked about ‘‘creating a new norm’’ where security didn’t depend on power.
‘‘We can’t force countries to give up their nuclear weapons unless they want to but this is a way of creating pressure on these states to adapt to these norms. The US, China, and Russia didn’t sign up to treaties on the prohibition of land mines and cluster munitions – they didn’t even participate in the negotiations. But they shifted their policies afterwards because the rest of the world stigmatised these weapons, made a new norm that these are unacceptable.
‘‘These countries, dragging their feet, kicking and screaming, do start adjusting eventually. International law can be powerful and smaller countries have much influence if they use it well and if they push for new norms and for new standards.’’
But as well as refusing to abide by the treaty, nuclear states like the US are moving to upgrade their arsenals.
North Korea has ‘‘joined’’ the nuclear club. Trump has announced he’ll withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia – a deal that has kept nuclear-tipped missiles off the European continent for the past 30 years.
The future of the Iran nuclear deal is uncertain, with a transatlantic statement and escalating threats out of Tehran.
France has rejected the idea of a ban, and even Japan is noncommittal, wary of upsetting its defence ally, the US.
Remarkably, Fihn views all of this as a sign of success.
Her campaign has the nuclear states running scared.
‘‘One of the most motivating things is the reaction from the nuclear armed states.
‘‘They are fighting hard, feeling threatened by a group of non-nuclear states, and a civil society movement without any significant resources.
‘‘We’ve seen diplomats from nuclear weapons-producing countries saying that the biggest threat to the success of nuclear weapons are these democracies in Europe where the public opinion might change.
‘‘They are realising that they are extremely vulnerable to people’s perceptions on nuclear weapons. They are based on this idea of deterrents – and if the public no longer believes in that, it falls apart.’’
Fihn spends her days talking about the potential for nuclear armageddon. But a false alert about about an incoming ballistic missile in Hawaii earlier this year made that existential threat seem very real.
‘‘North Korea and the US were exchanging threats of using nuclear weapons and to be honest, that was one of the first times when I was like: oh this could actually happen, it’s possible, I am not talking hypothetically.
‘‘It really hits home sometimes more than others.’’
One reality we must face up to is the fate of any survivors, she says.
‘‘Nobody in the world wants to see nuclear war – no-one is in favour of nuclear war. But it’s a little bit like climate change, people don’t want it but aren’t prepared to do anything about it right now. It’s almost too big for people to think about.
‘‘So, it is really important to draw attention to what happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and what has happened on the nuclear test sites around the world. These are practical questions – every time I speak to survivors it is the small details that hit hardest.
‘‘How people were trying to find water, how there were no doctors or nurses to help, how they were lining up to try and burn all the bodies, how to treat infection and diseases.
‘‘Sometimes we think of nuclear weapons as a computer game: game over. But there will be survivors, they will have to deal with the consequences, and that is going to be awful.’’