UrFU Professor Mikhailenko Gave an Interview on Nuclear Ban Treaty

09:57, November 9, 2020

Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is not a cause, but a symptom of disagreement, said UrFU professor Ekaterina Mikhailenko and the Brazilian Ambassador Sérgio Duarte in an interview for Sputnik News Brazil

Brazilian ambassador Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte and a scholar of international relations Ekaterina Mikhailenko discussed the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which could build a bridge or deepen the gap between nuclear and non-nuclear countries. Scheduled to enter into force in January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a symptom, not a cause, of the disagreement between nuclear and non-nuclear countries, according to Ekaterina Mikhailenko - associate professor of the Department of Theory and History of International Relations at Ural Federal University.

On October 24, Honduras became the 50th country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), ensuring that the legal instrument to eradicate nuclear weapons enters into force on January 22, 2021.

Innovative, the treaty proposes that nuclear weapons, like chemical and biological weapons, become illegal, forcing possessing countries to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The five countries that now have nuclear weapons legally - the USA, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom - are against the treaty, which would not consider the security challenges in the world today.

Non-nuclear countries and civil society organizations, on the other hand, accuse the possessing countries of wanting to maintain their nuclear status indefinitely, without taking into account the security of countries that have chosen not to have weapons of mass destruction. The TPNW debate can either widen the gap between non-nuclear and nuclear countries or, on the contrary, balance the game and be the foundation for building a safer world for all.

On Non-Proliferation and Disarmament

Nuclear weapons are the subject of the most successful treaty in contemporary international relations: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Signed by 189 countries, the NPT was successful in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

In 1961, then President of the USA, John F. Kennedy, believed that, in the 1970s, up to 25 countries would obtain nuclear arsenals. Today, only seven countries confirm possession of this type of weaponry.

However, the NPT was much less successful in applying Article 6, which concerns nuclear disarmament.

"There were no clear disarmament measures, on the contrary, the nuclear countries, despite having reduced the number of weapons they have, have exponentially increased their capacity for destruction," Ambassador Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte told Sputnik Brasil.

For the Ambassador, the nuclear countries "continued to interpret the NPT as a license to do what they want, as if [the treaty] did not compel them to take clear measures for nuclear disarmament".

"There was a demand on the part of non-nuclear states for the possessing states to present an action plan, a timetable with deadlines for disarmament," Ural Federal University professor and non-proliferation nuclear expert Ekaterina Mikhailenko told Sputnik Brazil. "But that didn't happen."

To try to reinforce disarmament, a group of seven countries, of which Brazil was a part, proposed the creation of TPAN at the United Nations General Assembly.

"From the point of view of the non-proliferation regime, polarization between nuclear and non-nuclear countries was already a reality" before the elaboration of the TPNW, believes the researcher. "TPNW is not the cause of this polarization, but a symptom," said Mikhailenko.

This disagreement between nuclear and non-nuclear states was accompanied by an increasing mobilization of civil society. The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) stands out for being one of the main supporters of TPAN and for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

Why TPNW?

According to civil society organizations in favor of disarmament, nuclear weapons must be banned, as are chemical and biological weapons.

"There would be a legal gap, since all weapons of mass destruction are prohibited, except nuclear weapons," said Mikhailenko. "Currently, a limited number of states have nuclear weapons in a completely legal manner."

One of the objectives of the agreement would therefore be "to make possession of nuclear weapons an abnormal fact, reinforcing the stigma associated with them".

"From the ideal point of view, the agreement is very good. It proposes a human goal, a denuclearized world, which agrees that the possession of nuclear weapons is something dangerous, which can have very serious consequences," said the researcher.

Nuclear countries

Despite TPNW's good intentions, legally nuclear countries - the USA, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom - believe that the treaty does not realistically address contemporary international security challenges.

"According to these countries, the TPNW does not consider reality to be objective, nor that we are at a time when security issues are quite complicated," said Mikhailenko. According to professor Mikhailenko, "the security doctrines of all nuclear states are based on the policy of deterrence, in which nuclear weapons play a central role".

After opening the agreement for signature, the Non-Proliferation Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried out studies, in which it raised some questions relevant to the text of the TPNW. There is a concern that countries that sign the TPNW feel authorized to leave the NPT and, therefore, cease to be subject to inspections by the International Nuclear Energy Agency (IAEA), which guarantee that these countries will not develop nuclear weapons.

"Technically, it can happen," conceded Mikhailenko. "But that is not the intention of those who drafted the treaty.The TPNW text stipulates that the treaty is a complement, not a replacement, to the NPT."

Despite the questions, Ekaterina Mikhailenko notes that Russia has been expressing a more flexible position, "in favor of an approach in which it says it understands why the TPNW was proposed, but expresses its disagreement". According to the UrFU expert, although the Russian position is currently based on legal arguments, Russia also points to the withdrawal of the US from arms control agreements as one of the reasons why Moscow could not join the TPNW.