First Committee Monitor, Vol. 22, No. 4
Editorial: Fueling Transformation, Not Fire
26 October 2024
By Ray Acheson
The First Committee’s third week was filled with thematic debates on nuclear weapons, other weapons of mass destruction, conventional weapons, and other disarmament measures. Throughout it all, most delegations continued to express dismay at increasing global violence, violations of international law, withdrawals from disarmament agreements, and rising tensions among the most militarised states in the world. “We are living in a polarizing moment on the global stage,” warned the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP), “characterized by threats of military aggression, which are in turn fueled by rhetoric filled with accusations, against a backdrop of increasing militarization and a sharp rise in the sale and illicit transfer of weapons.” The question for First Committee delegates, then, is are you going to take any meaningful action to transform this situation?
Fueling the flames of war
The increasing militarisation and aggression highlighted by the CPLP has a horrific human toll. Many delegations condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s expanding wars in Palestine, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East; others spoke of the violence and loss of life in the Sahel and Sudan; others spoke of historic wars still causing death and injury in Viet Nam, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and other heavily mined countries. Meanwhile, heated exchanges continued between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the Arab states and Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea, and the United States and Russia, signaling some of the hot spots of current and potential armed conflict.
Amidst all the arguing and posturing, Sri Lanka urged all delegations to remember that they are not just discussing policy, but are “addressing actions that continue to fuel conflicts and claim innocent lives across our globe every single day.” It implored delegates to keep the human costs in mind throughout their work, while Indonesia encouraged delegates to work “together to stop the bloodshed by preventing war and promoting global disarmament.”
But in contrast to these appeals, as Indonesia noted, “Some states continue to supply weapons and ammunition, further escalating wars.” This issue came to a head once again this week, with Italy claiming in a right of reply on Friday that it has suspended new arms exports to Israel, while admitting that it has allowed existing ones to continue as long as the weapons aren’t used in Gaza (!). Meanwhile Israel, in two right of replies on Friday night, justified both its slaughter of Palestinians and the escalation of its war in Lebanon as necessary and lawful actions against “terrorists”. It claimed that this is not a war started by or wanted by Israel, but it is a war that it “must win” in order to allegedly keep the whole world safe from terrorism. Israel simultaenously refuted that it is committing genocide, has attacked peacekeepers or civilians, or that it is violating international law. It even claimed to be doing everything it can to minimise civilian casualties and to be in full compliance with international humanitarian law. Just a few hours after these comments, Israel attacked Iran.
Israel’s remarks in the First Committee were refuted by several delegations in right of replies, including Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon, which pointed out that Israel’s war crimes are being livestreamed for the world to witness. As Jordan said, “If you can kill with impunity, you can lie without shame.” Warning that the Middle East is on the brink of a wider regional war “fueled by Israel’s killing machine,” it pointed out that that the whole world supports a ceasefire while only Israel calls for more violence. “This is not just a war on a people,” said Jordan, “it’s a war on humanity and international law,” and the world cannot allow this barbarity and impunity to continue.
More obliquely, in its conventional weapons statement Norway warned, “Established norms and rules of warfare are being challenged by a lack of compliance in several armed conflicts.” Expressing particular concern with “attacks against UN personnel and humanitarian workers,” Norway descrbed all of this behaviour as “inadmissible” and “unacceptable” and called on states to “push back firmly”. This is what some delegations from the Middle East are repeatedly doing during right of replies, but they could use an assist from all the other delegates that oppose this genocide and want the flow of weapons and the war crimes to stop.
Nuclear rhetorics of responsibility
At the same time that people are being killed, injured, or displaced from armed conflict or armed violence around the world, “threats of nuclear weapons have dangled over all of us for much too long, with increasing intensity year after year,” warned Myanmar. “Safeguards and norms protecting us from nuclear holocaust are eroding,” it said, “while nuclear brinkmanship is broadening” and “nuclear disarmament is on life support.” Sri Lanka connected the risks posed by nuclear weapons directly to the other violations of international law that are growing around the world, noting that the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament and on multilateral solutions more broadly “creates a toxic vacuum that endangers everyone as we witness the death and destruction evident today in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere.”
Other states also highlighted the connections between nuclear weapons and armed conflicts, with China arguing that the “continuation of the Ukraine crisis and exacerbation of conflicts in the Middle East have given rise to high nuclear risks.” It urged all parties to work together “to promote dialogue and negotiation to resolve the crisis and conflicts, thereby eliminating the immediate driving factors of nuclear risks.”
Yet, the nuclear-armed states, including China, continue to raise the stakes by modernising and expanding their nuclear arsenals, doctrines, and/or sharing arrangements. At the same time, they all refuse to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) or fulfil in any other way their legal obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Instead, the nuclear-armed states are all involved in campaigns of disinformation about their nuclear arsenals, the risks of nuclear war, and the treaties that are meant to prevent nuclear violence.
France, for example, continued to repeat disinformation about the TPNW, which Ireland and Austria refuted in right of replies, with Austria pointing out that making false accusations against the TPNW is “unnecessarily antagonist” and pointing out that all TPNW states parties are in good standing with the NPT and have taken on additional obligations “to make sure these inhumane weapon are never used again or proliferated further.” Meanwhile, several North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) states continued to repeat disinformation about the international community’s alleged lack of concern about nuclear sharing, which Reaching Critical Will thoroughly debunked during the last NPT Preparatory Committee in July 2024, relying on Mohamed Shaker’s categorical account in his three volume history of the negotiation of the NPT.
Overall, the nuclear-armed states each claim to be “responsible” while accusing others of being “irresponsible,” as if some nuclear weapons can unleash hell while others are innocuous. In reality, all nuclear weapons are equally monstrous, and every nuclear-armed state is reckless. “There is no such thing as ‘responsible nuclear rhetoric’,” said Mexico, noting, “all threats to use nuclear weapons are illegitimate, inadmissible, and extremely dangerous.” Indeed, to bestow power upon a device capable of unleashing a radioactive firestorm, or to invest billions of dollars in weapons that you say you intend never to use but have doctrines and deployments to make it clear that you will, is the height of arrogant imprudence, not solemn restraint.
“The mere existence of nuclear weapons continues to cast a dark shadow over the future of the entire world,” said Jamaica. Critiquing the “false narrative that nuclear weapons provide security,” Jamaica warned that “the potential for use of nuclear weapons is no longer an abstract concern, but a tangible reality that risks the unravelling of the very fabric of human civilization.” Far from deterring conflict or maintaining peace and security, “the continued stockpiling and reliance on these weapons is incompatible with our survival. Their continued existence serves only to heighten tensions and perpetuate global instability.” Similarly, Ghana argued, “History has repeatedly shown that nuclear weapons are not guarantors of security but rather harbingers of destruction. From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Cold War standoff, these weapons perpetuate insecurity and pose existential threats.”
Practical actions for change
Amidst these challenges, delegations offered concrete suggestions to end violations of international law and protect human life. These included a reiteration of calls from some states to stop transferring weapons, ammunition, and military equipment to Israel, or to other countries engaged in armed conflict. Many delegations urged all states to endorse and fully implement the Political Declaration aimed at preventing the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, and to adhere to all of the conventions that prohibit or restrict weapons, from cluster bombs to nuclear weapons. As Norway said:
Disarmament conventions are not just commitments that apply in peace time. They are even more important when countries are at war. In a time of rearmament and rising global tensions, adherence to these norms is crucial. We must not lose sight of the humanitarian imperatives that led to the prohibition of these weapons.
The prohibition of nuclear weapons is of course one of the disarmament conventions, and Norway would do well to head its own advice and join the TPNW. But beyond ratifying treaties, states must take the obligations contained within them seriously. Five of the nuclear-armed states are party to the NPT, yet have failed to implement its disarmament provisions, while NATO states and other allies provide cover for them by claiming security from nuclear weapons. It is in this contex that Jamaica called for “renewed global engagement based on a shared understanding that true security cannot be achieved through deterrence” but only through disarmament.
A new resolution from Ireland and Aotearoa New Zealand offers an opportunity to help build this shared undertstanding by scientifically assessing the risks of nuclear weapons, which many nuclear-armed and nuclear-supportive states claim to want to do. This resolution sets out to create a panel of scientific experts to conduct a new UN-mandated study on the effects of nuclear war. As in other fields, such as public health and climate change, this acknowledges the need for science to best inform the response to the dangers humanity faces from escalating nuclear risks. The last time such a study was conducted was in the 1980s, when the risks of nuclear war were high, but there was major public awareness and action led by new scientific research on nuclear winter. A new study will contribute once again to growing public awareness and disarmament education. All delegations should vote in favour of this resolution when it’s up for consideration, along with the resolutions on the TPNW, the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, ethical imperatives for a nuclear weapon free world, the implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments, and addressing the legacy of nuclear testing.
It’s also important for delegations to take action against the development of new weapon systems. Even as nuclear risks are rising, war is raging, and disarmament agreements are under attack, some states are trying to develop new technologies of violence. From weapons in outer space to cyber attacks, from the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in military systems to the development of autonomous weapons, all of this high-tech militarism will only make matters worse both in terms of undermining international norms and increasing human suffering.
A small step in the First Committee is to support the resolution tabled by Austria on autonomous weapon systems. The resolution would establish a process of four days of informal consultations in 2025. This is unfortunately less robust than earlier drafts, but is still valuable in setting up a process for further discussion on this issue within the UN General Assembly. This will help build capacity among delegations to contribute to work on this issue outside of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), where discussions on autonomous weapons have been ensconsed for more than a decade to no meaningful end.
But states need to go far beyond informal consultations in the General Assembly and endless talk-shop mandates at the CCW. They need to get serious now about negotiating a legally binding treaty on autonomous weapons and address the grave risks to humanity posed by the growing use of AI, algorithms, and other autonomous technoloigies in weapons, military operatons and systems, policing, border enforcement, and more. Otherwise, states are simply allowing the world to be designed and controlled by tech bro billionaires and heavily militarised governments—a world that we can already see is generating ever more inequality, fascism, and suffering.
The myth of pragmatism
Through all this work, we also need to get real about what is “realistic”. Regardless of whether we’re talking about preventing AI-enabled or autonomous weapons, or eliminating nuclear weapons, or stopping arms transfers to those committing genocide and war crimes, we’re often told that we need to be “realistic” or “pragmatic”. The nuclear-armed and allied states try to control the narrative over what is feasible or possible in the realm of nuclear disarmament; Japan even has a whole resolution aimed at dismissing the desire for disarmament by the majority by claiming a monopoly on reason and practicality. We see the same rhetoric about steps and stability, or realism and responsibility, when it comes to most other issues on the First Committee agenda as well.
But as civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis has pointed out, “The idea that people who support enormous injustice and terrible policies are ‘pragmatic’ is one of the most subtly ideological and dangerous characteristics of corporate news,” or in our case, of government officials. “Not only does this constrain the imagination for what is possible,” Karakatsanis notes, but “it’s often just a lie.” Claims of pragmatism, concealed as unquestioned conventional wisdom, maintain “that certain ideological and strategic political positions are more realistic and strategic than others to obtain lofty goals.” But these are the always the positions “that happen to help people with power.”
It's not realistic to put the fate of the Earth into whimsical nuclear deterrence doctrines, assuming that arrogance or accidents or the quest for world domination won’t one day soon push us into nuclear war. It’s not realistic that by continuing to send weapons and ammuntion into conflict zones we can somehow achieve peace and stability. It’s not realistic to assume that machines will be able to value life, law, and liberties in war or policing. It’s not realistic to continuously devote trillions of dollar to weapons and war when the world is falling apart. Honestly, anything is more realistic than the path we’re on now.
Thus, in line with Norway’s call on states to “push back firmly” against violations of international law, delegations to the First Committee and other disarmament fora must push back against the assertions of pragmatism. We do not have any more time to waste playing rhetorical games with governments that wield the threat of nuclear violence in order to get their way; we do not have time to waste waiting for those who are creating killing machines from sensors and software to decide who among us should live or die. Most of us can imagine a better future, and we have a responsibility to try to bring that into being. As feminist abolitionist Angela Davis says, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
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