Lacking enforcement mechanisms or a practical path to
elimination, the treaty has little chance of being effective.

You could be forgiven for assuming that governments of the world inhabit two parallel universes. In July this year, Australia launched the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which concluded that its region “is in the midst of the most consequential strategic realignment since the Second World War”. Pledging more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in new and upgraded capabilities between now and 2030, Prime Minister Scott Morrison invoked the 1930s to warn of “the multiple challenges and radical uncertainty we face”.

In contrast, the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty) presents as hopes among some other nations that sheer force of will is enough to bring about a world free of nuclear weapons. Established in 2017, the Ban Treaty commits states parties not to manufacture, transfer, station or receive and “never to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons”. The Treaty represents a watershed insofar as it obligates complete nuclear disarmament with no conditions – unlike the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has carve-outs for the five countries that tested nuclear devices prior to 1 January 1967 and aims to achieve nuclear disarmament in the context of general disarmament.

Regrettably, however, the Ban Treaty is a triumph of wishful thinking over realism.

Rather than fashion a treaty that provides a practical pathway to eliminating nuclear weapons, the Ban Treaty’s authors have actually made it harder. As members of the NPT, North Korea, Iran and Iraq all agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons, and have sought to do so anyway. The Ban Treaty does not even try to address the problem of verification and compliance.

Please click here to read the full “Nuclear Ban Treaty: Wishful thinking over realism” article originally published at The Interpreter, written by Professor Stephan Frühling and Griffith Asia Institute Researcher, Professor Andrew O’Neil.