Nuclear Ban Daily, Vol. 4, No. 2
Editorial: Dismantling Deterrence is Decolonisation
28 November 2023
By Ray Acheson
In a statement to the high-level session of the TPNW Second Meeting of States Parties, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted that “nuclear weapons are not some mythical creation that stands above and beyond the law.” Like any other weapon, they are subject to international law, the principles of humanity, and the dictates of public conscience. But the possessors and supporters of nuclear weapons seem to believe that they, if not their weapons, stand above the law—and this is what currently guides their policies and practices.
Most of the nuclear-armed states and their enablers are colonial countries. Throughout history, they have invaded and occupied the lands and waters of others, thieving and destroying. As Equatorial Guinea pointed out during an interactive discussion on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons on Tuesday, several of the nuclear-armed states enslaved and sold human beings; these same governments tested and used their atomic bombs on Indigenous Peoples and lands and on predominantly non-white populations.
As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said during the high-level session, the nuclear-armed states “selected their test sites for their supposed remoteness—the deserts of Australia and Algeria, Pacific atolls, the steppes of Kazakhstan.” But these locales are not remote from those living nearby or downwind or downstream. They are only remote “from the decision-makers in national capitals, who deemed the local populations expendable, their lands and waters worthless, as they worked to perfect their ability to kill and destroy on a massive scale.”
It is this same colonial attitude—to which nuclear-armed states seem wilfully blind—that guides much of the ongoing work to modernise and expand nuclear weapons today, ICAN attested. Just as these governments experienced impunity for their violence against global populations that they deem inferior, they today expect impunity for their violation of international law. Despite their legal obligation to nuclear disarmament, these states believe that they have the right—based on their “security needs”—to indefinitely retain their arsenals of mass destruction.
Strategies for security that are based on the theory of nuclear deterrence perpetuate the perceived “need” for nuclear weapons. Deterrence doctrines thus perpetuate the financial, physical, and political investments in nuclear weapons, which in turn perpetuate the violence and harms caused by every aspect of nuclear weapon production and deployment. The humanitarian impacts of nuclear deterrence doctrines are not limited to the use or testing of atomic bombs. As several speakers from affected communities pointed out during the panel discussions on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, harm begins with uranium mining, milling, and processing, continues through the construction and use of facilities to build and modernise nuclear weapons, is generated from the explosions of nuclear bombs, and persists through the attempted storage of radioactive nuclear waste.
At each stage, most of the nuclear-armed states impose these burdens and harms on Indigenous Peoples. Today in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the US government is expanding the facility for plutonium pit production to build more nuclear bombs even though it is yet to address the harms it has already caused to local populations since the 1940s. In Australia, the government is actively seeking to impose nuclear waste dumps on First Nations land despite brave and consistent opposition of those affected.
“The nuclear industry has no care for First Nations people,” said Yankunytjatjara-Anangu woman Karina Lester, who grew up on land and in communities impacted by UK nuclear testing in South Australia. She pointed out that the way nuclear-armed states talk about nuclear weapons is divorced from the reality of what these weapons do and the harms felt by people, land, plants, and animals. This is why it is imperative that the experience and expertise of people from affected communities is not just included, but centred, in discussions about nuclear weapons and in the work to implement the TPNW.
As ICAN said, work for nuclear disarmament is, in a sense, a continuation of the project of decolonisation. Part of that project must be the categorical rejection of nuclear deterrence doctrines, and the systematic and comprehensive dismantlement of all the political, physical, and economic scaffolding that supports and sustains nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is a system of punishment, fear, and massive violence; it is a system of supremacy and suppression. Deterrence can be, must be, replaced with disarmament.
The nuclear-armed states may imagine themselves to be above the law, but the structural and political inequalities their logics and policies have produced cannot be sustained forever. TPNW states parties and supporters can help ensure that alternative structures—for the destruction of nuclear weapon programmes, for building trust and respect in a non-nuclear world—are being built right now.
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