First Committee Monitor, Vol. 20, No. 5
Editorial: The Only Winning Move is Not to Play
29 October 2022
Ray Acheson
After running hundreds of nuclear war simulations, the computer system in 1983’s War Games declares it to be a “strange game,” noting, “The only winning move is not to play.” Forty years later, this is still a lesson that the nuclear-armed states seem not have learned. Despite everything we know about the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons, Russia has been threatening to use them to protect its imperial ambitions while the United States reaffirmed its first-use policy in its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), as well as the absurd notion that its nuclear weapons are there to “achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.”
If “deterrence fails,” it’s not clear what objectives will be left to achieve, aside from surviving blasts, fires, and radioactive wastelands. Looked at another way, “deterrence” already has failed. Far from providing the promised “geopolitical stability,” nuclear weapons have not deterred Russia or the US—or other states—from waging wars of imperialist aggression, developing and deploying warfighting capabilities in cyber space and outer space, and creating other high-tech weapons such as autonomous weapon systems, hypersonic weapons, and directed energy weapons.
These heavily militarised countries are still attempting to play a game that can never be won, extending their potential battlefields around the globe and into orbit, while depriving the world of the peace, security, and economic resources it needs to survive the worsening climate crisis and disastrous colonial and imperial practices that have already plunged so many into poverty and despair. The answer to the problems we collectively face lies not in more of the same. It lies in stopping investments in death-making machines and building instead the structures and systems that prevent harm and provide care for us all.
Responsibility for irresponsibility
Throughout this session of First Committee, all the governments that like to think of themselves as “major powers” have referred to themselves as “responsible” and their adversaries as “irresponsible”. This has come through in relation to nuclear weapons, outer space, the arms trade, and more.
Countries like China and India consistently refer to themselves as “responsible” nuclear-armed states, claiming that their small arsenals and their doctrines make them somehow different from the other states possessing nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France (the so-called P3) have consistently sought to juxtapose their “responsible” nuclear policies with those of Russia’s. At the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in August, they issued a joint working paper condemning Russia’s “reckless nuclear actions” and calling on Russia to “cease its irresponsible and dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behaviour.”
In keeping with this, the United States’ new NPR asserts, “Unlike some of its competitors, the United States will not use nuclear weapons to intimidate others or as part of an expansionist security policy.” But the NPR also explicitly rejects a no-first-use or sole-purpose doctrine and confirms the US government would use nuclear weapons to “defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners.” This hardly seems “responsible” when the world is on the brink of nuclear war, but the US government tries to frame its policy and rhetoric as sensible and mature.
The P3 are asserting a hierarchy of nuclear threats, in which some threats are apparently more threatening than others. In the end, the unadopted outcome document at the NPT Review Conference did not contain a condemnation of any nuclear threats but only a commitment from the nuclear-armed states “to refrain from any inflammatory rhetoric concerning the use of nuclear weapons.” Of course, nuclear deterrence itself is an implied threat to use nuclear weapons. To be effective, “deterrence” requires the presumption of willingness and ability to use nuclear weapons.
The idea that some threats are responsible and others are irresponsible has a very Orwellian “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” vibe. Explicitly threatening to use nuclear weapons is bad; modernising your nuclear arsenal, practicing dropping nuclear bombs and testing nuclear missiles, and bolstering policies and scenarios for the actual use of nuclear weapons is fine.
The P3 also delivered a vitriolic explanation of vote in relation to their explanation of vote on this year’s First Committee resolution on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). “We will not support it, we will not sign it, we will not ratify it,” they jointly proclaimed. They also called on all countries considering supporting the TPNW to “reflect on the impact this Treaty will have on international peace and security,” which sounds like an echo of the accusation by the previous US administration that the TPNW would “risk creating a very unstable security environment, where misperceptions or miscalculations could escalate crises with unintended and unforeseen consequences, not excluding the possible use of a nuclear weapon.”
While Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons and war of imperial aggression in Ukraine certainly meet the criteria of “irresponsible” behaviour, so too does the P3’s refusal to fulfil their legal obligations for nuclear disarmament, their ongoing nuclear war games, and their aggressive rhetoric against the TPNW. Prohibiting nuclear weapons is not dangerous; possessing nuclear weapons is. Trying to gaslight other governments into abandoning the TPNW and rescinding their categorical renunciation of nuclear weapons is not just incredibly offensive and patronising, it also translates into an astonishing call for proliferation.
This could be seen tangibly in the voting results on the TPNW resolution this year, which Finland and Sweden voted against for the first time. As part of their quest to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), they apparently no longer have self-determination over their votes at the United Nations. Finland and Sweden even abstained for the first time on the resolution on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. This is not even a common NATO position; NATO members such as Greece and North Macedonia voted in favour of this resolution. But apparently for Finland and Sweden, joining NATO means no longer being concerned with the catastrophic impacts of nuclear weapons or agreeing that they should not be used again. This move away from the global norm against nuclear weapon use is what is irresponsible, not the behaviour of those supporting the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.
In contrast to Finland and Sweden, Australia moved closer to the global norm. For the first time, it abstained on the TPNW resolution rather than voting against it. It is the first state with an “extended nuclear deterrence” relationship with the US to do so, which makes it a notable and courageous move. It is consistent with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s remarks at the UN General Assembly in September, in which she pledged that Australia would redouble its efforts for nuclear disarmament because Russia’s nuclear threats had underscored “the danger that nuclear weapons pose to us all.” As Gem Romuld, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Australia noted in an article in The Guardian, the change in vote indicates Australia is “heading in the right direction,” pointing out that Australia has joined many other disarmament treaties that the US has not.
Australia’s decision on Friday offers an example of how states can shift toward more responsible behaviour in international affairs. Due to the leadership of those countries that have worked tirelessly to stigmatise and outlaw nuclear weapons, the possibilities for nuclear disarmament have expanded considerably since 2017. The landscape is shifting, which is even more important in the current context. While the nuclear-armed states claim to want an “international security environment” more “conducive” to nuclear disarmament, it is the TPNW supporters that are actually putting in the work to make that happen.
When militarising Earth is not enough, go to space
A similar dynamic is emerging in the discussions of outer space security. With both the thematic debate on outer space and a joint meeting of the First and Fourth Committees focusing on outer space this past week, the tensions among those actively weaponising outer space, and the efforts of others to prevent it, came to the fore.
As with nuclear weapons, the P3 and others are trying to position themselves as “responsible” spacefaring nations. The UK-led initiative on reducing space threats through the development of norms, principles, and rules is widely welcomed by many governments, but has also created a hierarchy of approaches to preventing an arms race in outer space (PAROS). Much like nuclear-armed states and allies say that a “step-by-step” approach is the only “pragmatic” path to nuclear disarmament—while bolstering their nuclear arsenals, doctrines, and deployments—so too do many of the same states say that voluntary commitments are the only practical measure for peace in outer space now, without completely writing off the eventual possibility of a legally binding instrument.
In this context, the United States earlier this year announced a moratorium on destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) tests. Several other states have since made similar commitments and have tabled a First Committee resolution on this issue.
However, some governments have asserted that this is a disingenuous move. China noted the United States has already conducted enough ASAT tests and thus is not seeking to constrain its own technical capacities but only those of other states that have not yet engaged in the same level of testing. In a joint statement, Belarus, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela said that political commitments against ASAT tests are a “step in the right direction, although insufficient to guarantee of exclusively peaceful activities in outer space and address the tasks of” PAROS. They argued, “The adoption of such commitment does not imply the renouncement of developing and manufacturing the said anti-satellite systems, their combat use or non-destructive ASAT tests. The elimination of the already available weapons of this type is not envisaged as well. As a result, as long as this initiative becomes universal, advantages for a certain group of States that are already in possession of such means would emerge, while others, primarily the developing countries, would find themselves in a discriminated position.”
Russia and China also pointed out that the United States is the only country in the world to have a stated policy of supremacy in outer space, and, as the US government proclaimed in 2018, “Space is a warfighting domain.” The new US National Defense Strategy asserts that the United States “will improve our ability to integrate, defend, and reconstitute our surveillance and decision systems to achieve warfighting objectives, particularly in the space domain.”
The aggressive US space policy has been widely condemned by most countries, including again this past week by the Non-Aligned Movement, which also expressed concern with the development and deployment of anti-ballistic missile defence systems and abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Of course, Russia and China are also conducting ASAT tests and building space warfighting capabilities. To avoid the obvious hypocrisy of their arguments, they claim they are not pursuing “supremacy” in outer space, which is the difference between their activities and US activities. Each claim to be responsible and the other to be irresponsible. But it is the collective investment in militarism that is irresponsible; for this, all of these governments are accountable.
Paths to peace
As Nayef Al-Rodhan of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy said during the panel discussion at the joint First and Fourth Committee meeting, if outer space becomes unsafe, it will not be selectively unsafe. It will be unsafe for everyone. He urged states to change their current geopolitical mindset and “move away from zero-sum security paradigms, which has never worked in human history, to multi-sum security and symbiotic realist paradigms.” Which is an academic way of saying, we need to work together to avoid conflict and collective harm.
Fortunately, most of the rest of the world doesn’t want to become embroiled in a catastrophic arms race in outer space. Just as the majority of countries has rejected nuclear weapons, so too have they already rejected space weapons and the idea of armed conflict in outer space. It is a tiny minority of governments, whose economies have become inextricable from their military pursuits, that are driving the world towards its destruction.
A paradigm shift is urgently needed. Austria has repeatedly called for this throughout this First Committee, while Costa Rica has concretely demonstrated what this could look like through its thoughtful gender analysis of each issue before the Committee. The crux of the matter is that yes, the world is a dangerous place, and becoming even more dangerous. But the reason is the hyper-militarism of those who profess themselves to be “major powers”. The answer is to de-escalate and reduce that danger, including through disarmament, demilitarisation, and denuclearisation. By insisting upon more militarism as the solution to the problems caused by militarism, all of these so called “responsible” states are condemning us to more and more violence.
Fortunately, others are leading the way, forging a path of peace and security built on the foundation of international law and normative principles that put humanity above profit, and collective survival above supremacy. This is the only “winning move” we have.
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