First Committee Monitor, Vol. 23, No. 2
Editorial: Time to Turn from Dominance to Disarmament
11 October 2025
By Ray Acheson
During the opening days of the First Committee’s general debate, most states demanded a course correction from dominance and destruction to disarmament and diplomacy. The ceasefire in Gaza has provided a glimmer of hope, but it is far from achieving peace and justice. Globally, war profiteering has generated out-of-control military spending, while the deliberate spread of disinformation has been used to justify genocide and war. As many delegations said during the first three days of general debate, the way to end this spiral of violence is to change the way we think about security. Security is not achieved through weapons but through a prioritisation of life and wellbeing.
Stopping genocide must be the priority
The announcement of a ceasefire for Gaza dropped on the second day of the First Committee, two years after Israel accelerated its genocide of Palestinians, using an attack by Hamas as its political cover to do so. While it remains to be seen if Israel will comply with the ceasefire—it has violated past ceasefire agreements and was still killing Palestinian civilians even after this agreement was approved by the Israeli Cabinet—the relief in Gaza is clear. Now, states must ensure that the siege is lifted, humanitarian aid is provided unconditionally, and Palestinians can return to their homes. States must also ensure accountability for war crimes, end their material support to Israel, including weapons, and support the end to the occupation. There is much work to be done to ensure that Palestine is free and that all people in the region can live in peace—and the First Committee offers an important venue to begin to make those commitments.
At the UN General Assembly high-level debate in September, a rising number of states shifted from supporting Israel’s alleged right to self-defence to condemnation of Israel’s genocide. This shift has taken too long, and in most cases is still not matched with concrete actions to end the genocide. But some governments, following the lead of global civil society, has finally begun to end arms transfers, boycott and divest from Israel, and support attempts to end the blockade on aid. Yet during the opening few days of the First Committee, a clear divide between the West and the Global Majority persisted, with many Western states remaining silent, or being extremely vague about the situation.
The European Union, for example, said that “It is abhorrent and totally unacceptable that civilians and civilian objects, humanitarian workers, and journalists are targeted and increasingly so; that women, girls and children continue to suffer disproportionately; and that safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access is increasingly challenged or used as a bargaining chip.” But the EU failed to mention which state is the perpetrator of all these horrific crimes—Israel.
This refusal to name Israel or its atrocities continues two years into its brutal attempt to annihilate Palestinian life. The failure to call Israel out, let alone stop facilitating the genocide through arms transfers and other material support, is in violation of international law. This refusal also reflects an obsequiousness to violence, perceived by many as power.
This inclination toward supporting perceived power was also apparent in the praise offered by a few delegations to the current US president, by name—for which there isn’t any precedent in the First Committee. Fawning accolades toward an individual person who is currently engaged in a violent authoritarian takeover of an allegedly democratic country is offensive to those living through the horrors being imposed, as well as to those who are at the receiving end of the unlawful wars it is launching or genocides it is arming. This is an individual who claims the US military would have “won the wars” in Vietnam and Afghanistan if it hadn’t been so “politically correct;” who is unlawfully bombing ships in the Caribbean; who has designated all anti-fascists as “terrorists;” and who claims to be at war with cities in his own country. It’s very odd and unsettling to hear diplomats from other countries, including Egypt, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, praise such a person by name—but maybe not so strange when read in the context of global violence and militarism.
The fool’s errand of pursuing power through violence
The perception that violence is power—and the tendency of certain governments or political leaders to serve the interests of power above anything else—is intimately related to the challenges being addressed at the First Committee. As Mexico pointed out, “the regulatory frameworks that were established precisely to prevent the perception of security from being based on armaments” are being discarded and replaced instead with ever more militarism. This has led to our current situation where, as the African Group said, “The disarmament and non-proliferation regime is losing its grip.”
Whatever grip disarmament and arms control efforts had on international affairs, it has been knocked into a tailspin because of global war profiteering. “Conflicts are multiplying; trust is eroding; and resources that should finance sustainable development are being diverted to military expenditures, threatening to hollow out the very foundations of collective security that the United Nations was created to uphold,” warned Mozambique. Many other countries critiqued rising military spending, with many welcoming the UN Secretary-General’s new report The Security We Need, which highlights military spending and the military-industrial complex as impediments to peace and “development”.
As Costa Rica argued, “Every dollar spent on weapons … represents a political choice that privileges force over dialogue, weakens confidence in multilateral institutions, and contradicts the spirit of the Charter.” It pointed out that all the humanitarian crises faced today are crises of prevention and human rights. “The answer cannot be to increase military spending indefinitely. The accumulation of armaments does not produce security; it produces security dilemmas that erode strategic stability and generate cycles of mutual distrust among States.”
It’s in this vein that Austria cited “obstructionist behavior or maximalist or unilateralist approaches” as one of the key challenges to multilateralism, international law, and disarmament, while Mexico highlighted the responsibility of the arms industry in fueling armed conflict and armed violence. South Africa asked, “How do we build consensus on principles for stability and security, promoting cooperation and the reduction of armaments, when States are building more and more weapons and fighting wars that causes untold death and destruction?”
Disinformation and disassociation impede disarmament
Building consensus to pursue security through disarmament is directly undermined by hypocrisy, double standards, and disinformation. Some states talk about their commitment to international law while simultaneously acting to destroy it.
The Nordic countries, for example, jointly lamented that the world is “at risk of reversing the progress achieved through decades of multilateral cooperation, including on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation.” But certain Nordic countries are actively part of reversing this progress—particularly Finland, which recently withdrew from the Mine Ban Treaty along with a handful of other European countries, citing fear of a Russian invasion. Of course, as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines has well documented, landmines cannot “protect” these countries from Russia, they can only harm civilians. Finland and Lithuania defended their withdrawal from the Mine Ban Treaty, essentially saying Russia made them do it—though Finland said it does not encourage others to withdraw. Estonia, Latvia, and Poland didn’t mention their abandonment of the Treaty—but Latvia has apparently disassociated from its decision to withdraw, absurdly saying, “The effectiveness of all non-proliferation and disarmament instruments depends on our collective adherence, transparency, and rigorous implementation of them. It is a non-negotiable to ensure this architecture continues to serve its fundamental purpose.”
This kind of disassociation from reality—that you can claim support for global norms and international law while actively undermining it—is also reflected in the hypocritical stances taken by some governments against the behaviour of certain countries but not others. During the opening days of general debate, Israel and Russia both continued to spread disinformation about the origins of the genocide and war they each started, asserting their victimhood while engaging in mass slaughter and rampant violations of international law. Meanwhile, certain states that rightly condemned Russia’s unlawful and dangerous attacks against Ukraine’s nuclear facilities not only failed to condemn Israel’s and the United States’ unlawful and dangerous attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities, but also spoke as if Iran is the only country to blame over the failed diplomacy to constrain its nuclear programme. Likewise, some states rightly condemned Russia’s nuclear coercion and threats but not Israel’s or the United States’.
Disarmament is a work in progress that must be continued
The hypocrisy, the deliberate spread of misinformation, and the selective application of international law led Mexico to raise concerns “that, in recent years, the First Committee has become a forum for countries to exchange accusations and justify why it is not possible—or desirable—to move towards disarmament.” If we have any chance of building a world of peace and justice, this approach to international relations must change.
“Dialogue and peaceful means are the only way to address regional and international conflicts, far from the logic of force or imposing facts on the ground,” said Oman, noting, “Security is not achieved through hegemony or armament, but through mutual respect, building trust, and joint cooperation.” This is the only approach to security that will lead to peace and justice. This makes the efforts to understand the security concerns of non-nuclear-armed states through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons so important. It’s what makes the implementation of existing disarmament law and the development of new law, such as on autonomous weapon systems, so essential.
The system we have now is far from perfect, as Austria pointed out. “It is a work in progress, a direction of travel towards reduction of tensions and increased trust, towards building common and collective security. It is about the gradual creation of international law to achieve disarmament, prevent proliferation and limit human suffering through the prohibition of particularly inhumane weapons.”
In this context, Costa Rica expressed deep concern with the withdrawals by some states from humanitarian disarmament treaties, noting, “When a State denounces a humanitarian disarmament treaty, it abandons its legal obligations, weakens international protection for civilians, and erodes the credibility of international humanitarian law,” said Costa Rica, which also warning that this trend “threatens to normalize the use of weapons that the international community expressly prohibited precisely because of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences.”
The states withdrawing from the treaties on landmines and cluster munitions are doing so on the basis of the “international security environment,” which is the same excuse the nuclear-armed states use to justify their nuclear arsenals and obscene levels of military spending. Most states in the world reject this alleged security logic, and are clear that we cannot afford to allow the most militarised states in the world prevent this progress toward a peaceful and more humane world.
“Yes, we may be facing more difficulties and a higher level of complexity than ever before, but it would help if we stop doing what we have been doing for the last thirty years: to try and address all issues before starting to negotiate, out of fear to get a result not 100% to our national liking,” advised the Netherlands. “This is a zero-sum approach, while we should be valuing compromise for the common good of all. There is no time to lose, let us start now.”
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