Connection between no-first-use policies and preventing any use of nuclear weapons.
Posted: 31st December 2022
From NoFirstUse to No Use
Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for the New Year
Call for nominations: PACEY Award
NoFirstUse Global extends greetings for the holiday season, our thanks to you for your interest and engagement during 2022 in nuclear-risk-reduction and disarmament initiatives, and our best wishes for the New Year.
During the past month some developments have advanced no-first-use policies and also the connection between no-first-use policies and preventing any use of nuclear weapons.
These include the:
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Leaders’ Statement adopted at the G20 Summit in Bali, in particular paragraph 4 (See Breakthrough at the G20 Summit: Leaders of nuclear weapon and allied states affirm the inadmissibility of nuclear weapons threat or use);
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Briefing paper released by NoFirstUse Global entitled Nuclear weapons non-use BREAKTHROUGH! From taboo since 1945, to normative law as of 2022;
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No First Use, Never Any Use of Nuclear Weapons appeal by 14 Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and more than 750 others. including many other scientists (released on December 13, 2022);
- Article by Morton H. Halperin (Senior policy adviser in the Clinton, Nixon, Johnson and Kennedy administrations), released on December 19, entitled The lesson of Ukraine: Threats to use nuclear weapons first (or even second) are not viable.
Nuclear leaders forced to accept nuclear-use facts
This existential danger [nuclear threat arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine]has, like the threat of hanging, cleared the mind and forced world leaders to accept these facts:
First, nuclear explosive devices are not weapons and cannot be effective instruments of policy. They are only a means of terror and must never be used.
Second, states that possess nuclear weapons must never use them first.
Third, states that possess nuclear weapons must never use them second.
And fourth, replying to a nuclear detonation with another detonation is never the effective, moral, or legal response.
Morton Halperin, The lesson of Ukraine: Threats to use nuclear weapons first (or even second) are not viable. December 19, 2022. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law.
NoFirstUse Global welcomes these developments, while at the same time expressing continued concern at the policies and practices of the nuclear armed States that maintain a high risk of nuclear-weapons-use. A catastrophic use of nuclear weapons could arise, for example, due to miscalculation, crisis escalation, destabilizing threat postures, maintaining nuclear forces on high alert and the continuing nuclear arms race in which the nuclear weapon States are producing and deploying of an array of provocative nuclear weapons systems.
We thank you for your engagement in nuclear-risk-reduction and disarmament issues during 2022 - including in actions and events facilitated by NoFirstUse Global. To recap on some of these, please see our blog articles page.
We look forward to continuing contact and cooperation with you in 2023. Please feel free to send any ideas or feedback you may have to us at [email protected].
Call for nominations: 2023 PACEY Award
We take this opportunity to inform you of the Call for Nominations for the prestigious Peace, nuclear Abolition and Climate Engaged Youth (PACEY) Award.If you know of an exciting/promising youth project on these issues (especially on reducing nuclear dangers), we encourage you to nominate it for the 2023 PACEY Award. Three prizes of €5000 each will be awarded at the PACEY Awards Ceremony on January 21. Nominations are due by December 30, 2022.
The award is established by the Basel Peace Office with support from the Basel-Stadt Kanton (Basel City Government) and the Reformed Evangelical Church of Basel-Stadt.
Nominate a youth project for the 2023 PACEY Award
NoFirstUse Global is a network of organizations, academics, policy makers and civil society advocates working cooperatively for the adoption of no-first-use policies by nuclear-armed States, the support for such policies from nuclear allied countries, and the implementation of such policies to help achieve broader nuclear risk-reduction, non-proliferation and disarmament measures.