ICAN being awarded the Nobel peace prize is a laudable sign for nuclear disarmament efforts. (Click here to know on ICAN and its treaty).
However civil society and governments are required to focus on practical steps to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons to make the above meaningful.
Is ICAN's treaty effective?
The U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded in 2009 the Nobel Peace Prize for offering a vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
This has hardly contributed to any reduction in nuclear dangers and in fact nuclear arsenals have only increased in several states.
Similarly, the Nobel Committee’s choice of ICAN is more an awarding of ambition.
ICAN's Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons creates a legal basis for banning nuclear weapons among adhering states.
It only seeks to delegitimise nuclear weapons as tools of statecraft on the grounds of indiscriminate humanitarian effects and has actually not banned them.
What makes nukes indispensible?
Without nuclear weapons, States believe that there would be more violence, not less.
And regional wars would increase in frequency and lethality with catastrophic consequences.
States opposed to the prohibition treaty are located in Europe and East Asia which are shaped by the trauma of World War II.
States facing nuclear threats are particularly driven by potential existential threats.
E.g. South Korea supports the idea of acquiring nuclear weapons to counter the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.
It is such international security problems that the current nuclear prohibition treaty have trouble addressing.
Nuclear weapons and alliances backed by them are seen as guarantee to security.
Resultantly, none of the weapons possessors seems particularly concerned with the stigma created by the prohibition treaty.
The efforts that US, Pak, India, China and North Korea, etc are engaging in, to modernise their nuclear arsenals proves this.
What is the way forward?
Instead of increasing the number of states that join the prohibition treaty, efforts could be made globally to reduce the sources of nuclear danger.
This could aim at mitigating security threats that drive demand for nuclear weapons, and could legitimise nuclear deterrence.
Countries could be encouraged to route their investments to economic or international political power rather than towards weapons.
This could possibly work as an alternative means of international leverage or suasion.
Stakeholders should thus find the right balance between nuclear disarmament (complete elimination of weapons) and nuclear deterrence (discouraging or inhibiting the use).
Without these the prohibition treaty of ICAN risks becoming merely a moral victory, rather than contributing to concrete steps.
