Humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and the logic of a ban

Abstract

The achievement of past international treaties prohibiting anti‐personnel mines and cluster munitions showed that unpropitious political situations for dealing with the effects of problematic weapons could be transformed into concrete, legally binding actions through humanitarian‐inspired initiatives. Although there is now renewed concern about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, some policy makers dispute the relevance of these past processes. This article examines how and why cluster munitions became widely reframed as unacceptable weapons, and the nature and significance of functional similarities with contemporary efforts of civil society activists to instigate humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and promote the logic of a ban treaty in view of its norm‐setting value among states. In the case of cluster munitions, the weapon in question was signified as unacceptable in moral and humanitarian law terms because of its pattern of harm to civilians with reference to demonstrable evidence of the consequences of use. Ideational reframing was instigated by civil society actors, and introduced doubts into the minds of some policy‐makers about weapons they had previously considered as unproblematic. This is relevant to the current discourse on managing and eliminating nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty, in which there is dissonance between the rhetoric of those states claiming to be responsible humanitarian powers and their continued dependence on nuclear weapons despite questions about the utility or acceptability of these arms.

Why nuclear weapon ban treaty is unlikely to fulfil its promise

“…De-alerting, and encouragement for no-first-use commitments by the nuclear weapon states would decrease the military utility of nuclear weapons in the eyes of the military (Ritchie, 2014). This may, in turn, lead to opening of the avenues to consider the humanitarian grounds for banning nuclear weapons, along the lines taken by the coalition advocating the ban on cluster ammunition (Borrie, 2014). At the same time, efforts to promote verifiable nuclear disarmament (including through the publicprivate enterprises such as the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification) should be encouraged, rather than maligned as insufficient.…”

Risk–Risk Tradeoff Analysis of Nuclear Explosives for Asteroid Deflection

“…The disarmament rate is a hotly contested international issue, with many nonnuclear-armed states and nongovernmental organizations articulating the concern that the nuclear-armed states are not progressing on disarmament fast enough; the nuclear-armed states similarly defend their progress (Sauer, 2015). Many of these nonnuclear-armed states and nongovernmental organizations are working to stigmatize the possession of nuclear weapons as a strategy to hasten nuclear disarmament (Borrie, 2014;Fihn, 2013). Nuclear deflection programs could weaken the possession stigma by claiming a legitimate and constructive role for nuclear weapons.…”

The transformation of targeted killing and international order

“…In other terms, they legitimize or delegitimize certain forms and instances of violence. For example, coalitions of state and non-state actors have successfully delegitimized the use of landmines and cluster munitions, and are currently engaged in the delegitimization of nuclear weapons by emphasizing their indiscriminate nature and the grave humanitarian consequences of their use (Borrie, 2014 ). Second, agents also (re)interpret the ideas, norms, and rules that make up the institutional dimension of an order and thus also contribute to its change.…”