The Nuclear Ban is Back
From 3–7 March 2025, members of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) have gathered for their third meeting since the agreement became law in 2021. About half the world’s countries have joined the treaty so far, pledging to never acquire nuclear weapons and to work for their abolition globally. During the first few days of the meeting, rich discussions transpired about both the geopolitical obstacles and hopeful opportunities for nuclear disarmament. Rising military spending and threats of “rearmament” create a grim context for this meeting, but TPNW states parties are well poised to articulate a collective alternative based on the logic of disarmament instead of the illogic of deterrence. As many speakers conveyed, courage and conviction are needed now more than ever.
An Unconscionable Surge in Spending
During the high-level opening session, Mexico expressed grave concern that several countries have recently announced their intention to reduce their contributions to official development aid while increasing their military spending. Given that the UN has warned that the world is already “woefully off track” to meet agreed development goals and that many countries are staring into a “financial abyss,” additional cuts to aid will further impoverish and endanger those who have long suffered the inequalities imposed by colonialism, imperialism, and extrication. Redirecting development aid to militarism will not only destroy efforts to meet development goals but will inevitably send the world crashing into more violence, more destruction, more poverty, suffering, death, and unrelenting injustice.
This is not theoretical. In the United States, the Trump regime is actively slashing and burning all international aid and social services, dismantling every agency and programme designed to provide for human well-being or survival both within the US and abroad. At the same time, the regime is supporting the allocation of billions of more dollars to militarism. While some media reported on claims of an eight per cent cut to the military budget, the “cuts” are actually a shifting of funds from “non-lethal” programmes to an “alarming military buildup at the border with Mexico, an absurd ‘Iron Dome’ project, and accelerated militarization of the Indo-Pacific region.”
So far, nuclear weapons are not on the chopping block, regardless of random comments by the President. The military-industrial complex and its team of well-funded lobbyists are making sure that Elon Musk and the DOGE boys don’t come anywhere near their expensive, deadly toys. More broadly, believing anything a fascist says about wanting to reduce his capacity to wield massive violence is likely a fool’s errand.
Meanwhile, in response to mounting US hostility towards its former Western allies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that European states “need more fiscal space to do a surge in defence spending,” arguing that “after a long time of underinvestment, it is now of utmost importance to step up the defence investment for a prolonged period of time.” On 4 March, she announced a plan to “rearm” Europe with the mobilisation of 800 billion EUR from states and private capital. Switzerland and the United Kingdom have already announced cuts to their development or aid budgets and their plans to redirect those funds into their militaries.
Amidst rising fascism in Europe, the call for European “rearmament” is incredibly alarming. But also, the idea that Europe is not already heavily militarised is absurd. The United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, and France are already among the top ten military spenders. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has calculated that military spending in Europe totalled 588 billion USD in 2023, which was 16 per
cent more than in 2022 and 62 per cent more than in 2014. Some European countries’ military expenditure has already surged in recent years—the United Kingdom went up in 2023 by 7.9 per cent, Germany by 9 per cent, and Poland and Finland by a whopping 75 and 54 per cent, respectively.
Many European countries also profit from the international arms trade: France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain are among the world’s ten top arms exporters, while Türkiye, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Norway are in the top twenty. SIPRI has found that the revenues of 27 weapon companies based in Europe rose to 133 billion USD in 2023, accounting for 21 per cent of the top 100 arms-producing and military services companies.
Many of the weapon manufacturers in the SIPRI Top 100 are involved in the development and production of nuclear weapons, including several European-based companies. In response to the Trump regime’s skepticism about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the French President has called for talks about the development of a European nuclear force. This raises the spectre of proliferation of nuclear weapons in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which all European states are party. Meanwhile, Canada’s former deptuy prime minister, who is currently running for Liberal party leadership, said that UK nuclear weapons could help protect Canada against Trump’s threats to annex the country.
All of these developments, as Mexico said, are “taking us further and further away from what humanity requires: resources for development, not for war, not for destruction. We are, in practice, following a perfect recipe for the annihilation of humanity.”
Disarmament Versus Deterrence
This recipe for annihilation, as many speakers pointed out over the past two days, is inherent to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. As Dr. Nick Ritchie of the University of York said during the panel discussion on the true cost of nuclear war, the risk of nuclear violence is an essential feature, not a flaw, of nuclear deterrence. This is precisely why Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat, the only nuclear scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds, said that “nuclear deterrence is the ultimate form of terrorism.”
Nuclear violence is not confined just to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. The development and maintenance of these weapons is violent, creating conditions of terror for many. During the high-level opening session, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) explained:
The insidious reality is that the manufacturing of these weapons, their maintenance and their eventual disposal all cost the earth, even without any direct use. These weapons displace people and communities from cradle to grave, diverting funds and scientific know how from pressing global needs. Deterrence theory is a distraction and an abstraction. The reality is these weapons create harm on many levels through their very existence. Survivors of the more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests conducted so far in the world can verify the breadth of harm from developing this supposed deterrent.
This understanding of nuclear violence is reflected in the report submitted to this meeting by the coordinator of the consultative process on security concerns of states under the TPNW, which finds that “nuclear deterrence is not a sustainable approach to security. It is built on creating extreme risks and an ethos of fear based on the threat of mutual annihilation and global catastrophic consequences.” The report offers an extensive assessment of the core problems with nuclear deterrence theory and argues that TPNW states parties have a right and obligation to protect their populations and the planet from such unpredictable and unsustainable luck-based approaches to security.
While nuclear-armed states make claims that deterrence has prevented war or maintains geopolitical stability, countless examples to the contrary indicate that these notions are not facts, but mere assertions made to justify continued investments in weapons of mass destruction. “The appropriate question is not whether nuclear weapons can deter, ever, but whether there is certainty that they will deter, always,” notes the report. As several speakers on the panel discussion about the true costs of nuclear war articulated, there is no way to calculate the probability of nuclear war or predict the decisions that would lead to it.
Nuclear deterrence “may not even exist currently between nuclear-armed States in high-tension situations,” warns the report on security concerns, “in which case, it is not so much that nuclear deterrence may fail, rather, it may be that there was no nuclear deterrent effect at all.” Regardless, the reliance of nuclear deterrence on the threat to use nuclear weapons and the existential risks that accompany those threats means that “the theory of nuclear deterrence is a highly precarious gamble: one that no human being or Government should be entrusted to make.”
Courage of Conviction
Based on these findings, the report concludes that “rejecting nuclear weapons is not an idealistic aspiration, it is a rational and realist response to real dangers.” TPNW states parties and signatories, along with the wider community of supporters, understand this. They intentionally crafted the Treaty to provide a legal basis to eliminate the risks and threat of nuclear violence. Now that we have this agreement, as the president of this meeting said in his opening remarks, it is time to move beyond rhetoric to meaningful action.
TPNW states parties and signatories account for half the world’s states. Many more countries support the Treaty even if they have not yet joined. As ICAN said, these states are the global majority, and thus hold power to act. The volatility of the current moment, as with many other moments in the past, does not prevent action for disarmament. It is preceisely because things are so bad that we must act. Mexico urged states “to continue to strengthen the standard established by the provisions of the TPNW, so that it remains the antidote to arms race and its associated risks,” while the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs said that ambitious outcomes are necessary, arguing, “The alternative is the inertia that is born of cynicism.”
There is plenty that TPNW states parties can do. The reports from various working groups to this meeting are full of recommendations, as are the working papers submitted by states and civil society; the Action Plan adopted at the first meeting of states parties offers guidance for advancing the Treaty’s goals.
Focusing on justice is among the most important strategies for the TPNW community to take across all its actions. Gender justice, justice for affected communities, and environmental justice are key ingredients to disrupting the structures of nuclearism and advancing real disarmament.
Mexico, which has been the gender focal point for the TPNW since the second meeting of states parties, called on all states to “prevent any regression on gender issues, particularly given the wave of backsliding that has unfortunately been seen at the United Nations.” This regression has of course been seen outside the halls of the UN, too, where women and LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender people, are under increasing attack. In this context, the TPNW community must go much further in its work to implement the Treaty’s gender provisions and advance gender justice more broadly.
Mexico’s report to this meeting about its activities as the gender focal point provides a good starting place; particularly helpful are its recognition that gendered language has an impact on nuclear disarmament and that the TPNW is “not merely a legal instrument for nuclear disarmament but also a platform for advancing gender equality and inclusivity in international security.” The recommendations in the report to establish a conversation series on gender within the intersessional period is useful, especially if these discussions look beyond the gendered impacts of ionizing radiation to account for a broader range of gendered harms, and provide space to hear from those who have articulated how gendered ideas and concepts sustain nuclear weapons. A joint meeting of the consultative process on security concerns of states and the gender focal point could be useful to unpack the many ways that gender influences nuclear deterrence theory—and how feminist analysis can help articulate alternatives.
It will also be important to connect the work of both these groups with the work on the TPNW’s positive obligations on victim assistance and environmental remediation, which were designed to advance toward justice for affected communities. As described eloquently in the report from the consultative process on security concerns of states:
Nuclear inequalities are part of broader global injustices, where “security” is connected to fairness and justice, rather than just maintaining stability, which often supports existing power imbalances. The global nuclear order is widely viewed as unfair because it distributes the risks and harms of nuclear violence unequally. For Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons-supporting States, the Treaty constitutes a framework for security rooted in justice, aligning with broader international views that link security, justice and development.
As we look for opportunities to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons in these bleak times, it is absolutely essential to foreground justice in all of our efforts. Rather than trying to appeal to fascists, and thus inadvertently lend credibility to the horrorshows they are building in their countries and around the world, we must hold as central the needs of the most marginalised among us. The seemingly limitless cruelty and lawlessness of the leaders of nuclear-armed states does not provide a bedrock upon which to pursue denuclearisation. But the actions we take now, if oriented toward justice and peace, can help set the stage for a better future.
Those working for the abolition of other structures of state violence have a theory of change: “dismantle, change, build”. This means dismantling the elements of the thing you’re trying to abolish—in this case, the nuclear-industrial complex, nuclear deterrence, and the practices and policies that sustain them. It means striving to change common sense, resource allocation, and practices away from nuclear weapons. And it means building practices, skills, relationships, and resources that address the needs of our communities and our world.
We might not be able to eliminate oppressive systems overnight, especially those as entrenched as militarism. But we must allow ourselves the space to imagine a different world, to collectively envision and invent what we need to build it, and to try many different things towards those ends. As poet Diane di Prima said, “No one way works. It will take all of us shoving from all sides to bring it down.”
This article is based on the editorial for the Nuclear Ban Daily, Vol. 5, No. 2, a publication produced by Reaching Critical Will. To get more news about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, subscribe to RCW’s newsletter.
