(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The Vatican invited 10. – 11. November for the conference Plans for a world without nuclear weapons and for full disarmament. Here, Pope Frans condemned not only the use and threat of nuclear weapons, but also the possession of nuclear weapons. This is new, historic and brave. The Vatican no longer provides any moral acceptance for a military nuclear deterrence doctrine.
The Vatican City was among the first to ratify the UN's new nuclear weapons treaty. But the nine nuclear weapons countries and those under NATO's nuclear weapons umbrella are trying to undermine this treaty even before it comes into force. The conference was therefore highly timely, also in relation to the confrontation between the United States and North Korea.
Conference leader Cardinal Turkson said: "It is understandable that people who are afraid are asking for more security and security, but the answer is not the proliferation of more weapons of mass destruction. It not only causes security problems, but reduces the countries' financial opportunities to invest in what promotes lasting peace, such as health, workplaces and environmental care. ”
Church leaders, peace activists, politicians, diplomats, academics and students discussed the next measures for a world without nuclear weapons. Eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners participated. ICAN, the international campaign against nuclear weapons, which will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this year, was represented by its Swedish leader Beatrice Fihn. Norway was instrumental in initiating the process that led to the UN nuclear ban and initially provided significant support to ICAN. But Norway had no official representative at the conference.
Rose Gottemoeller, Deputy Secretary General of NATO, NATO defended the position that the UN's new nuclear weapons agreement would undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, she was confronted with a lack of follow-up to section 6 of the NPT that requires nuclear weapons countries to disarm so that others will not rust up.
There are fewer nuclear weapons now than during the Cold War, but there are still over 15 – the vast majority in the United States and Russia. The existing nuclear weapons are also hundreds of times stronger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and can destroy humanity and the planet many times over. Modern nuclear weapons are also easier to use, satellites and transport systems more efficient. In the United States alone, $ 000 billion is planned to be spent on modernizing nuclear weapons over the next 1200 years. Not exactly in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and hardly an inspiration for disarmament in other countries. About 30 of the US atomic bombs are stored in Europe, specifically in Germany, Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.
The UN High Representative for Disarmament emphasized that disarmament is part of the UN's foundation and that the very first resolution in the General Assembly was about "eliminating nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction." Alexei Arbatov, a former parliamentarian and now a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believed that our civilization, which builds security on the capacity to destroy itself, does not deserve the term "civilization." "It's time to find an alternative insurance policy," he said. The Red Cross emphasizes that those as an emergency aid organization do not have any adequate aids in the case of the use of nuclear weapons. The only way to guarantee lasting peace and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to abolish them, said several Nobel Prize winners. They also emphasized the need to establish a mechanism for multinational control of fossil fuel production. This will counteract an emerging phenomenon where more and more countries are able to develop nuclear weapons via their nuclear energy program.
The pope's vocabulary was particularly strong: "International relations cannot be held captive by military force, mutual intimidation and parade of weapons depots," he said. "Weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, create only a false sense of security […] An escalating arms race continues unabated and the cost of developing and modernizing weapons, not just nuclear weapons, is a significant expense for individual countries. This puts the real priorities of our human family second… »
Can Pope Francis' historical condemnation of the very existence of nuclear weapons lead to a change in existing plans for the modernization of nuclear weapons? Is he able to get the entire Catholic Church involved in a moral and legal condemnation? What influence can the pope have on the governments of Catholic countries? We must hope that he manages to inspire Christianity – and the world – to disarmament, to free the world from nuclear weapons and to a renewed belief that diplomatic solutions are possible.
