OVER 30 BISHOPS INCLUDING BOTH ARCHBISHOPS HAVE URGED THE UK GOVERNMENT TO COMPLY WITH THIS TREATY TO HELP MOVE TOWARDS A NUCLEAR FREE WORLD. AT PRESENT THE UK GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO HIDE AWAY FROM THIS LEGAL COMMITMENT TO THE UN, BUT THIS STATEMENT BRINGS IT OUT INTO THE OPEN AS OBVIOUS MORAL AND COMMON SENSE.

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT EVEN DISCUSS THE ARGUMENTS, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BAD. IT WILL MUTTER SCARES TO COVER THIS POLICY VACUUM. SO LET US GO THROUGH THE ARGUMENTS THAT BORIS, AND THE OTHER NUCLEAR POWER POSSESSORS, WILL NOT ADDRESS.

ASIDE THE NUCLEAR POWER MILITARY LOBBY, (AND THIS HAS BEEN A GRAVY TRAIN THROUGHOUT OUR LIFETIMES) THE CRUCIAL PROBLEM IS THAT THE SUPERPOWER LEADERS CANNOT ADMIT THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG FOR SEVENTY FIVE YEARS. “OH WE GOOFED AND WASTED TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND JUST WENT AROUND SCARING ONE ANOTHER” WILL NOT BE SAID. WE HAVE TO BE THEIR COMMON SENSE, AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND HAS GOT IT MOVING. WE WORK WITH THE UNITED NATIONS TO GET THIS TREATY FULLY IMPLEMENTED..

FIRST, WE RECONSIDER WHY NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA.

1. THEY ARE UNUSABLE. Nuclear weapons have not been used for seventy five years, really because they are unusable. No person or state can plan to wipe out ten or a hundred million people merely because they cannot sort out a quarrel.
2. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ONLY DESTROY. Nuclear weapons only destroy – people, cities, nations, animals and even the planet. We talk about nuclear states as powerful, but the power to destroy is an illusion. Only the power to do good counts. Destruction is useless tantrum power. It is the other side of useless. Superficially, we learn that “if a single nuclear weapon “designed to emit EMP were detonated 250 to 300 miles up over the middle of the country it would disable the electronics in the entire United States.” That might be inconvenient, but one nuclear explosion can wipe out a conurbation of several millions and make life unliveable well beyond that. They destroy trillions of property and infrastructure. The only destroy – ridiculously that is their purpose. The nuclear people are toying with the destruction of the planet, the dark winter, the end of civilisation, what will make coronavirus seem a picnic. They hide the evil outcome, but this evil destruction needs to be prevented now.
3. CONTINUED PRODUCTION IS NONSENSE. Around the world over a hundred thousand nuclear weapons have been produced since 1945, none of which has been used and most of which have been scrapped at great cost. If we produced a hundred thousand flying saucers which were never used, we would stop making them and close the industry down.
4. THEY COST THE EARTH. The cost of these unused weapons is vast; it cannot really be calculated. It involves the bombs, missiles, submarines, planes, command systems, bases and manufacturing centres all spending money flat out. The US has spent well over $10 trillion on them. Other nuclear powers – at least another $10 trillion on these useless things. Wasting far more than $20 trillion is criminal and should cease. This vast cost has ruled out good spending which would help people, end poverty and be useful. By contrast, peace is free and costs nothing.
5. THE SYSTEM RUNS ON BUILT-UP FEAR AND MOST OF THE FEAR SURROUNDS NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The nuclear powers fear one another. The US feared the USSR but not before the USSR feared the US. China Fears the West. India fears Pakistan. We did not fear Russia after the Cold War, but now Russia fears us and we fear them. France does not know whom it should fear. Most of the fear is of nuclear weapons, but the weapons purport to address the problem they have created. Those with the most weapons fear the most.
6. FEAR IS CONTINUALLY STOKED BY THE MILTARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Most of the fear is generated by those who depend and profit from the nuclear defence system. In the 50s the US military greatly exaggerated the USSR forces to get more bombers. Since then the nuclear sector and its paid political spokespeople continually talk up the external nuclear threat. We are taught to fear tinpot North Korea, Russia, China and so on SO THAT THE DEFENCE MONEY KEEPS FLOWING. They profit from our fear and explain why the policy is continued.
7. NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS ARE A POSSIBILITY. There have been a string of accidents and near strike backs. In early 1961 two nuclear bombs came down at Faro, West Virginia, about 300 miles from Washington. On one three out of four of the safety devices failed and one held. On the other the firing device was on after it broke from the bomb. In September 1983 Stanislav Petrov saw five incoming missiles on his screen and should have notified the Soviet retaliatory counter-strike people. He concluded that because it was only five missiles it was a screen error. At the time the US was flying bombers straight towards USSR targets veering off at the last moment to scare the USSR operatives. There have been dozens of US and USSR nuclear bombs lost at sea, ablaze in aircraft or in other dangers. PROBABLY NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAVE BEEN A GREATER INTERNAL THREAT THAN AN EXTERNAL THREAT.
8. NUCLEAR WEAPONS GIVE A UN SECURITY COUNCIL PLACE.  The US, Russia and China are the world’s most heavily armed states and permanent members of the Security Council. France and the UK believe they retain permanent places partly because they have nuclear weapons. Actually, this gives a power base to five militarist and arms exporting states which locks the UN into the status quo, but it is a dumb playground bully way of thinking. So, although the UN is committed to peace, its five most powerful members are militarists. This structure has headlocked the UN since 1945. The smaller nations, talking sense, rightly challenge this.
9.  NUCLEAR WEAPONS HASTEN GLOBAL WARMING. Nuclear weapons are intense energy users. The bombs are obviously are the biggest potential energy wasters on the planet, but tests, missiles, bombers, nuclear submarines, bases, weapon development all use lots of energy and the most intense energy materials on the planet. A missile not only costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of energy before it is fired. Cutting this vast waste out is the biggest green win we could have bar one. Even nuclear energy is now more costly and less efficient than wind, solar, tidal and others. It has nothing going for it.
10. THE UNDERLYING STANCE OF NUCLEAR DEFENCE IS FLAWED. All the nuclear states say they would never use them first, but only in reprisal, but they teeter on the edge of first strike, because there is no defence. A missile will always get through. Reagan was talked into “Star Wars” as a defence shield. It made many arms firms very rich, but it could not work. It was not just the problem of “hitting a bullet with a bullet”, or of nuclear fireworks over Britain between the USSR and the US, but the fact that stopping one missile was many times more expensive than making one. There is no defence against nuclear weapons, except to get rid of them all.
11. MISSILE DETECTION IS DODGY. Nuclear defence involves spotting incoming missiles, so that one can respond. But it is a dodgy process. We all toast Mr Petrov because he worked out the five incoming missiles weren’t. But the nuclear missile detection systems are paranoid. You have minutes to decide whether to blow up the planet in accordance with your threats of retaliation. Are they missiles, geese, mistakes or what? Here we could get catatonic laughter. “Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.” Oh, he pressed the wrong button. “Ministers have been accused of covering up the failed test which saw the launch of an unarmed Trident II D5 missile from a British submarine off the coast of Florida in June.” Oh, Sorry, yes we are your ally and very glad you sold us the missiles in the first place, but it went the wrong way – yours, Theresa May. The whole system is dangerous and flawed, because there is no time for corrections in this counterstrike culture. The knock out counter punch does not work;  not getting in the ring in the first place is far more effective.
12. NATIONAL CONQUEST WAR IS OVER. Though many have not realised, national conquest war no longer works. The US failed in Vietnam and Iraq. 9/11 showed that the cost of subduing those you attack rises and rises. You cannot occupy, tax or exploit. Countries are full up and too complex to control. War is a failed enterprise and nuclear weapons belong to that failed enterprise – a useless weapon in a failed enterprise.  
13. NATIONAL MILITARY RIVALRY IS SILLY. As Europe has shown, national military rivalry is unnecessary and it is far better to get on with one another. Time and again, nationalism, patriotism, mutual blame, self-promotion, leading the world, imperialism have led to destructive useless wars, including several hundred in European history. Now Europe knows that Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and the other countries living together is the better way. Some of the nuclear rivalries are tragic. India and Pakistan need their resources for their people. Now they are buying vast quantities of nuclear related weapons to feed a rivalry which can only destroy. Expressing National Rivalry through Nuclear Weapons is a dumb response. When you meet friends and neighbours, you do not put a bomb on the table, let alone a bigger one.  
14. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT DETER CONVENTIONAL WARS. One argument for nuclear weapons used to be that nuclear weapons deterred conventional weapons, because they were obviously more powerful. This is not the case. Conventional wars have gone on in the last seventy years, often against nuclear powers, and the nuclear weapons have not deterred anything. Vietnam was not deterred from beating the US. Egypt was not deterred from evicting Britain from Suez. Afghanistan got rid of the USSR in a long war and Saddam did not give up in Iraq or Assad in Syria. It would be difficult to suggest one war which has been deterred by the possession of nuclear weapons.
15. NUCLEAR POLICY IS NOT DEFENDED STRAIGHT. Nuclear weapons are sold to the public through fear – “We will protect you”. Actually, the fear is unnecessary. No state has threatened the UK for the last seventy years. The threats are talked up. In the Renewing Trident debate Teresa May could only come up with North Korea as a country to fear. Second, those who are against Nuclear Weapons are presented as traitors. I remember chatting with Bruce Kent, of CND, one evening on an empty Finsbury Park Underground Station.  The media had claimed he was receiving money from the USSR. He laughed, and I asked how he tackled it. “I just told them to come and have a look at my office.” The disarmers are demonised, lied about, singled out, as Corbyn recently experienced. The rhetoric has the underlying form of  “WE” are fighting the Battle of Britain again and so, of course, we are in the right. The nuclear policy makers do not explain why a never used, unusable, expensive weapon should be retained.
16. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST TERRORISM. We are told terrorism is the main threat. Obviously nuclear weapons are useless in addressing this kind of conflict, because it is micro militarism, personally carried.
17. THE POLITICAL RHETORIC HAS BEEN FALSE. Between 1945 and 1990 we were told that the nuclear problem was Communism. When the USSR collapsed in 1990 under the weight of its military expenditure and the Cold War finished, Western/Russian relations were fine for a while. Now with Russia governed by a Capitalist oligarchy, we have reverted to a Cold war stance, because the military regimes in the US, Russia, NATO and the UK needed mutual enemies. The problem was not Communism at all. It was militarism.
18. BECAUSE WE ARE AN ECONOMICALLY INTERDEPENDENT WORLD, NATIONALIST NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES ARE OUT OF DATE.  We import and export around the world, travel, share technologies, food and education. We have an interdependent world economy at many levels. This old nationalistic nuclear weapons culture and distrust doesn’t fit the world economy. It is merely foisted on us by national self-interested militaries and the arms manufacturers, the merchants of death, because it means attacking those who help us and trade with us…
19. NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY. The Non Proliferation Treaty required the Nuclear Powers to disarm and they agreed to do so. They have failed to honour that commitment. The nuclear powers should do that now.
20. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT UNITE NATIONS, BUT DIVIDE THEM. The UK ignored the United Nations over the Iraq War and with the United States, it has created chaos in the Middle East. We should abide by UN Treaties like this one.  This is a Treaty passed by over two thirds of UN members and ratified by over fifty. Treaties require members to comply. We have signed up to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” which fits this Nuclear Weapons Ban. We should be promoting peace. Obviously nuclear weapons are a threat. It is time to practice peace and honour the collective democracy of the United Nations and the meaning of its title.
21. CONVENTIONAL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT CAN FOLLOW.  It is sometimes said that removing nuclear weapons makes conventional weapons more dangerous. We have seen that does not seem to be so. Conventional wars have taken place frequently with and without nuclear powers, with nuclear weapons not damping their occurrence. Nevertheless, the multilateral acceptance of nuclear disarmament could be swiftly followed by multilateral conventional disarmament. If conventional weapons were cut by 20% a year for five years with full scrutiny, open inspection, policing, the required closure of all terrorist groups by disarmament or force,  we could close down all militarism in five years. It is actually easier than competitive arming, far cheaper and allows military tensions to ease away.  Disarmament works.
22. JESUS SUMMED IT UP. Jesus’ words, “Those who take the sword perish by the sword” identify the problem. Aggression, threats, weapons always bring reprisal and later self-destruction. It has been so throughout history. Weapons do not work. We need to close down the process, which now enslaves world leaders. Surely, we should realise that now after two thousand years. Tit for Tat, and keeping ahead in weapons race, reveals a certain lack of intelligence. I will blow you up before you can blow me up is not a good relational attitude. We can do better.

ALL THESE ARGUMENTS POINT TO THE UNDERLYING FAILURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. THEY ARE NOT FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATIONS, BUT KEEP MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS GOING AND THE CONTRACTS FLOWING. POLITICIANS DO NOT EVEN OFFER A RATIONALE FOR THEM ANY MORE, BUT EVADE ALL DISCUSSION, BECAUSE THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS SO BAD.  THE NUCLEAR EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES AND IT IS TIME TO TELL HIM THAT HE IS FAT AND USELESS. THE POLITICIANS HAVE PROBLEMS SAYING THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG, BUT MILLIONS AND THEN BILLIONS CAN HELP THEM CHANGE THEIR MINDS. THE POLITICS OF THIS TRANSITION WILL EMERGE. FIRST WE NEED ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AND MUST GO. THEN, AS JESUS SAID, WE MAKE PEACE, PASS IT ON, UNDO THREATS AND CONSTRUCTED ENEMIES AND MAKE SURE THAT NATIONS ONLY SPEAK PEACE TO ONE ANOTHER AND DO NOT LEARN WAR ANY MORE.