Oxford Martin School

In the latest contribution to our Michaelmas term seminar series on 'Getting to Zero' Dr Patricia Lewis, Deputy Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, gave an insightful lecture on nuclear disarmament. A podcast of this lecture is available here.

Entitled 'A new approach to nuclear disarmament: learning from international humanitarian law success', Dr Lewis' lecture asked what nuclear disarmament might have in common with other weapons control campaigns and what lessons we might therefore be able to draw from those movements.

Dr Lewis began by setting out some of the characteristics of nuclear weapons, arguing that they do not pose a unique problem in international relations. Nuclear weapons are characterised by the number of causalities which they inflict, the indiscriminate nature of those casualties and their long-lasting effects. However, Dr Lewis pointed out that firebombing, as used in the Second World War, inflicted casualties in a similar manner and of a similar magnitude, while landmines and cluster munitions can have similarly long-lasting effects on an environment. Given these similarities, Dr Lewis argued that the nuclear disarmament movement had a lot to learn from campaigns to ban other types of weapon, such as landmines, small arms, cluster munitions and chemical and biological weapons.

Dr Lewis then moved on to discuss the role of nuclear weapons in the world today, questioning the effectiveness of the so-called 'nuclear deterrent'. She highlighted the fact that historians are now questioning whether the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War was primarily due to the use of nuclear weapons. Instead, many now argue that the key factor was the Soviet declaration of war in 1945. Dr Lewis also pointed out that nuclear weapons have not changed the nature of humanity, that nations will continue to go to war, no matter how many states have nuclear weapons. Dr Lewis believes that if we don't disarm, these weapons will inevitably be used at some point in the future.

Turning to some of the more successful weapons campaigns which she had mentioned earlier, she then asked what might be responsible for the success of these campaigns. She laid out what she saw as four defining characteristics of a successful campaign:

1. Presenting the issue of disarmament as humanitarian action - a key characteristic of all successful weapons bans
2. The presence of a core group of governments who feel strongly about the issue at hand
3. Including a diversity of perspectives in negotiations; from politicians and activists to victims and academic experts
4. Thinking about security 'in human terms', which helps to put the prohibition of use at the centre of the debate

Echoing the message of a previous lecturer in our series, Professor Richard Price of the University of British Columbia, Dr Lewis concluded by arguing that the nuclear disarmament movement should try and create a strong treaty, without worrying too much about whether or not the 'key players' would sign up to it. She pointed out that weapons treaties could do a lot of good, even without the support of powerful states such as the USA and China.

As Sir Malcolm Rifkind, another recent contributor to the series, pointed out: a less ambitious treaty may not ensure the swift global elimination of nuclear weapons, but reducing the number of nuclear warheads in the world would nevertheless be hugely significant - bolstering the non-proliferation treaty and reducing the amount of fissile material at risk of falling into the hands of terrorists, potentially saving thousands of lives.