Nuclear weapons are still a problem

UN Secretary Antonio Guterres says we are in worrying times. Since many factors such as the climate crisis, ostensible inequalities, bloody conflicts, human rights transgressions and the individual and economic devastation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have created more frictions in our world than he says he has seen in all my life.

Although the above is important, he believes that the existential threat that overshadowed the first half of his life no longer receives the attention it should. Nuclear weapons have disappeared from Hollywood headlines and scripts, although the danger they pose is as eminent as ever and increases, year after year.

It only takes any misunderstanding or miscalculation to trigger nuclear extermination — a sword of Damocles that would bring not only death and suffering on a horrific scale, but the end of life on Earth.

Even with more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in arsenals around the world, how long can good luck last us?, even with a little judgment and good luck, no one has used nuclear weapons The COVID-19 pandemic has made us more aware of the catastrophic consequences that can result from an unlikely event.

We know that at the end of the Cold War, nuclear arsenals were drastically reduced and even eliminated. There were entire regions that declared themselves nuclear-weapon-free. A widespread and profound feeling of rejection of nuclear testing emerged. As Prime Minister of my country, I ordered Portugal to vote for the first time against the resumption of nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The end of the Cold War also left us with a dangerous fallacy: that the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. Nothing could be further from reality. These weapons are not a problem of yesterday, but they continue to be a present and growing threat. Today, we are at greater risk of nuclear weapons being used than in the entire period since the Cold War era of nuclear drills and safe havens. We know that today's relations of certain countries that possess nuclear weapons are characterized by mistrust and competition. It is not exactly characterized by intelligent dialogue. Transparency is weakening and nuclear weapons are becoming more and more important as national security strategies find new contexts in which they could be used. Meanwhile, technological advances and the emergence of new areas of competition in cyberspace and outer space have highlighted the vulnerabilities and risk of nuclear escalation.

We have no international networks or instruments that can address these new developments. In this multipolar world order, that means that regional crises with a nuclear background could attract other countries with nuclear weapons. The nuclear landscape is like Tinder: an accident or miscalculation can cause the spark to fly.

Our great hope to turn back and move the world away from nuclear cataclysm is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the NPT, which dates back to the harshest years of the Cold War, in 1970.

The NPT is one of the main reasons why nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945: it sets out legally binding commitments to achieve nuclear disarmament, and those commitments include the five major nuclear-weapon countries. It is also a catalyst for disarmament: it is the only way to eliminate these horrendous weapons once and for all.

The 191 countries that have signed the NPT, representing virtually the entire world, have pledged not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency is responsible for monitoring and enforcing these commitments.

Let us pray that there will be no more war clashes like this one that we have witnessed recently between Ukraine and Russia, which mourns many homes, and has left more economic crisis, especially for Ukraine, as a country with less war potential, which in one way or another affects other countries of the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdY2i6wloro

Antonio Guterres calls any attack on a nuclear power plant “suicidal”