Only a tantrum away from a nuclear catastrophe

With the dangerously unpredictable United States President Donald Trump plunging the world closer to nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula and in the volatile Middle East, last Sunday’s warning by the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winner needs to be seriously reflected upon. With his unpredictability being one of his only predictable qualities and inconsistency being consistent with his nature, Mr. Trump is threatening a nuclear war with North Korea while Kim Jong-un’s North Korean regime itself is apparently trying to provoke a conflict to disrupt next year’s Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Middle East is facing its worst crisis since 1967 after Mr. Trump, apparently to please his white supremacist base and Zionist funders, shocked the world last week when he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.   

It was in this hellhole scenario that the 1917 Nobel Peace Prize winner the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) warned the world was only a ‘tantrum away’ from a nuclear war. Its executive Director Beatrice Fihn said the world faced a “nuclear crisis” from a “bruised ego.” It was an apparent reference to US-North Korea tensions. She said, “The deaths of millions may be one tiny tantrum away. We have a choice, the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us.”  

Tensions over North Korea’s weapons programme have risen in recent months. The open hostility between Mr. Trump and the North Korean leadership under Kim Jong-un has at times descended into personal attacks this year.  

Ms. Fihn said, A moment of panic could lead to the destruction of cities and the deaths of millions of civilians from nuclear weapons. The risk of such weapons being used, she added, was greater today than during the Cold War.  

Ican, a coalition of hundreds of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), has worked for a treaty to ban the weapons. Prior to presenting the prize on Sunday, Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen gave a similar warning, saying that irresponsible leaders can come to power in any nuclear state.   

Ms. Reiss-Andersen commended Ican which, she said, had succeeded in highlighting the dangers of nuclear weapons and trying to eradicate them. She also acknowledged the contributions of Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an Ican campaigner. Ms. Thurlow, who was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building at the time, said that most of her classmates, who were in the same room, were burned alive, BBC reported.   

Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by, grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen, she said.  

Mr. Trump -- now even with calls for his resignation over his alleged sexual misconduct -- has warned that North Korea’s government will be “utterly destroyed” if war breaks out. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said last week that the potential for war with North Korea was increasing every day. In November, North Korea said it had tested a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching the whole of continental United States.   

Ican, formed in 2007 and inspired by a similar campaign to ban the use of landmines, has made it its mission to highlight the humanitarian risk of nuclear weapons. The Geneva-based group helped pave the way for the introduction of a UN treaty banning the weapons. It was signed this year. Pope Francis also is strongly supporting the move and called on leaders of all religions to join in this campaign to save the world.   

While 122 countries backed the treaty in July, the talks were notably boycotted by the world’s nine known nuclear powers and the only NATO member to discuss it, the Netherlands, voted against. Only three countries, the Vatican, Guyana and Thailand, have so far ratified the treaty, which requires 50 ratifications to come into force.   

Sri Lanka’s National Unity Government says it is committed to the creation of a just, peaceful and all-inclusive society. In that context, we ask why it did not sign the treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Was it because we were afraid of the UN Security Council’s big powers -- the US, China, Russia, Britain and France or were we more afraid of our nuclear powered-neighbours, India and Pakistan? Foreign Ministry experts would speak of the realities of international diplomacy, but overall it is a choice between ending the era of nuclear weapons or facing the possibility of the end of the world?