There are over 30,000 nuclear weapons in our world today, with the capacity to destroy the whole planet in 45 minutes, and many times over. One such weapon possesses 1,000 times more devastating power than what was dropped on Hiroshima, while 5,000 nuclear weapons are kept on hair-trigger alert.
On many occasions our world has came within minutes of an accidental nuclear war. One such instance was in 1995 when a scientific rocket launched from Norway was detected by Russia as an incoming nuclear device and it was within a few minutes of responding when a false alarm was raised.
It is more than 50 years since nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan. Today, a decade after the end of the Cold War, any justification for nuclear deterrence has no place in the world. But it is unfortunate that the Cold War mentality dominates military thinking in the nuclear weapons states.
These states have not demonstrated any genuine willingness to live up to their commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Some explicitly state those weapons are the cornerstone of their security.
This justification will lead us, not to a nuclear-free world but rather to a nuclear weapons free-for-all. There are already over 40 nuclear-capable countries and the weapons states have no moral credibility to stop those weapons being developed by others. What we have learnt from history is that if one country develops a new weapon, others will try to have it too, sooner or later. The only defence against nuclear weapons is their total elimination.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the major international treaty which has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons. Ireland is proud of its achievement in this regard. It was Frank Aiken, then Minister for External Affairs, whose pioneering role through a decade brought this treaty into being in 1968. It came into force in 1970.
Primarily, this treaty is an agreement between the five nuclear weapons states - the US, Russia, France, Britain, China - and the 182 non-nuclear states. It prevents the non-nuclear states from developing nuclear weapons; they can use nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes.
In essence, this commitment is based on a reciprocal commitment by the nuclear weapons states to total nuclear disarmament. The non-nuclear weapons states have kept their side of the bargain but not the weapons states.
The five nuclear states have continued to perfect and produce more sophisticated weapons since the signing of the treaty. Although bilateral agreements between the US and Russia have reduced weapons numbers in both countries, this is more a strategic readjustment and not a process towards their total elimination.
The US has technologically advanced to test and develop nuclear weapons within the confines of a laboratory. This violates the actual spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), to which it is a signatory.
The CTBT emerged from a 40-year struggle to stop countries testing nuclear weapons, which is essential for their production. This technological bypass is against the whole spirit of nuclear disarmament.
The 1995 NPT review extended the treaty indefinitely and put in place procedures to evaluate steps taken by weapons states and to propose measures to achieve nuclear disarmament. But at the preparatory meetings for the review of the NPT, no progress was made on any substantive issue. The only decisions taken were for the date and venue of the review.
From this stagnation emerged the New Agenda Coalition in 1998, led by Ireland and six other nations - Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden. They focused on an unequivocal and demonstrable commitment, with interim measures, by the weapons states to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
The 1998 and 1999 New Agenda resolutions at the UN General Assembly revitalised the international debate on disarmanment.
It was doubtful, however, whether the NPT review process would produce any great results. An unequivocal commitment by the nuclear weapons states to total nuclear disarmament was a major success, but an accelerated process towards its achievement remains to be achieved. The attitude of civil society will be a crucial factor in this.
One of the important issues which had not featured in the NPT review was the US national defence which will detect and destroy incoming missiles. Russia is unhappy about renegotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prevents the US making progress in this matter.
This is a major regression in global disarmament. It is worse than the Cold War logic of mutual assured destruction, when every nuclear weapons state was vulnerable to nuclear attack and thus would not use them. The national missile defence will make the US invincible and others vulnerable. This, inevitably, will led to an arms race and set the agenda of nuclear disarmament back by decades.