• by Jonathan Frerichs
• Tuesday, January 24, 2012
• Inter Press Service

We live under a nuclear 'umbrella' that is outdated, unwieldy, extremely costly, and doesn't even work. People today see themselves as part of a global community. They want to live in ways that protect life instead of putting it at risk. Nuclear weapons are wrong and need to go. It's time to get involved. Each person can do his or her part; all can make a big difference, together, writes Jonathan Frerichs, programme executive for peace-building and disarmament for the World Council of Churches.

In this article, the author writes that the international construct that shelters nuclear arms is coming apart. More and more people see no place for such weapons in human, ecological, and planetary affairs. Thus it is disturbing to watch the five percent of governments that are nuclear armed reject the common good and refuse their obligation to disarm as the 95 percent of governments that don't have nuclear weapons fail to implement the majority will to see them abolished.

The Middle East is so ripe for proliferation that the very future of the NPT is tied to establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone there. A UN conference on that goal is slated for 2012 after a 17-year delay. Yet the old nuclear story looms over the conference. Irresponsible rhetoric is again pushing the myopic view that enforcing the nuclear double standard is the solution for the Middle East, not the problem. While Israel is not a member of the NPT, its neighbours who are members have been expected to live with its nuclear weapons as if it were an NPT nuclear-weapon state. This is an improbable recipe for security of any kind. It is a prescription for proliferation by others in the Middle East, and elsewhere.

(*) Jonathan Frerichs is programme executive for peace-building and disarmament for the World Council of Churches.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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