What’s next?

Let’s not forget: We are standing at the edge of global change. I believe what’s visible in this fleeting moment is our own evolution.

Let’s not let this moment flicker and die, to be replaced, with a despairing shrug, by business as usual. Donald Trump shattered the centrist political norms, sent chaos rippling through the corridors of power. Now he’s gone. We have to look through the cracks – these cracks in American exceptionalism – and see what’s possible. We have to make sure Joe Biden sees it as well.

And what’s possible is geopolitics beyond borders. What’s possible is addressing the truly profound threats that the planet – and the future – face, among them climate change and, with even more immediacy, nuclear war. The necessity for total nuclear disarmament – including American disarmament, for God’s sake – is more urgent than ever. This is bigger, by far, than reinstating the Iran nuclear agreement, necessary as that is. We must move beyond the world’s fragile pseudo-peace maintained by the threat of Armageddon. The time to move beyond this insanity is now.

Consider this tidbit of logic: Since nuclear war would respect no borders – its outbreak would inflict hell on every occupant of Planet Earth – why should their use and, indeed, their existence, be at the whim of the nine national leaders whose nations possess nuclear weapons?

Because that’s the way it is?

Those who would say yes to this, ending the discussion with a sigh and telling me to shut up and move on, would have to admit that humanity’s singular value, its singular source of empowerment, is utter and total selfishness – these nukes are ours! – no matter the potential harm and insanity such selfishness could wreak.

I fear this is the belief of the world’s nuclear powers and their allies, who have boycotted, mocked, dismissed and ignored the global movement to create a nuclear-free world, most significantly in the last three years by the creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 by a vote of 122-1. The nuclear nine – the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – along with their allies, including all NATO members, boycotted the vote.

The arduous journey of this treaty, which flat-out bans the use, development and possession of nuclear weapons, required that 50 signatory nations officially ratify it before it could become international law. That finally happened last October, when Honduras became the fiftieth country to do so. And then 90 days had to pass, which occurred on Jan 22. Nuclear weapons are now ... ahem ... illegal.

What could that possibly mean?

Excerpted: ‘Nukes are Illegal, Now What?’

Counterpunch.org