The UN launches its nuclear weapons ban treaty today – if only Trump would sign up

The very real danger is that Trump’s bellicose approach will lead to more nuclear proliferation not less

Donald Trump at the United Nations (Evan Vucci/AP)

Today should be recorded in our history books: the day when the United Nations opens the signing ceremony for the first global nuclear weapons ban treaty. This groundbreaking initiative, backed by 122 states, opens the door to achieving a nuclear-free world and goes beyond the status quo approach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In these turbulent times, when the US-North Korea crisis is a stark reminder that nuclear war is a real possibility, it's an indication of how seriously the majority of states take this issue. They are tired of decades of prevarication by the nuclear weapons states and, well-understanding the impact a nuclear exchange will have on their own nations, have decided to force progress on the nuclear club. Their concerns are timely.

Yesterday, Donald Trump addressed the United Nations, telling the world that he may “have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”. This comes after his now well-known promise to unleash “fire and fury” on Pyongyang; the authorisation of US-led military drills over the Korean peninsula; and the deployment of the THAAD missile defence system. North Korea itself has conducted a series of provocative missile launches and last month claimed it had tested its first hydrogen bomb.

Commentators have pointed out the similarities between Trump's UN speech and that given by President George W. Bush in 2002 which named North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the “axis of evil”, terrorist states seeking weapons of mass destruction to threaten the US and its allies. We know how that unfolded with Iraq, but less well-known is that not long after that speech, North Korea announced it would leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, on the grounds that it had a “deterrent” need to develop nuclear weapons. This, together with the ever-present consequences of the disastrous war on Iraq, is a stark reminder of the failure of Bush’s belligerent approach to solving complex problems – and indeed demonstrates how such an approach makes things incomparably worse. This is not a lesson that Trump has yet learnt.

Donald Trump's decision to talk once more about North Korea and Iran as “rogue regimes” – as well as name-checking a number of others that he deemed sufficiently “evil” to merit action by the “righteous” – not only indicates his bombastic contempt for the international community but a dangerous disregard for the outstanding diplomatic work which resulted in the agreement between Iran, the US and others, limiting the scope of Iran’s nuclear power programme to remove the potential for nuclear weapons development.

There is rightly grave concern over the consequences if Trump trashes that valuable and highly regarded agreement. The very real danger is that Trump’s approach will lead to more nuclear proliferation not less, more takers for the “deterrent” argument, who note what happened to an Iraq which turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction.

So nuclear brinkmanship – in particular the war of words between the US and North Korean leaders – has led to growing fears about a war that will certainly involve nuclear weapons should it begin. The fears are well founded: there will be no winners from war between the US and North Korea – millions will be killed, not only directly in the blast from the attack, but slowly and terribly, across the world through the impact of radioactive fallout. There is no barrier which can prevent that poison blowing at will across the world, no wall that President Trump can build to protect himself and the American people from that fallout.

The present crisis clarifies what most states have long felt: that the world can only be safe when nuclear weapons are abolished. Living with them is just too dangerous.

Those who would retain nuclear weapons argue that nuclear disarmament is a utopian ideal – a wonderful vision, but impossible to deliver in practice. Others even take the line that nuclear weapons have delivered stability, have kept the peace. But which world do they actually live in? With the present crisis in north east Asia, 16 years of wars in the Middle East, and conflicts and war so numerous that we are unaware of many of them, human suffering on a devastating scale across the globe, grappling with climate change, resource shortages, vast movements of refugees, these arguments have never been less credible or less relevant.

Britain needs to get serious about how it can help address the real security problems that Britain and the global community face, before the global disaster movie that we are increasingly experiencing can no longer be held back. Part of that is facing up to the reality of our nuclear folie de grandeur and abandoning the notion that playing a role in the world has to mean having the capacity to kill millions of people indiscriminately.

Just for a start, we need to sign the global ban treaty, rule out British military involvement on the Korean peninsula, and throw the weight we have into backing the resumption of the Six-Party Talks. To follow any other path is to help take the world down the short road to nuclear catastrophe.

Kate Hudson is CND general secretary