Thank you very much, Dr. Watson, and to Lloyd Elder dies and the organising committee.
Thanks very much for this kind invitation.
I'll be speaking on nuclear weapon free zones in the context of our conversation today and really trying to make the case that
we should take these zones much more seriously than they have been taken either in the policy or the scholarly communities.
And I'll be suggesting that in some way, nuclear weapon free zones, at least in one sense,
represent perhaps the most far reaching and the most successful example of nuclear containment.
In our recent nuclear history. At least since the.
And so I'd like to advance this case for nuclear weapon free zones by looking at a few examples
and also just reflecting on where they fit in the broader architecture of nuclear order.
So at a summit in Cairo in 1996, President then Hosni Mubarak stood grinning before a phalanx of dignitaries heralding
and celebrating the opening for signature of the African nuclear weapon free zone.
The zone is affectionately called the Treaty of Pelin Dhaba Pelin Dabb is a portmanteau of Pela in the language which means end and in the story,
the treaty of ending the story. But far from ending the story,
the Treaty of Darbar formed part of a multi continental trans historical story of the establishment
and the persistence of nuclear weapon free zones which have lasted from 1967 to the present.
So to try and get our heads around the story, I'll offer a little bit of background on these nuclear weapon free zones.
How many are there? Who signed them? Where do they obtain?
What are they?
And just so that we can get a deeper understanding of what these zones actually are and their extent, their remit and their jurisdiction.
Then I'll look at this question of obedient rebellion before moving on to.
The. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and how that interfaces with nuclear weapon free zones,
because I think we've got an interesting story there of both harmony and disharmony,
which I think is particularly pertinent in the current era of nuclear order in which we find ourselves.
So that's how the the brief remarks will will flow.
So let me come on to this question of background and just provide a brief overview of the significance and the reach of nuclear weapon free zones.
So. What are nuclear weapon free zones?
It's actually a non-trivial question, and in fact, the legal architecture of nuclear weapon free zones represents.
In my view, quite an elaborate legal achievement, not only in finding the language to contain and prohibited nuclear weapons,
but in order to get that language to be language, which is agreed often by tens, sometimes hundreds of states.
So nuclear weapon free zones in a nutshell, are legally binding treaties which prevent the use of nuclear weapons in a given territory.
And of course, there are various complexities which flow from that which we might get into in the questions.
And these treaties require both the agreement of the states within that territory.
So let's take the African nuclear weapon free zone, for example.
You need the agreement of African states that the territory will be nuclear weapon free.
But then you also need the agreement in additional protocols of the nuclear weapon states.
And so far, these are between the officially recognised nuclear weapon states and the states within these zones.
So there's quite a complex legal interplay between, on the one hand,
non-nuclear states and given regions and the nuclear weapon states as they relate to these other regions.
I mean, why do these zones matter and why do they deserve greater attention?
Well, for one thing, if we're going to be looking at how nuclear non-proliferation, even disarmament, for that matter, might work,
then we ought to look at the places where it actually has worked and where successes, even if limited and contingent, have been scored.
And it seems strange to me that while nuclear weapon free zones have spread and proliferated rather successfully since nineteen sixty seven,
we give them so little importance in our discussions of non-proliferation.
And I think part of the reason for that is their location in the global south,
a sense in which we might not have anything to learn from the way that the global south has tackled nuclear non-proliferation.
But it's exactly in those places where we have been shy to look that in fact some of the most important work has been done,
complex work has been done to show the way towards nuclear containment.
And so I think we need to take off the blinkers, as it were,
and tried to treat this process of denuclearisation or at least nuclear prohibition in the global south with the seriousness it deserves.
How many zones are there and how many have been tried?
We have 10 zones that have at least open for signature in the Antarctic, as you can see here, that was the first one in fifty nine.
They cover a wide and interesting range of of states, regions, the entirety of outer space to the seabed.
But the zones that I think are of particular interest are regionally defined, territorial state implicated zones.
And these particularly include the African nuclear weapon free zone, as I mentioned,
the Latin American nuclear weapon free zone and the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone.
And it's on those zones that I want to focus, because those are, I would suggest,
three of the more successful zones from which we might draw some insights.
Again, we can get on to some of the failures and the Middle Eastern question, perhaps in later sections, but in the interests of preserving time.
Let me just also show you the coverage of nuclear weapon free zones.
So what do we have in this image? We have various kinds of nuclear security, governance arrangements and how they cover the world.
And in blue, yeah, you have nuclear weapon free zones juxtaposed against states possessing nuclear weapons
and red nuclear sharing agreements where state might not possess nuclear weapons itself,
but has some kind of agreement with the state that does and the NPT only.
So where a state is only a signatory or has ratified the NPT but is not involved in a sharing agreement or or a nuclear weapon free zone.
And you can see that the coverage of nuclear weapon free zones is distinctive in its location in the global south, but is also extremely wide ranging.
And you now have over one hundred and twenty states that have in one way or another signed up to these nuclear weapon free zones.
So barring the NPT, there's an argument to be made that these regional regional initiatives from the bottom up,
as it were, constitute the next most successful example of collaborative, multilateral nuclear renunciation.
Let me move on to this question of obedient rebellion and try and encapsulated in a nutshell,
because I think the way that these zones have emerged in global nuclear order teaches us something
about how zones might spread in the future and why these zones have been particularly resilient.
Dr. Ritchie referred earlier to a kind of a.
Nuclear D colonial sentiment on the part of states in the global south and.
That is certainly part of the story with nuclear weapon free zones.
There's a sense in which decolonisation and denuclearisation became entangled at the same historical moment.
And the questions have always been linked to these states so that a kind of rebellious attitude to nuclear order underpins much of the rhetoric.
And much of the politics which surrounds these states are trying to send a message to global nuclear order
that at least they themselves renounce nuclear weapons and the colonial connotations that flow from them.
But alongside this rebellious attitude, as it were,
is an obedient one to the extent that all of this rebellion happens within the context of the existing
global institutions as they currently stand so that these zones are underpinned by ultimately the NPT.
A lot of the conversation of these zones happens within the United Nations itself, within formally recognised international fora.
These states also have a contending impulse to form part of the global nuclear order to be good nuclear citizens to,
as Sebastian mentioned, be responsible nuclear players.
So what we really have here is a paradoxical situation which binds these zones because
they become faura in which states are able to resolve these competing tensions.
On the one hand, by joining a zone, you get to send the middle finger to the nuclear order.
But on the other hand, you also get to signal your commitment to that same order.
And so it's this paradoxical sense in which these zones represent contending impulses that actually, ironically, bind them.
And I would argue in many cases this.
Explains why nuclear order itself has continued to hang together because it has been able to represent two states in the global south,
both a rebellion against and an obedience towards global nuclear order.
And so I think this tension is something that we we should reflect further on when we think about how further examples of nuclear non-proliferation,
proliferation or enunciation might play out.
I just like to end, if I might, if I do still have the time.
Dr. Watson, with with a reflection. Yep. Sorry, very briefly, if you would write.
Let me do this, let me leave the question of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon free zones for the for the questions,
perhaps, but try to offer some brief concluding remarks and and show what I think is at least the most low hanging fruit before us.
The thing for me at the moment is it seems that we have an arrangement from below with nuclear weapon free zones in various regions,
and then we have a treaty on the prohibitions for nuclear weapons from above.
And these two things need to marry and meet with the NPT somewhere in between.
One of the most simple ways or one of the low hanging fruit, it seems to me, is, is this and perhaps I'll leave it here.
The African nuclear weapon free zone and the latter the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone have have been ratified by China.
France, Russia and the United Kingdom. The United States has signed but not ratified the African nuclear weapon free zone.
Same for the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom.
The United States has signed but not ratified. Surely one of the key steps we could be taking in the immediate term,
perhaps at this opportune moment with the Biden administration is getting the United
States to ratify the African and the South Pacific nuclear weapon free zone treaty.
That, it would seem to me, would be a key practical step that could be taken towards the question of nuclear renunciation.
So lots to ponder on in the comments, lots to move forward on,
but I would suggest ultimately that if we want to understand how nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear containment, even disarmament works,
then we ought to cast our eye to the places it actually has worked, continues to work,
and think from those places how the lessons that have been learnt and the contradictions
under which those lessons have taken place might apply in a more broad sense.
Thanks. Look forward to questions and to engaging further. Please do reach out to me if you have any questions after this conference.