Egeland, Kjolv --- "Nuclear abolition from Baruch to the ban" [2019] ELECD 937; in Bailliet, M. Cecilia (ed), "Research Handbook on International Law and Peace" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 244

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Law and Peace

Editor(s): Bailliet, M. Cecilia

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Nuclear abolition from Baruch to the ban

Author(s): Egeland, Kjølv

Number of pages: 23

Abstract/Description:

The relationship between nuclear disarmament and peace is close but uneasy. On the one hand, nuclear weapons are indiscriminate implements of mass killing, developed to destroy whole cities. Nuclear disarmament is by many viewed as a prerequisite of peace in both the positive and negative senses of the term. But on the other hand, some argue that the prospect of a devastating nuclear conflict is precisely the reason major powers have not waged war on each other since 1945. Nuclear weapons, in this view, foster peace. These conflicting understandings of the relationship between nuclear weapons and peace have both found expression in the institutional and legal framework for nuclear arms control and disarmament. In recent years, non-nuclear-weapon states and civil society actors have sought to resolve the apparent contradictions of the nuclear regime by bringing into force a treaty unequivocally prohibiting nuclear weapons.