Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 30 Years On

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the opening for signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. As we mark this milestone, the Co-ordinator of the Methodist Peace Fellowship, Liddy Buswell, considers its importance.

How many times have nuclear bombs been detonated? If you stopped someone in the street, they might say twice: at the end of the Second World War, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet the reality is that over 2,000 nuclear weapons have been tested since the first weapon was tested in July 1945.

America was the first nation to successfully test a nuclear weapon, but it was not alone in the race to split the atom. After the Second World War, Britain had its own period of development and testing. Archives make clear this was achieved through taking advantage of colonial land ownership, without consent or respect for local people.

One location the UK conducted significant nuclear weapons tests was on the Pacific island of Kiribati (then known as Christmas Island), in 1957 and 1958. Local people have stories of being covered with a tarpaulin on a tennis court or being taken to watch Disney films on a boat out at sea, woefully unprepared for the nuclear explosions taking place around them, and terrified. Meanwhile, 20,000 British service personnel were also involved. They found themselves often ordered to perform tasks dangerously close to radioactive material, without any form of protection. This gave rise to serious moral, health-related, and environmental questions.

Many people believe that nuclear weapons are too political to be discussed in the pulpit. But nuclear weapons raise major moral, ethical and theological issues. They indiscriminately destroy the lives of beloved children of God and damage the Earth that we are called to steward – often beyond repair. I believe that Jesus would challenge those who say peace is established by these weapons to think more deeply about what type of peace is built when islanders living in Kiribati, as well as many other Pacific Islands, alongside Indigenous communities in 15 countries, including Australia, Kazakhstan and Algeria, all have to deal with particularly severe and ongoing consequences of the tests.

International diplomatic and legal processes took steps towards recognising the damage caused by these tests. A Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT), covering testing in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater, was introduced in 1963. This was added to by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which opened for signature 30 years ago, in September 1996, under international pressure to ban all nuclear test explosions under International Law, this time imposing a zero-testing norm, including underground. These developments helped lay the foundations for the significant Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2021), which named the long-term legacy of such tests as a major issue needing action.

But, this week, as we remember the global ban on testing, I won’t just be celebrating the legal and technical milestone it marks. Instead, I will reflect upon the theological points it reminds us of. It’s my belief that the Kingdom of God does not contain nuclear weapons. As we mark this anniversary, let us use it as a springboard to show that progress is possible and that we should take more steps together to build a more peaceful world, in which nature is protected and no human being is seen as disposable.

Co-ordinator of the Methodist Peace Fellowship, Liddy Buswell