Link to article: https://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0006910856
The Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga said that Japan would not sign the U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons. The treaty is supposed to take effect sometime in January. Although they will not sign the treaty, Japan did say that they would continue to pursue a more realistic approach to reduce nuclear weapons. “We have no intention of signing it,” Suga said at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors. “It is appropriate to steadily and pragmatically pursue a path toward nuclear disarmament,” he added, indicating his intention to continue working as a bridge between nuclear powers and non-nuclear nations.
While I am glad that the U.N. is working on finding a way to ban nuclear weapons, it will only ever fully go into effect if every country agrees to it. As long as one country has nuclear weapons, every country is going to want to have nuclear weapons. Because it’s the countries who have the nuclear weapons that have all the power, and no one is going to give that power up unless everyone decides to. So until every country agrees to lay their nuclear weapons aside, no one is going to be signing that U.N. treaty.
The United Nations is an example of an IGO, which is something that we have learned in class. The United Nations is a rare IGO because it deals with all four IGO categories; Political, Economic, Military and Cultural. This current issue of nuclear weapons is a military issue. The banning of nuclear weapons is an attempt to help keep world peace, which is why the United Nations was originally created. Sadly, the United Nations is probably not going to get their world peace in January, because no country is going to end up signing the banning of nuclear weapons treaty.