Matthew Bolton, director of Pace University’s  International Disarmament Institute, published the following op-ed in The Hill on 7 July 2017 on the new Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

While U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley condemned the North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test this week at the U.N. Security Council meeting and threatened military action, a very different conversation was happening elsewhere in the building.

The majority of the world’s countries were negotiating a new treatybanning nuclear weapons, which was adopted today by a vote of 122 in favor and only one vote against and one abstention. It is the most significant development in nuclear politics since the end of the Cold War, placing nuclear weapons in the same category of international law as other weapons of mass destruction or that cause unacceptable harm: chemical and biological weapons, landmines, and cluster munitions.

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