25the United Nations on July 7, 2017. ICAN
was an instigator of this treaty.
ICAN had taken a page from ICBL,
the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines. This group achieved a treaty
in 1997. That same year, ICBL and its
leader, Jody Williams, an American
activist, won the Nobel Peace Prize. The
United States did not join the landmine
treaty, and hasnot. President Clinton
explained that the U.S. needed its mil-
lion mines in the DMZ between the
Koreas. Williams said that Clinton was
“on the wrong side of humanity” and,
for good measure, a “weenie.”
The United States did not agree to
the nuclear treaty either, and neither did
the other nuclear powers, and nor did
their allies. In concert with Britain and
France, the U.S. issued a statement: “We
do not intend to sign, ratify or ever
become party to it,” meaning the treaty.
(The word “ever” is particularly strong.)
“This initiative clearly disregards the
realities of the international security
environment. Accession to the ban treaty
is incompatible with the policy of nuclear
deterrence, which has been essential to
keeping the peace in Europe and North
Asia for over 70 years.”
Security and disarmament. The role of
deterrence in peace. These things have
been debated by the Nobel committee, and
its laureates, and others of us, for a veryT
HE world has been nervous
about nuclear bombs ever since
August 1945, when the United
States dropped two of them on
Japan, thus ending World War II. (The
bombs killed about 130,000 people; the
war killed about 60 million.) Some
periods have been more nervous than
others. We are going through a marked-
ly nervous one now.
North Korea’s psychotic regime is
testing nukes at will. Kim Jong-un, the
dictator, is engaging in a war of words
with the American president, Donald J.
Trump. Trump promised “fire and fury
like the world has never seen.” Kim did
not promise fury, but, according to
Pyongyang’s official translation, he did
say, “I will surely and definitely tame the
mentally deranged U.S. dotard with
fire.” (An Oxford dictionary defines
“dotard” as “an old person, especially
one who has become weak or senile.”)Into this atmosphere steps the Nor -
wegian Nobel Committee, awarding
Alfred Nobel’s peace prize for 2017 to
the International Campaign to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons. The group’s chosen
acronym is “ICAN,” leaving out the
“W” for “Weapons.” You pronounce it
“I can,” which conveys a message of
self-confidence and possibility. Based in
Geneva, ICAN is a coalition of hun-
dreds of civil-society groups around the
world. Its symbol is a missile being
broken within a peace sign.
The Nobel committee, in its annual
press release, said this: ICAN “is receiv-
ing the award for its work to draw atten-
tion to the catastrophic humanitarian
consequences of any use of nuclear
weapons and for its ground-breaking
efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohi-
bition of such weapons.”
ICAN has helped convene confer-
ences whose purpose is to highlight
the devastation that nuclear attacks
would wreak (and did, in Japan). You
would not think this needed highlight-
ing. When I was growing up, the peace
movement had a bumper sticker:
“One nuclear bomb can ruin your
whole day.”
And what of the treaty alluded to by the
Nobel committee, in the statement quoted
above? That’s the Treaty on the Pro -
hibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted byNo Nukes,
They Say
The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize and
the momentous issues it raisesBY JAY NORDLINGEROMERMESSINGER The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons protests near the U.S. embassy in Berlin, September 13, 2017./GETTYIMAGESText