On January 22, 2021, two days after Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, nations around the world celebrated the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This international treaty makes it illegal to “develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use, or threaten to use nuclear weapons.” The treaty was negotiated at the United Nations and has the support of over 120 countries, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movements, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and millions of ordinary people across the globe.

This treaty is the product of work by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace prize. The campaign was inspired by the successful international campaigns that led to the prohibition, under international law, of biological, chemical, and other inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, including landmines and cluster munitions.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government is unwilling to sign the treaty and, in fact, boycotted the negotiations. The other eight nuclear nations – Russia, the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea – will not sign it either. In fact, the U.S. and the other nuclear powers are pursuing new nuclear weapons, even ones designed for battlefield use, rather than pursuing diplomatic courses to de-escalate tensions and reduce the chance that nuclear weapons will ever be used.

The U.S. could help avoid the possibility of a nuclear disaster by entering into arms control agreements with other nations. We can dismantle the 400 missiles that are on hair-trigger alert. We should reinstate and preserve the treaties that have already been negotiated, including the Open Skies Treaty, which increased confidence and transparency on military activities of states through information gathering from aerial imaging (Trump withdrew the U.S. on November 22, 2020), and the Intermediate-Range Forces Treaty (INF), a treaty that bans missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,400 miles (Trump withdrew the U.S. on August 2, 2019).

President Biden and Russian President Putin agreed to extend the New START Treaty, which expired February 5, 2021, to another five years. This limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 for each country. As the cost of the escalation of the arms race and the modernizing and developing of nuclear weapons and other weaponry continues, the real priorities facing our human family such as the fight against poverty, the promotion of peace, the undertaking of educational, ecological, and healthcare projects, and the development of human rights are relegated to second place.

Disarming nuclear weapons is not a difficult process, since we have the technical expertise and verification procedures in place. The Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, is capable of disarming thousands of nuclear weapons in a relatively short time.  In 1991, some 4,000 nukes in Europe were disarmed without a treaty under the cooperative leadership of President George Walker Bush, President Mikhail Gorbachev, William Perry, Sam Nunn, and Senator Richard Lugar.

We can continue this process of disarmament, but we need the political will and popular support to do so.

As citizens, we can call on our legislators to take immediate steps to alleviate the threat of nuclear war. In working toward this goal, we must confront the reality that one of the reasons our government has failed to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction from our arsenals is that there are 26 powerful corporations that profit from making nuclear weapons. And these companies have significant control over the re-election budgets of many legislators.

And lastly, the U.S., the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, should take the lead in convening talks with the other eight nuclear nations with the goal of working toward the elimination of these horrendous weapons and becoming signatories of the new landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Impossible? Let us remember the words of Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Marie Braun is the chair of the End War Committee of Women Against Military Madness and is active locally with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.