This year’s Nobel peace prize rewards a nice but pointless idea

IT IS easy to see why the Nobel Committee decided to award this year’s peace prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. The North Korea crisis has brought nuclear weapons to centre stage again and the campaign group has succeeded in producing a nuclear-ban treaty, which reached the United Nations in July when 122 out 193 countries voted in favour. It has been signed by 53 member states since the ratification process began on September 20th and will go into effect after 50 states have formally ratified it. But then what?

In all probability, not much. The nine nuclear-weapons states (the five permanent members of the Security Council—America, Russia, Britain, France, China—together with the “unofficial” ones—India, Pakistan, Israel and now North Korea) had nothing to do with the negotiations and boycotted the vote. America, France and Britain have declared the treaty “incompatible with the policy of nuclear deterrence which has been essential to keeping the peace for over 70 years”. They added that it failed to “address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary”—or to do anything to help solve the problem of North Korea’s nuclear programme. Close allies of the five permanent members, including NATO members, have been similarly disdainful.