The Atomic Age

The Vatican representative to the IAEA, Monsignor Janusz Stanisław Urbańczyk, says the efforts of the international community to utilize the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons to make the world safer “have not been sufficient.” The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is preparing for the review conference on the treaty, which happens every five years.

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Urbańczyk said the Vatican, which signed the NPT in 1971, was taking part in the preparatory meeting “to lend its moral authority” to the process.

“The Holy See cannot but lament the fact that the potential devastation caused by the use of nuclear weapons so clearly identified over 40 years ago has not been relegated to history,” the diplomat said. “In other words, the efforts of the international community to utilize the NPT to make the world safer have not been sufficient.”

He said the preparatory meetings and the 2020 review conference itself should “make concrete and consensus-based progress” to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and work towards “the ultimate goal of abolishing all nuclear weapons.”

“Pope Francis, following in the footsteps of his venerable predecessors, has repeatedly called on the international community, not only to seek the end of war, conflict and strife, but to embrace forcefully and advance peace,”  Urbańczyk said, “the value of peace must be recognized as an ‘active virtue’, calling for the engagement and cooperation of each individual and society as a whole.”

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In March, the United Nations General Assembly hosted a conference in New York to work towards a treaty banning nuclear weapons, which was boycotted by all the nuclear powers.

Francis wrote a personal letter to that conference, offering his support, and calling for a “collective and concerted” multilateral effort to eliminate nuclear weapons,” adding that international peace and stability “cannot be based on a false sense of security, on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, or on simply maintaining a balance of power.”

Read more at Vatican: Nuclear weapons give “false sense of security”

Projectile blasts off just after midnight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles – the second in a week

The US has test-fired a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile from a site in California, the second such launch in a week, amid rising tensions with North Korea. 

The unarmed Minuteman 3 missile has a range of around 8,000 miles, putting it within striking distance of Pyongyang.

It blasted off just after midnight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and delivered a single projectile to a target approximately 4,200 miles away at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, US Air Force Global Strike Command said. 

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Colonel Chris Moss, Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing commander, said of the first test launch that it was “an important demonstration of our nation’s nuclear deterrent capabilities”.

“These Minuteman launches are essential to verify the status of our national nuclear force and to demonstrate our national nuclear capabilities”, he said.

The tests come amid rising tensions between North Korea and the US.

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Washington has expressed concern about Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, and recent missile tests by the North suggest it is making progress toward developing a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the US.

In response, the US has sent warships to the region to deter North Korea from conducting another nuclear test.

Donald Trump said on Monday he might be willing to meet with the country’s dictator, Kim Jong-un.

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Rising tensions are also pushing Japan to consider dropping its pacifist charter.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday he hoped the first-ever change to the country’s 70-year-old pacifist constitution would be enacted by 2020, and that it would enshrine the status of the military.

Under the constitution’s Article Nine, Japan forever renounced its right to wage war and banned maintenance of a military, though successive governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defence.

Japanese troops have taken part in international peace-keeping operations, as well as a non-combat reconstruction mission in Iraq from 2004 to 2006.

Read more at US tests nuclear-capable missile with the range to strike North Korea