“The victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remind us that the threat posed by nuclear weapons is not a thing of the past, but still represents one of the greatest existential dangers for mankind,” Kurz said yesterday. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that security can be based on nuclear weapons and mutual threats of annihilation. “It takes a fundamental rethink, away from nuclear deterrence,” said the Chancellor. “We have to preventively eliminate this existential risk,” said Foreign Minister Schallenberg.
The green anti-atomic energy spokesman Martin Litschauer, in turn, used the anniversary for sharp criticism of the nuclear power. They would have “wasted an unspeakable US $ 71 billion on the nuclear bomb business” during the corona pandemic.
“Prohibition contract”
Schallenberg sees “reason for hope” in the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty that came into force on January 22nd. “The new international law prohibition of nuclear weapons due to their unacceptable humanitarian effects and uncontrollable risks is a milestone and a sign of how to turn away from nuclear deterrence,” said the Foreign Minister.
The first meeting of the signatory states will take place in Vienna in 2022. The Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2017. The treaty prohibits the development, production, testing, acquisition, storage, transport, deployment and use of nuclear weapons. However, the agreement is boycotted by all those who are not nuclear.
