Heinz Gärtner spoke at the conference „The Neutrals and the Bomb“, in Tokyo on December 14/15, 2019. The conference was organized by the “Waseda Institute for Advanced Study” and the “National Institute for Advanced Study” in Japan. Several neutral and non-aligned states (including Sweden and Switzerland) had nuclear weapons programs after 1945 before they joined the Non-Proliferation-Treaty of 1970. One exception was Austria. Its State Treaty of 1955 states that “Austria shall not possess, construct or experiment with any atomic weapon”. This historical background made it possible that Austria became one of the initiators of the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” that was adopted by 122 states 2017.

At the July 7 United Nations Conference, 122 participants voted in favor of a treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons. No nuclear-weapon states nor their allies participated (except the Netherlands, which voted against). The Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty expresses concern about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and calls for their complete elimination. Take Austria for example, which can be seen as representative of the position of nonnuclear weapon states today. After declaring its neutrality in the second half of the 1950s, Austria became a model for the concept of a geographic zone without nuclear weapons in Central Europe—a concept known the Rapacki Plan, after the Polish foreign minister who expanded upon the idea and formally introduced it to the world. Because of the emerging concept of Mutual Assured Destruction, however, the plan was not implemented, although it never died. Since 2010, Austria became a major sponsor of initiatives regarding the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, and an “Austrian Pledge”—which later became the “Humanitarian Pledge”—was signed by 127 states in 2014. The humanitarian pledge calls for a ban on nuclear weapons because of the unacceptable consequences of a detonation, which include tremendous loss of life and injury, radiation poisoning, and the possibility of a nuclear winter—all of which would be inflicted upon not just the combatant states, but upon neighbors and bystanders. Austria hosted one of the three conferences on this issue.