Although, as the delegations in question were keen to point out, they didn't actually "withdraw" the resolution - they were just not going to "press for taking action" this year. By carefully avoiding the word "withdraw" in their statement, the delegations hoped to keep the P5 and the CD aficionados in the Non-Aligned Movement on their toes until next year.
Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Maybe the CD doesn't really matter - we don't really know. But more than anything, probably, this tiny little diplomatic victory shows how bogged down in minuscule detail the international disarmament machinery finds itself.
Go to the sports pub called Manchester a few blocs away from the UN Head Quarters in New York, and you will see that everyone understands - indeed takes for granted - that if you want to achieve something, well, then you better start moving in that direction. Like score a goal or two. Inside the diplomatic maze of the UN, for some reason, this commonsensical logical deduction doesn't seem to apply.
Most of the countries in the UN have long ago committed themselves to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and no one seems to deny that there has been little, if any, progress towards this goal in the CD for the last 15 years. However, even the oh so feeble attempt to kickstart substantial negotiations on a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons made by Norway, Austria and Mexico, triggered knee-jerk skepticism from a range of countries which, truth to be told, seem to be suspiciously comfortable with status quo.
Yeah, suspiciously comfortable with the fact that there are still 20 500 nuclear weapons in the world - enough such weapons to blow the entire world back to the stone age, perhaps even further. Arguments vary, and where New NAM believe that there is an inherent flaw in the institutional set up of the CD - particularly the fact that the consensus rule is applied not only to the conclusion, but also to the beginning of negotiations on nuclear disarmament - the skeptics, and particularly some key countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, argues that the problem is not so much institutional as political.
At the end of the day, they are probably both equally right and equally wrong. One the one hand, it seems to be true that the issue of multilateral nuclear disarmament has been held hostage to some kind of consenus tyranny in the international disarmament machinery.
However, it seems also to be true that a change in the institutional set up of the CD cannot itself provide for substantive negotiations of a ban on nuclear weapons. As leading countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, such as Egypt and Indonesia, are right to point out, the fact that there are still 20,500 nuclear weapons in the world is not only an institutional, but also a political problem - which can only be solved when government leaders and foreign ministers in both nuclear armed and nuclear free countries are pushed to the negotiating table.
In a sense, when it comes to nuclear disarmament, the UN First Committee seems to be characterised by the same mindboggling impotency that the CD is marked by, and the discussion that has been going on in the First Committee these last four weeks seems to have been nothing more than a deferral of global proportions. Essentially, the debate seems to be a pseudo debate, which serves no other purpose than preventing substantial discussion.
Instead of instructing them to get down to the real issues; instead of ordering them to deliver what they promised their voters they would do; instead of telling them to find a solution to the nuclear problem - state leaders and foreign ministers all over the world seem to continue to instruct their sober-suited diplomatic servants to do exactly nothing else than they did last year, the year before that, and all the way back to the Cold War.
Instead of instructing them to get down to the real issues; instead of ordering them to deliver what they promised their voters they would do; instead of telling them to find a solution to the nuclear problem - state leaders and foreign ministers all over the world seem to continue to instruct their sober-suited diplomatic servants to do exactly nothing else than they did last year, the year before that, and all the way back to the Cold War.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that state leaders and foreign ministers all over the world have become all too comfortable with doing nothing. They seem to think that they don't run a political risk by closing their eyes to the fact that there are still 20,500 nuclear weapons in the world. Well, here's a message to any politician who doesn't think this problem requires a solution: We'll make sure to get you into trouble if you don't act.
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