Resumo

PRETORIUS, Joelien  e  SAUER, Tom. The elimination of nuclear weapons in the context of outlawing war. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2025, vol.65, n.4, pp.1058-1077. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2025/v65n4a6.

Outlawing nuclear weapons (as done by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) and thereafter eliminating nuclear weapons should be placed in the context of outlawing war (as done by the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928). The International Humanitarian Law justification for banning nuclear weapons run up against the idea that nuclear weapons are essential to deter wars in general and keep nuclear peace in particular. In this article discursively the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will be contextualized in a broader set of arguments that reject the idea that nuclear weapons keep the peace. Banning nuclear weapons is not simply an issue of not using or threatening to use a massively destructive and indiscriminate weapon in war, but an important step in rejecting conventional wars of aggression behind a nuclear shield as national policy. The scholarship revising the Kellogg-Briand Pact's impact provides another way to think about nuclear weapons and ius ad bellum. It starts by taking the outlawry of war and the new legal order that it brought about as the explicit political context that the TPNW is born into and asks what such a contextualization might mean for the political work that needs to be done around the TPNW to reach its endgame, namely a world without nuclear weapons. Five ways in which such a contextualization can help the TPNW are discussed in the article. The system set up by the United Nations to achieve peace through instruments, such as collective security, mediation, and peacekeeping, is undermined by the reliance on nuclear deterrence. When nuclear weapons are off the table, these instruments are back in play and have a greater chance of success. The TPNWfits in history as an outflow of the outlawry of war, as another positive peace measure to consolidate an order where wars of aggression have been outlawed. Contrary to nuclear deterrence, the TPNW is rooted in the same normative discourse that underpinned the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Palavras-chave : Elimination of nuclear weapons; war; Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons; nuclear deterrence; Kellogg-Briand Pact; United Nations Charter; ius in bello; ius ad bellum; Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

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