Sarkar Publishes Op-Ed on Biden’s Policy on Nuclear Ban Treaty
On February 7, 2021, Jayita Sarkar, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University (BU), published an op-ed in Lawfare on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and the United States’ own nuclear weapons policy.
In the article, titled “How to Support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Without Signing It,” Sarkar discusses the treaty itself as well as how the Biden administration can support the tenants of the agreement. The treaty is the first multilateral legal document to outlaw nuclear weapons; however, the U.S. and other countries that possess nuclear weapons have long opposed TPNW. Sarkar argues that even if the U.S. doesn’t fully support the treaty, it can at least provide proper humanitarian relief to those affected by its nuclear weapons and nuclear explosive devices through its own policies – expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), for example.
An excerpt:
By selectively supporting the TPNW through Article 6 commitments while not acceding to it, the Biden administration can be at the forefront of an anti-racist global nuclear agenda. It can promote the U.S. image abroad, which has been tarnished by the Trump administration’s four years of isolationist “America First” rhetoric. It could also win support at home. According to a 2020 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 66 percent of Americans want a world without nuclear weapons.
The full op-ed can be read on Lawfare‘s website.
Jayita Sarkar is Assistant Professor at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where she is also the founding director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She teaches diplomatic and political history at graduate and undergraduate levels. Professor Sarkar’s areas of research expertise are 20th century South Asia, history of U.S. foreign relations, politics of nuclear technologies, and connected partitions. Her book, Ploughshares & Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War, (Forthcoming, Cornell University Press, 2022), examines the first forty years of India’s nuclear program through the prisms of geopolitics and technopolitics. Read more about Professor Sarkar on her faculty profile.