The global race to rearmament is endangering international peace and undermining decades of progress on disarmament, the United Nations has heard.
The Holy See’s envoy to the United Nations, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, appealed for a renewed commitment to disarmament during an address to the UN General Assembly in New York.
He said that the world was witnessing a “perilous resurgence of force and fear” as many nations continue to expand military spending and modernize their arsenals.
He expressed fears of a “new arms race" with the added elements of artificial intelligence and military expansion into outer space - developments he said pose “an unprecedented danger to humanity.”
Eighty years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, trust and dialogue is only decreasing, Caccia said, as he called on governments to return to a “spirit of diplomacy and multilateralism”.
Fighting for "military supremacy", he said, only risked "fuelling even greater hatred and desire for revenge".
In other comments, the Archbishop warned of the growing threat posed by drones and similar autonomous weapons systems, which he said “operate without meaningful human control” and “transgress every legal, security, humanitarian, and ethical boundary.” He called for a legally binding international treaty by 2026 to ban such weapons, Vatican News reports.
Likening nuclear deterrence to an “illusory logic”, the Archbishop reminded nations of their obligations to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals under the non-proliferation treaty.
He urged them to ratify other treaties on the table that are aimed at the reduction of nuclear arms, like the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Instead of funds being directed towards military spending, Caccia said he wanted to see increasing priority be given to poverty reduction, education, and healthcare as he called for “a fundamental change in perspective”.
“There is still time to change course,” he said.
