Topic: 2025 – No First Use Policies and Nuclear Disarmament
Country: Lithuania
Delegate Name: Siddharth Gatla
Delegate: Siddharth Gatla
Country: Lithuania
Committee: DISEC
Topic: No First Use Policies and Nuclear Disarmament
School: Okemos High School
No-First-Use policies are nuclear policies in which a country declares they’ll never resort to nuclear weapons first in a conflict. This policy only applies to only nuclear-armed states and it is built based on commitments. These countries include the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Israel. These countries are extremely populous and roughly account for 45% of the world’s population, which is why nuclear war is so detrimental. First-use-policies and nuclear disarmament reduce the risk of nuclear war and help ease international tensions. The UN has done several actions on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation such as establishing the NPT. The NPT is a multinational treaty that commits nuclear-armed countries to pursue disarmament and non-nuclear-armed countries to forgo acquiring nuclear weapons. The UN also adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which bans development, testing, producing, stationing, stockpiling, using or threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
Lithuania recognizes the need to address Nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation amid current tensions with Russia and Belarus. Lithuania currently does not hold any nuclear weapons of any kind. Lithuania has accepted the NPT and maintains agreements with the IAEA to ensure nuclear materials are not used for harmful purposes. Lithuania also ratified the Comprehensive-Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1999 and participates in many nonproliferation regimes and agreements. Lithuania strongly supports the disarmament of nuclear weapons, however Lithuania will not sign the TPNW because signing it will expose strategic vulnerabilities to Russia and Belarus.
Lithuania recommends that the UN uses a No-First-Use policy in which all nine countries sign the agreement. If all nine countries sign it, tensions between countries like The United States and Russia, and India and Pakistan, would ease. Countries wouldn’t have to constantly fear nuclear war and it would increase the mutual trust countries have with one another. Lithuania also supports a ban on non-nuclear countries holding nuclear weapons for nuclear countries. This is seen in the Belarusian tactical reinforcement in which Russian nuclear bombs are being held in Belarus. This reinforcement destabilizes the tensions in Eastern Europe and threatens international peace. A ban on this would reduce the spread of nuclear weaponry, and prevent potential wars from happening. Lithuania supports every effort to reduce the nuclear armory of nuclear-nations as long as the efforts aren’t harmful.
