Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 63, March - April 2002

Editorial

Politics v. Procedures: Implementing the NPT

By Rebecca Johnson

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states parties will be gathering in New York on April 8 for their first meeting since May 2000, when they unanimously adopted a comprehensive document detailing the tasks and obligations for fully implementing the Treaty. At that time, they had deplored the 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia, provided diplomatic language on Iraqi and North Korean non-compliance, and reaffirmed the goals of the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East. They emphasised the importance of the strengthened IAEA safeguards, and touched on issues such as the transshipment of radioactive materials and the environmental harm associated with the nuclear fuel cycle.

With regard to disarmament, the NPT parties endorsed an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament," as part of a 13-step plan of action for the implementation of Article VI. Other steps included: implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); negotiations and conclusion of a fissile materials production ban; a moratorium on testing pending entry into force of the CTBT; deeper unilateral and bilateral US-Russian reductions in nuclear forces; transparency (i.e. the provision of more open information on nuclear capabilities and the implementation of disarmament agreements); reductions in non-strategic nuclear weapons; concrete measures to reduce the operational status and diminish the role of nuclear weapons (understood to refer to de-alerting and doctrines dependent on the potential first use of nuclear weapons); the principle of irreversibility (i.e. the guarantee that nuclear reductions will be permanent); five-power disarmament approaches (stressing the obligations laid by the Treaty on all the nuclear-weapon states to work seriously toward their own disarmament); and further initiatives to place fissile materials (declared "excess") permanently under safeguards to put them out of bounds for future use in nuclear weapons.

This is a clear menu of steps and measures to be undertaken, though there are no target dates or timetables, which some consider to be a weakness. We know what needs to be done; the problem is how to develop the political conditions and will to do it. The important problems do not concern procedures but politics and priorities. The fundamental question we need to keep to the fore is this: how can we use the NPT review process to enhance overall national, regional and international security and discourage, curb and prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons? This requires disarmament, not just counter-proliferation.

Non-compliance has two sides: the non-nuclear weapon states, Iraq and North Korea, who violated their commitments; and the nuclear weapon states, who after more than 30 years still possess sizeable nuclear arsenals. India and Pakistan, which post-9/11 US policy has practically institutionalised as non-NPT nuclear-weapon possessors, continue to face each other over an uneasy line of control in Kashmir, both eagerly producing as much nuclear bomb material as they can. Meanwhile, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva remains deadlocked, with insufficient political will to move forward on either banning the production of fissile materials or averting the looming spectre of the weaponisation of space. The Middle East is becoming more and more of a tinderbox. Iraq needs to be opened up to IAEA and UN inspections, not stretched on a rack for carpet bombing. Ariel Sharon's aggressive policies have slashed wide open a wound that had looked set to heal a few short years back. Now Israelis and Palestinians slaughter each other's children in ever greater numbers, breeding deeper hatreds to kill the possibility of peace and feed new generations of state and non-state terror-mongers.

Obstacles to achieving nuclear disarmament are also mounting up. Much will depend on how international relations and US perspectives change, for good or ill, as the complexities of combating terrorism sink in. While it may be obvious to most people that reinforcing the non-proliferation and arms control regimes needs to be part of any strategy against terrorism, the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) issued in January 2002 is indicative of the opposite approach. In particular, there is a real danger that the "war against terrorism" will be used to justify individualistic, uncoordinated and unverifiable actions based on national interests which are defined in narrow, military terms.

The NPR proposes a 'New Triad' consisting of offensive strike systems (both nuclear and non-nuclear); defences (active and passive); and a "revitalised defence infrastructure that will provide new capabilities in a timely fashion to meet emerging threats". It should, of course, be welcomed that the Pentagon is finally moving away from cold war thinking. The Clinton administration squandered the opportunity to do this when it should have been leading the way in the 1990s. The problem is that Bush's friends are coming up with overly simplistic, even dangerous, responses to the serious and necessary security questions.

The NPR upgrades the strategic role of non-nuclear weapons, but it also blurs the line between the use of nuclear and non-nuclear forces. The most crucial - and disturbing - change is the reorientation of the US defence infrastructure based on expanding capabilities rather than responding to threats. This enables the Pentagon to support its defence industry indefinitely, make unlimited financial claims based on 'necessity', and drive its own, solitary, expensive, escalatory arms race to keep all options open to beat all imaginable - not just credible or possible - future threats. National defence policies should complement and reinforce, not undermine and destabilise international security regimes. It is possible to make them compatible, but not by keeping every option indefinitely open.

Also worrying is how the Bush government's hostility to the CTBT and the revival of debates about holding open the option to conduct nuclear testing is undermining the credibility not only of the test ban, but of the NPT as well. Assertions in March 2000 by the director of Sandia National Laboratories, Paul Robinson, that the US needed new nuclear weapons for the "deterrence requirements of a multipolar, widely proliferated world", were echoed after September 11 by an article in the Washington Times by Thomas Woodrow, who argued that low yield tactical nuclear weapons should be used in Afghanistan. The idea, dismissed at the time by Colin Powell, reappears in the classified sections of the NPR, leaked in mid-March. These classified portions also emphasised the "no holds barred" threat of use of nuclear weapons, not only against nuclear-armed adversaries, but against non-nuclear NPT parties not in alliance with nuclear possessors, in contradiction to the negative security assurances endorsed in UNSC 984 (April 11, 1995), regarded by most NPT parties as guarantees that helped to underpin the indefinite extension of the NPT. In modifying its nuclear doctrine in these ways, the US is deliberately lowering the nuclear-use threshold and undermining the political taboo that has blocked the use of nuclear weapons for more than 55 years.

The fashionable argument against multilateralism seems to be that non-state actors don't join in. The argument for keeping nuclear-use options open - so-called "strategic ambiguity" - seems to be to shore up deterrence by keeping adversaries uncertain of the response. But if US military might is not a sufficient deterrent, does anyone seriously imagine that the additional brandishing of nuclear weapons would be? On the contrary, canny terrorists would enjoy provoking Washington to use nuclear weapons. To get the US to breach the nuclear taboo and cross that all-important threshold would be viewed as a challenge and incentive.

Nor should multilateral negotiations be regarded as irrelevant in dealing with terrorism. Even when sub-national groups are not direct participants, arms control can contribute to security in three important ways: firstly, by putting in place mechanisms to monitor, curb or - preferably - to deny access to the weapons and materials, technology and training, thereby greatly increasing the costs and difficulties for groups attempting to purchase or develop weapons of mass destruction capabilities; secondly, multilateralism underpins international norms of behaviour and increases the political costs of violating them; thirdly, while suicide-bombers and terrorists may not care about such norms or worry about the consequences of their transgression, it is in the national security interests of almost every state (for a variety of reasons) to ensure that the means employed to oppose global threats to peace do not destroy beneficial international structures and return the world to brutal and limitless chaos.

What, then, needs to be stressed by NPT parties when they meet? In the light of the NPR, security assurances are likely to be a priority for many. Controlling tactical nuclear weapons has also become more urgent than ever. Since the May 2000 agreements on tactical nuclear weapons originated simultaneously in statements from the European Union, the NATO-5, the New Agenda and the non-aligned states, the weapon states standing in the way must not be permitted to block progress. Russia wanted the bilateral reductions announced at Crawford to be irreversible, transparent and verifiable. This application of important principles from NPT 2000 should be welcomed by everyone - and applied to all arms control. The nuclear testing moratoria must be endorsed as a binding commitment at the highest level. Payments to the CTBT Organisation must be maintained to ensure a credible verification system. A further attempt should be made to get the P-5 to commit to a moratorium on fissile materials production.

Ultimately, though, fulfilment of the NPT requires political action, not procedural discussions, and for that civil society has to work harder outside diplomacy in order to create the conditions for diplomacy to work.