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Editorial Essay by Rebecca Johnson
Does Britain need to invest some £20-25 billion in a new generation of nuclear weapons, as being promoted by the Ministry of Defence and its contractors? The UK Parliamentary Defence Committee has opened a formal Inquiry, and recently asked a range of experts to consider the strategic context in 2025, when the current Trident nuclear system is due to be decommissioned.
Those advocating a nuclear follow-on to Trident gave as their main argument that the future was "unknowable", that unexpected military threats could emerge, and that nuclear weapons were needed as Britain's "insurance policy". In effect, they are saying that there is no need for nuclear weapons now, but one day there might be.
In considering the strategic context for 2025 it is necessary to recognise that military threats are security challenges that did not get addressed effectively at a much earlier stage. The major threats to our security and well-being these days have social and political roots rather than being traditionally military or Westphalian: environmental degradation, climate change and depletion of agricultural or water resources; poverty, hunger, overpopulation, pandemics like AIDS or avian flu; failing states nearby or the disintegration of social institutions at home; non-state armed groups and terrorists, especially if equipped with biological, nuclear or radiological weapons; organised crime, gangs, warlords; or trafficking in drugs, people, armaments and weapons materials and technologies. In what may appear to be internal or 'civil' wars, the ostensible conflict may be territorial or religious, but the perpetrators are too often poorly educated and/or unemployed males aged 15-30, armed with quantities of easily acquired guns, spurred on by unscrupulous profiteers and corrupt politicians.
One look at this widely accepted list of problems is enough to convince that nuclear weapons are at best irrelevant and at worst an expensive distraction to solving the world's most serious challenges, yet they continue to pose threats of their own that decisionmakers in the major states ignore at their peril. In my evidence to the Defence Committee, I put forward two possible scenarios for the near future - accelerated proliferation or sustainable nonproliferation.
The insurance analogy of the nuclear weapon advocates neatly panders to people's fear of not having money to pay for damage from an unexpected calamity, while portraying insurance as a passive, neutral bystander, with no influence on the formation or acceleration of potential threats or hazards. It also assumes a reasonable ratio between the policy's costs and benefits, and ignores the terrible costs if the failure of the relied-upon insurance requires that the weapons are launched. How seriously would we take the householder who took out an expensive policy against being hit by a one-ton meteor from outer space, while neglecting to have effective insurance in case of fire and not bothering with lower cost practicalities like smoke alarms, fire blankets or fire extinguishers.
Insurance policies do not purport to prevent a catastrophe: we have them to help pay the cost after an unexpected disaster. Moreover, in Britain, most insurance companies refuse to pay out if the householder has failed to install other anti-theft or anti-fire devices. Though the Defence Committee hearings revealed that the 'received wisdom' now promulgated by nuclear weapon advocates is that having Trident is just like having a prudent insurance policy, this is as foolish as stacking brushwood and other inflammables in the basement and attic, close to a number of oil and kerosene lamps, on the grounds that these might be needed as an insurance against a power failure in the event of a fire. Matches, anyone?
The future may be unpredictable in some regards, but we are not passive bystanders to whom future events and conditions will just occur, willy nilly. We are agents whose actions (and non-actions) play a major role in shaping the kind of future our children and grandchildren will have to deal with. Perhaps they'd rather not be saddled with an 'insurance policy' that combines a hefty mortgage with provocatively large quantities of highly inflammable and toxic materials.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the state of the nonproliferation regime is inherently unstable: it is illogical to expect that the 180-plus non-nuclear weapon states will be content to remain so if new nuclear aspirants cross the threshold and the nuclear weapon possessors continue to emphasise the indispensability of nuclear weapons for their security or status.
This essay, based on my presentation to a Nonproliferation Conference at Wilton Park in December 2005, argues that the rival camps that pit initiatives such as the proliferation security initiative (PSI) or UN Security Council Resolution 1540 against multilateral regimes are missing the point. For sustainable nonproliferation, what is needed is an integrated approach to disarmament that would:
Tehran continually assures us that Iran only wants nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, but, according to most analysts, Iran is pursuing uranium enrichment and a full fuel cycle programme to provide itself with a nuclear weapon option in the future. If President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or some future leader) were to decide that Iran should get nuclear weapons, he would no doubt find it convenient to borrow from the justifications used by those British advocates of a nuclear follow-on to Trident: that the future is unknowable, which necessitates a nuclear weapon insurance policy.
This is, of course, a recipe for proliferation, and can be used to justify practically anything. Unknowable future - we can't risk giving up bioweapons after all (pity about the Biological Weapons Convention). Unknowable future - every couple needs to produce a dozen children (pity about over-population in the world). Unknowable future - put weapons in space (before someone else does). Taken to its logical conclusion, the 'unknowable future' argument could justify every home having its 'independent nuclear deterrent' as an insurance policy, just in case. In some countries, of course, gun culture makes a similar claim, with the consequence that in those societies more guns are used and far more children are accidentally killed by guns than in civilisations where guns are not treated as an insurance policy against random unknowables.
By contrast, the likely dire consequences of climate change can hardly be treated as unknowable. Though scientists may differ over the pace and details, the evidence is all around us that temperatures are rising, the icecaps are melting, and extreme weather, devastated agriculture and the flooding of coastal regions and cities could threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions within a few decades unless we halt the destruction of our environment and make deep cuts in our fossil fuel emissions. Somehow, this knowable threat does not attract the excitement of those responsible for our defence and security nearly as much as the prospect of more nuclear weapons to deter a highly unlikely but remotely conceivable Soviet-style threat in the future.
The primary nuclear threat envisaged during the cold war was military conflict between some or all of the nuclear weapon states leading to all out war and global devastation. In the 21st century, the world now faces four kinds of nuclear-related dangers:
Though nuclear weapons are now viewed by weak leaders as playing a deterrent role in preventing invasion from major powers such as the United States, the cold war weapon states are hard pressed to identify a convincing deterrence role. At a pinch, the possession of nuclear arms is thought to prevent such weapons being used among stable, rationally governed states - though one would hope that stable, rationally governed states would not want to use nuclear weapons in the first place! Prevention of nuclear weapon use in such circumstances would of course be even more certain if no nuclear weapons were deployed at all. In the 21st century threat environment, nuclear deterrence - as opposed to deterrence based on a mix of political, economic, diplomatic and other governmental tools and signals - has no convincing role and needs to be abandoned as a security concept.
The priority should be to reduce the incentives, opportunity and access to nuclear weapons and materials. (Many of the practical prescriptions apply also to biological and chemical weapons, but the core difference is that the use, production and deployment of these weapons have already been comprehensive banned.) Though they cannot be deterred, terrorists and new proliferators can be prevented. The emphasis needs to be on vigilance, better intelligence and stronger action on three levels:
1) Reinforcing the multilateral regimes and underpinning the legal and moral force of existing taboos on use;
2) Choking off access to and supply of the finances and necessary ingredients for nuclear terrorism;
3) Addressing (but not pandering to) those aspects on the demand side that are linked with perceptions of insecurity, such as: regional conflicts; discrimination, especially with regard to access to education and resources; and injustice.
While this will not be a panacea, more needs to be done to understand the causes and drivers of terrorism in order to reduce the threats from fundamentalists, fanatics and armed groups across the board. In addition, health, education and emergency planning policies need to be developed and better resourced, with the aim of limiting the effects and casualties as much as possible. As is beginning to be realised by some governments and alliances, this would have an intrinsic value for security, while also serving to reduce incentives for terrorists.
Nonproliferation norms and agreements had been undermined so much in the past five years, that the 2005 NPT Review Conference was an even greater failure than had been forecast by most analysts. Much time was wasted on procedural wrangling, none of the issues important for nonproliferation and international security were adequately addressed, and the conference ended with no substantive recommendations for strengthening the regime or making progress on any of the crucial issues.
As identified by many NPT parties in their opening statements (albeit with variations in ordering) the seven priority issues were perceived as:
Further institutional issues were also raised, including the deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament, the role of the Security Council, and the need to integrate better enforcement powers with the legal rights and obligations of states party under the treaty. Unwilling to accept the necessity of disarmament, which continues to be rubbished in the halls of the Kremlin and White House, nuclear policy makers have been floundering around for convincing approaches to stem proliferation, coming up with counter-proliferation, military pre-emption, and preventive attack. These are the tactics of denial, and suffer from being perceived as one-sided and unfair.
Nonproliferation without disarmament, the approach favoured by states with nuclear weapons, is unsustainable and has no future. Disarmament without nonproliferation would be impossible to implement. Both must be worked on in a progressive, integrated approach that puts human security at the heart of the endeavours.
With the regimes appearing to falter, some individual states or groups of states turned to plurilateral initiatives to plug the gaps and advance their interests. PSI and Resolution 1540 were developed to address the challenge of non-state actors, which the state-centric regimes were ill-equipped to deal with. While its members were at pains early on to argue that PSI was consistent with international law and the implementation of the UN Security Council Presidential statement of January 31, 1992, others voiced concerns that PSI lacked international legal authority and gave carte blanche to a cartel of states to act outside the institutions established to oversee and implement the WMD regimes. There was initial fear that under the guise of preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, PSI would operate coercively to impede legitimate trading or technology transfers, especially among developing states. In consequence, efforts were made to give PSI broader legitimacy by means of Resolution 1540, adopted by the Security Council on April 28, 2004 after months of tense negotiations, with input from both PSI supporters and sceptics on the Security Council.
The resolution's primary operational purpose was to set out the obligations and powers of states in ensuring the national implementation of WMD-related agreements. It underlined governments' responsibilities for dealing with non-state and industrial activities in order to prevent terrorist acquisition of WMD and "fulfil their obligations in relation to arms control and disarmament and to prevent proliferation in all its aspects of all weapons of mass destruction". Resolution 1540 requires that states refrain from providing any support to non-state actors seeking to develop WMD and that they adopt and enforce domestic controls and national procedures and laws to prevent and prohibit non-state actors from acquiring WMD. It also established for up to two years a Committee of the Security Council to report back on the resolution's implementation. Though missing from early drafts, the multilateral regimes are brought into the preamble of the finalised resolution, which includes a paragraph encouraging Member states "to implement fully the disarmament treaties and agreements to which they are party".
Multilateral treaties provide legal parameters, norms, rules and authority; far from being in competition with unilateral or plurilateral enforcement initiatives, the regimes evolved to include a mix of incentives and controls that may not have been envisaged or possible to negotiate and include in the original treaties. For example, security assurances and export controls provided incentives and supply-side restrictions not contained in the NPT text but widely accepted as integral to the NPT-based regime. While some treaties have been written with national implementation measures explicitly stated, these were missing from the NPT and BWC. After initial scepticism, it is now widely recognised that spelling out the responsibilities and requirements through Resolution 1540 is a sensible way to plug that regime deficit.
Integrated disarmament is capable of providing a coherent, common-security approach to address the threats from nuclear weapons in all their aspects. Deriving in the first instance from negotiated treaties, the concept is embedded in the rule of law. Recognising that disarmament is both an objective and a process over time, the integrated disarmament approach combines parallel work on three levels: horizontal proliferation, vertical proliferation, and preventing non-state terrorists from gaining access to the materials or weapons.
Across these levels, integrated disarmament would employ four types of tools:
Nuclear weapons are a 20th century armament with 19th century military maps and mindsets. To be effective in the context of the 21st century security environment, the overall approach needs to be nondiscriminatory, reciprocal and as consensual as possible. At the same time, it must be flexible enough to target specific threats and harness the skills and forces of different states or groups of states, as appropriate. Integrated disarmament proceeds from the moral, practical and legally justifiable starting place that weapons of mass destruction cannot accomplish legitimate military, defence, strategic or tactical objectives.
To make any real progress towards sustainable nonproliferation and integrated disarmament, it is necessary for nuclear weapons to be devalued, thereby reducing their role and attractiveness. Cuts in arsenals may reduce some nuclear dangers, but unless and until they are accompanied by a disavowal of use (and therefore value), reductions will fail to have the desired political impact, both for the non-nuclear weapon states and on the decision-making of potential proliferators.
The time has now come to promote the worldwide adoption of the principles and commitments of the non-use of nuclear weapons. This would provide a qualitative complement to quantitative reductions in arsenals, and reduce the value accorded to nuclear weapons in conformity with the disarmament principles and measures adopted by NPT parties in 2000 and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (1996).
This is not the same as the no first use pledge called for by the Canberra Commission and others. Though such a pledge could help to counter the rise of destabilising doctrines of nuclear use for prevention, pre-emption or retaliation for attacks that have not involved nuclear weapons, advocacy of 'no first use' in the post cold war era is less helpful now than it once appeared. Importantly, it implies a legitimate second strike or retaliatory use in the event of a nuclear attack, and so undercuts efforts to stigmatise nuclear weapons as immoral, illegal and inappropriate for deterrence or defence.
The logic underlying first use nuclear deterrence is that an adversary should be uncertain of whether an attack or threat would be met with a nuclear response. As long as nuclear weapons exist, regardless of any declaratory policy, such uncertainty will be part of any calculation. No use doctrine is unlikely to change this fact for military decisionmakers, but the deterrence role of uncertainty should not be overestimated. In today's security environment, extreme ideologues, whether leaders of states or armed groups, will not be deterred by nuclear or other mass destructive capabilities held by their target countries or anyone else. On the contrary, provoking a nuclear or similarly disproportionate retaliation could well fit with certain political or terrorist agendas. Leaving aside the question of who could reasonably be targeted in retaliation for a terrorist attack, any use of nuclear weapons in response to an act of terrorism - however devastating - would be counterproductive.
Whatever the actual size and yield of the warhead, crossing the nuclear threshold in retaliation or pre-emption would destroy moral authority and fragment most anti-terrorist coalitions. It would no doubt result in the deaths of many more innocent people, and so deflect international condemnation and collective action away from the original perpetrators and towards the nuclear weapon user. Instead of there being one centre of destruction, caused by the terrorists, a nuclear retaliation would create many more victims, thereby fragmenting and dispersing international responses and practical assistance.
The consequences of a policy of retaliation are morally and legally indefensible and would be a recipe for signing up many new converts to the terrorists' cause. Though the threat to retaliate with nuclear force now lacks credibility and will not deter, it may provoke miscalculation. Only China has consistently declared a no first use policy, relating this to second strike deterrence doctrine. Some regard this as more defensible than doctrines of pre-emption, retaliation or the threat of first use, but second strike planning also breaches the essence of the International Court's ruling and keeps nuclear weapons possession in the proliferation driving seat as an attractive tool of military and security policy.
A no-first use commitment may appear to be an appealing step forward, but it flies in the face of the security imperative of preventing escalation to all out nuclear war. The real challenge that has to be confronted is taking the use of nuclear weapons out of military and security policies altogether.
Though their destructive effects derive from their physical properties, nuclear weapons are pre-eminently political. They carry symbolic importance for state leaders as well as non-state extremists. Though a great deal more can be done to limit access to the physical components that would make nuclear weapons usable, the key to reducing dangers lies in understanding how such armaments are employed symbolically and politically in domestic arenas, strategic relations and international security debates.
An important reason why biological and chemical weapons were able to be prohibited and given up by the vast majority of states is that they came to be stigmatised not only as inhumane, but as unethical, even cowardly; that is, something that moral and responsible leaders would not use. Though this does not of itself eliminate all threats, especially where unethical or irresponsible actors are concerned, the stigmatisation and prohibition of the use of gene-damaging and poisonous weapons were important international security milestones. They paved the way for the treaties banning biological, toxin and chemical weapons, and continue to underpin and give legitimacy to the panoply of restrictions and intrusions sanctioned by Resolution 1540.
A similar stigmatisation was deliberately fostered by civil society to lay the groundwork for a ban on landmines. By a related process, de-linking certain kinds of weapons from cultural notions of masculinity has now been recognised as an essential component in international efforts to combat small arms and light weapons. The social and symbolic association of such weapons with masculine power and pride ("respect") in some cultures has been found to have very real political effects and grave security implications. Experience has shown that policies that concentrate solely on the hardware and fail to take into account the social and political symbolism of the weapons are much less successful.
For landmines, biological and chemical weapons, reducing or reversing the symbolic value through stigmatisation were important steps towards changing political attitudes and overcoming perceived military utility and desirability. It is significant that once chemical weapons were banned, whatever strategic value that might have been accorded to their possession eroded rapidly, except in the peculiar context of the Middle East. There, chemical weapons are still viewed as having a role vis-à-vis Israel's nuclear weapons. This doesn't mean that Israel's neighbours have all acquired chemical weapons, but the option is still in play in a strategic trade-off that impedes further progress towards universality of the CWC. For this reason the objective of a nuclear weapon free zone is commonly substituted by a zone free of WMD in the Middle East. In this context, the greater obscenity represented by the effects of nuclear weapons serves to undermine the taboo on chemical weapons.
One objection to the no-use concept is that it is at best 'unenforceable' declaratory policy, and at worst, political rhetoric for propaganda purposes, with no genuine operational constraint. Critics point out that after President Gorbachev changed Soviet policy to no first use of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, Soviet nuclear forces remained in the same configuration and high alert status as they had under previous doctrines of deterrence and threatening first strike.
While declaratory policy is not as legally binding as treaty-mandated obligations, it is a mistake to dismiss declarations of intent or restraint as if they are not worth the paper they are written on. Many confidence-building measures (CBM) exist in the grey area between national and declaratory policy and international law, often laying the groundwork to prevent conflict and make possible more far-reaching regional or multilateral agreements. In effect, no use declarations would extend and embed unconditional negative security assurances, as many non-nuclear weapon states have long demanded, providing more confidence, relevance and restraint than the current assurances entail. Procedurally, unilateral declarations of no use could be given greater legitimacy through a Security Council resolution, as was done with the limited, conditional negative security assurances provided by the weapon states in April 1995, and referenced in UNSC Resolution 984.
After long years of frustrating the rest of the world's calls for disarmament, it is clear that states with nuclear weapons have imbued their possession with fetishistic power and cannot summon the will to let go. Notwithstanding these countries' large conventional forces, they have convinced themselves that the minute they divested themselves of nuclear weapons, someone would take advantage and attack. They need to be helped to see the value of the other components of security-building and deterrence that play a less flashy but more consistent and effective role than nuclear weapons in preventing war.
A no-use commitment would support the NPT and conform with the International Court's ruling. This would enable nuclear weapons to be progressively sidelined as an instrument of policy or coercion, but allow addicted states the reassurance of holding onto some physical weapons while they get used to the idea that they don't need them. It would, of course, be practical and preferable for the retained weapons to be few in number, de-alerted and held in secure storage, much like Stansfield Turner's concept of 'strategic escrow'; and it would need to be understood that such continued possession would be for a transition period, pending their complete abolition. Though such an arrangement might have sceptics on both sides of the nuclear divide, it has the merit of addressing concerns about new nuclear weapons (most of which are associated with revived doctrines for use), sustainable nonproliferation and the need for more reliable security assurances.
No use commitments would, of course, be required of all nuclear weapon possessors, not only the NPT states, but they can start unilaterally. And there is no reason why all states should not declare, as a matter of moral and legal principle that they would not use nuclear weapons. Multiple unilateral declarations would remind us that non-nuclear weapon states have already made the moral choice not to use nuclear weapons by entering into the NPT commitments. Too often, the NPT states in good standing are dismissed as being unable to use nuclear weapons, which belittles the conscious security choice they made not to pursue this capability.
The whole world knows that the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons will never be used again is to ensure that they are abolished. But no use declarations can add a new dimension to an old problem and would reinforce and facilitate the integrated disarmament approach. As long as nuclear weapons exist in some arsenals, some uncertainty would still prevail; but embedding no use doctrines would at least act as a powerful constraint on any state wishing to lower the threshold of nuclear use, and would reduce the risks of accidental or unauthorised launch or miscalculation.
To reduce the threats and dangers from nuclear weapons, attention must be paid to the symbolic, strategic and political factors, as well as to the physical materials and components. An integrated disarmament approach is essential if we are to sustain nonproliferation and find coherent ways to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and new proliferators. Our individual security depends on our collective security. Common security is best promoted when genuine progress in disarmament is pursued alongside nonproliferation in accordance with the nondiscriminatory, shared responsibilities developed as part of the human security paradigm. Addressing both the demand and supply sides of proliferation, the integrated disarmament approach would combine the norms, rules, institutions and practices built up over the last century to constrain all types of mass destruction weapons with the policing powers and tools developed to deal with non-compliant states, as well as those commercial and non-state actors whose activities threaten national and international security.
Dr Rebecca Johnson is the executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.
© 2006 The Acronym Institute.