Archive for May, 2007

Nuclear Disarmament Imperatives after the NPT PrepCom

Posted on: May 30th, 2007 by Ernie Regehr

This year’s Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference has confirmed two central realities: First, if the ailing NPT is to fulfill its foundational role in advancing global security it must be solidly balanced on its three equal pillars: disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful uses. Second, the international community is now well beyond simply debating a range of disarmament and nonproliferation options; rather, it is looking for meaningful implementation of an already agreed agenda.

While all states are equally bound by all Articles of the Treaty, there are really four categories of states in the nonproliferation regime; and each category faces particular implementation roles and challenges.

The biggest category, of course, is non-nuclear weapon states, and in exchange for forgoing nuclear weapons, they have received the legally-binding promise of disarmament by the nuclear weapon states, and they are to have access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. But that access requires that they continuously verify their non-weapons status through safeguards agreements with the IAEA. Many have yet to fulfill their obligations (and, of course, Iran and DPRK are in much more serious violation of their safeguards and NPT obligations). Furthermore, about three dozen of these states are in possession of nuclear power technology and thus must sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty before it can enter into force. (Of the NNWS on the Annex II list, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, and Colombia have signed but not ratified the CTBT; the DPRK, which has withdrawn from the NPT but now is on track to return to it, has not yet signed the CTBT).

Nuclear Weapons States, the second category, are under legal obligation to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. At the 2000 Review Conference they renewed their commitment to achieving that goal, although they are not bound by a specific deadline. In the meantime nuclear weapon states are obliged to fulfill specific commitments that they have themselves made. I won’t go through the list, but irreversible and verifiable cuts to arsenals are at the core. Failure to meet these obligations constitutes noncompliance just as certainly as do failures by non-nuclear weapon states to meet all their safeguard requirements.

In the third category are India, Israel, and Pakistan – de facto nuclear weapons states but not signatories to the NPT. That does not mean they escape all disarmament obligations. They are bound by the NPT norm of nuclear disarmament, and as members of the CD (Conference on Disarmament) they are obligated to pursue in good faith the agreed objectives of that body: including the prevention of an arms race in outer space, legally-binding negative security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states, and a fissile materials cutoff Treaty. The CD also negotiated the test-ban Treaty and all three, as states with nuclear technology, must ratify the Treaty for it to enter into force (only Israel has signed the CTBT, and none of the three has ratified it). Both are also in direct violation of SC Res 1172 which unambiguously calls on them to end their nuclear weapons programs.

The fourth category is non-nuclear weapons states within NATO – a group that obviously includes Canada. They find themselves in a stark contradiction – affirming within NATO that nuclear forces are essential to alliance security, while at the same time affirming within the NPT that nuclear disarmament is essential to global security. It is a contradiction that must be resolved in favour of the latter commitment.

So, what priorities should Canada pursue within this broad and essentially agreed disarmament agenda?

To continue to set the right course, each new Canadian Government should, as a matter of course and at the highest level, reaffirm Canada ‘s fundamental commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons. With that unwavering goal always at the core of its efforts, Canada should continue to actively promote the early implementation of the broad nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation agenda, referred to above and rooted in the NPT and its 1995 and 2000 Review Conferences, giving priority to particular issues that it is in a good position to influence. There will necessarily be some shifts in priorities according to changing circumstances, but currently at least four of the issues deserve the focused attention of Canada.

First among these is attention to the disarmament machinery. Nuclear disarmament depends first and foremost on the political will of states to simply do it, but the institutional mechanisms through which they pursue that fundamental and urgent agenda are critically important. The continuing dysfunction in the CD suggests it is once again time for Canada, along with like-minded states, to explore having the First Committee of the UN General Assembly form ad hoc committees to take up the four-fold agenda that lies dormant at the CD – that is, the non-weaponization of space, negative security assurances, the fissile materials cut-off Treaty, and new approaches to nuclear disarmament broadly.

In the context of the NPT, Canada should continue to press for a more effective governance structure involving annual decision-making meetings, the ability to respond to particular crises (such as the declaration of a State party’s intent to withdraw), and a permanent bureau or secretariat for the Treaty. In that context, Canada has made, and should continue to make, a point of promoting transparency through regular reporting by states on their compliance efforts and fuller NGO participation in the Treaty review process.

Second, the conflict regarding Iran’s uranium enrichment program raises important issues about the spread of weapons sensitive civilian technologies‚Äîto which all states in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations are now legally entitled. It is in the interests of nuclear disarmament that access to these technologies be severely restricted and placed under international control through nondiscriminatory multilateral fuel supply arrangements. Canada , as a state with high levels of competence in relevant technologies, should take an active role in investigating and promoting international fuel cycle control mechanisms.

Third, the US-India civilian nuclear cooperation deal has led to proposals to exempt India from key guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Canadian technology and interests are directly engaged. Canada must be at the fore of international efforts to bring India, Israel, and Pakistan under the rules and discipline of the nuclear nonproliferation system. In particular, and at a minimum, Canada should insist that the Nuclear Suppliers Group require that India ratify the test-ban Treaty and abide by a verifiable freeze on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes before any modification of civilian cooperation guidelines is considered.

Finally, Canada cannot avoid promoting within NATO a resolution of the NATO/NPT contradiction in favour of the NPT disarmament commitment.

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Momentum building for an arms trade treaty

Posted on: May 22nd, 2007 by Ernie Regehr

A recent survey, conducted in countries that together represent just over half the world’s population, found strong public support for a strengthened United Nations, including strong majority support for a standing UN peacekeeping force, UN regulation of the international arms trade, and UN authority to investigate human rights violations.

The survey was conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.Org, in cooperation with polling organizations in the countries surveyed,[i] and its findings of significant public support for UN regulation of the international arms trade has particular relevance for current efforts at the UN to negotiate an international arms trade treaty.[ii]

Last fall the General Assembly passed a resolution directing the Secretary-General to survey and report on the views of member states on such a treaty, and mandated an experts group to study “the feasibility, scope and draft parameters for a comprehensive, legally binding instrument establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.”[iii]

The survey of member states will soon be completed and Canada has already submitted its views, welcoming a “single comprehensive universal instrument guiding the trade in conventional weapons.”[iv] Canada ‘s submission focused on the parallel rights and obligations of states:

“Existing treaty obligations and customary international law includes the right of states to meet their own defence and security needs, and needs relating to their participation in international peace support operations, both through domestic production and through the responsible importing of arms. The export of arms to help other nations meet their defence and security needs is also valid in Canada ‘s view.

“Against this, however, are countervailing considerations that need to be addressed. These include the need to prohibit arms transfers that breach international sanctions regimes, exacerbate and prolong conflicts, destabilize countries, allow arms to flow from the legitimate to illicit markets, support terrorism, undermine sustainable development and in the commission of serious human rights abuses.

The survey results are welcome news for those promoting the arms trade treaty. Readily available arms are the most obvious means by which political conflict is transformed into war. The ongoing flow of arms encourages communities and governments already at war to resist compromise in negotiations and to press instead for redoubled efforts to win a military victory.


[i] The complete report is available from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs at http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/UserFiles/File/POS%20Topline%20Reports/….

[ii] See earlier commentary on “New Action to Control the Arms Trade,” newactio.

[iii] General Assembly Resolution A/Res/61/89, December 18, 2006.

[iv] Canadian Submission on the Arms Trade Treaty (resolution 61/89).

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It’s not really a matter of hate

Posted on: May 9th, 2007 by Ernie Regehr

A BBC Television report on Northern Ireland ‘s transition into a new era of self-rule under a government of unity felt obliged to warn viewers that the old hatreds have not vanished.[i] Or, as the BBC’s website puts it, “Old enmities have been foregone, rather than forgiven or forgotten. It is just that [the old enemies] have decided jointly to manage the present.”[ii]

Well, even “foregoing” the active prosecution of enmity, despite its ongoing presence, is a cause for celebration when active cooperation is the substitute behaviour. And just as cooperation between two communities does not require that they be linked by love, war between communities does not require that they be divided by hate.

A recent report in the Washington Post,[iii]unrelated to the happy events in Northern Ireland, makes that point by refering to the work of the American scholar Barbara F. Walter and her findings that it is wariness or a lack of trust rather than hatred that prolongs armed conflicts.[iv]

Communities and regions that find themselves in bitter armed conflict have usually lived harmoniously together for generations, even centuries, and when they come to blows the cause is not innate hatred but is invariably linked to a range of changed economic and political conditions that cast doubt on the reliability of hitherto trusted public institutions to mediate competing interests.

Communal identity remains a prominent factor in contemporary wars, but more as a product than a cause of conflict. When states fail, when they lose their capacity to maintain stability and meet the security needs of their citizens, the first casualty is trust in public institutions. With growing doubt that those public institutions really have the interests of their families and communities at heart, people appeal to other social and political entities, notably ethnic communities, through which to pursue individual and collective security.

And when mistrust of public institutions extends to security forces, including the police, then private and community militias inevitably emerge – illustrating an advanced stage of state failure, namely the loss of the state’s monopoly on the resort to force.

The point is persuasively, and tragically, illustrated in the conflict and chaos that have gripped much of Somalia for almost two decades now. Here is a people that has lived together in peace for centuries. One has to be careful not to romanticize the past, of course. Somali history is actually conflict ridden in the sense that it is a region inhabited by nomads and farmers that have always had to compete for access to land and water in harsh conditions, but it is a history of conflict that also produced a sophisticated set of communal (clan) institutions to mediate conflicts and to prevent disintegration and chaos.

But when national leadership developed that did not support the delicate diffusion of power among the country’s multiple clan communities, the result was a wholesale distrust of national institutions that led to their eventual overthrow. And since then, the “civil war” in Somalia has not been about venting old hatred or about competition for power – it has really been a fight to prevent any group from acquiring inordinate power and to prevent the emergence of any national authority or institutions that would be open to manipulation in support of some at the expense of others.

Conflicts in which the rights and political/social viability of particular communities are central issues are not evidence of ethnic chauvinism or of hatred for “the other”. Such conflicts are reflections of a more fundamental social conflict, borne out of a community’s experience of economic inequity, political discrimination, human rights violations, and pressures generated by environmental degradation. Identity conflicts emerge with intensity when a community loses confidence in mainstream political institutions and processes and, in response to unmet basic needs for social and economic security, resolves to strengthen its collective influence and to struggle for political recognition as a community.

In Afghanistan , in other words, achieving relative peace is not a matter of overcoming age-old hatreds; it is more a matter of addressing communal and regional wariness. The southern Pashtun are of course wary of a Kabul Government that has been constructed in such a way that it is regarded as unable, or at least unlikely, to understand and cater to the needs and interests of all Afghans.

You don’t defeat that wariness; it has to be dispelled through concrete acts of inclusion and accommodation. Military commanders, Afghan and NATO, make the point, over and over again, that the struggle in Afghanistan is not ultimately a military struggle, but neither they nor their respective political masters have yet managed the wit or the will to give priority to the non-military struggle.

Behind ethnic or communal or regional conflicts are basic economic, social, and political grievances. Failure to redress them has made group solidarity an increasingly attractive political strategy, throw some religious zeal and easy-to-use and easy-to-get small arms into the mix and the result is persistent social/political chaos and public violence – conditions that can be expected to bestir hatred, but that makes it a symptom not a cause.

Does it make a difference that conflict is much more likely to be rooted in distrust than hate? Yes it does – a lot. It means solving conflict doesn’t require a change in human nature, just in human institutions. And institutions can be built, and built to function according to agreed rules – and when they do, they become conveyors and purveyors of public trust.


[i] May 8, 2005 BBC World News, WNED TV New York.

[ii] Kevin Connolly, “A benchmark for improbability,” BBC News, March 8, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6636371.stm).

[iii] Shankar Vedantam, “Wariness, Not Hatred, Keep Civil Wars Raging,” Washington Post, May 7, 2007 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/06/AR200705…).

[iv] The particular study cited by Vedantam is not cited, but brief references to the work of Barbara F. Walter are available at http://www.princeton.edu/politics/people/bios/index.xml?netid=bwalter.

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