Archive for July, 2009

Towards an international commission on the resort to force

Posted on: July 27th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

Traditionally, when Canadian Governments have had no convincing idea of what to do on a particular issue, or when they’ve known what should be done but just didn’t want to do it, their preferred option has been to appoint a Royal Commission to study the matter – often with constructive and useful results.

The international community seems to have reached that same point of immobilizing uncertainty when it comes to the collective deployment of military force in support of peace and security in situations of serious conflict – so, perhaps it’s time for another international commission.[i]

In fact, Canada, with a history of involvement in UN Peacekeeping and UN-approved (and not approved, as in Kosovo) peace support operations, is well-positioned to encourage the international community to engage broad questions of the utility and the limitations of collective force, the conditions that have to be in place for it to be effective, as well as the methodologies or rules of engagement that should guide the multilateral resort to force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

One obvious context for such a study would be Afghanistan. The resort to force has certainly been prominent, and the failure to advance Afghan security has been just as prominent.[ii] Furthermore, few would argue that this insecurity could be overcome simply through the application of still more military force – that being the point of the now widely shared recognition that the war in Afghanistan will not end with a military victory over the insurgents. At the same time, it is also a widely shared view that the withdrawal of foreign military forces now would risk the precipitous descent of Afghanistan into generalized civil war with even more devastating consequences for Afghans.

Indeed, this description of conditions, prospects, and risks in Afghanistan broadly conforms to post-Cold War experience in both counterinsurgency[iii] and peacebuilding. Sri Lanka joins some other exceptions to the rule, but it remains the fact that insurgencies are only rarely defeated on the battlefield.

One key lesson from post Cold War military peacekeeping, robust and otherwise, is that international intervention forces depend on key non-military conditions and measures for them to be effective in advancing the safety and well-being of vulnerable people and fragile governments: a broad political consensus or at the very least the active pursuit of one; a host government capable of establishing and renewing its basic legitimacy; economic and social measures that make a discernable difference to the lives of people; and disarmament, that is, a visible and credible effort to gather and control instruments of violence.

Domestic law enforcement is a relevant analogy inasmuch as it too, or especially, is most successful when it is bolstered by a basic consensus as to the rightness or justness of those laws, and when the law-making institutions themselves are regarded as legitimate. In other words, a society can function in accordance with the rule of law when the people overwhelmingly give their consent and voluntary compliance because they believe that to do so is better for everyone, including themselves. The resort to force is thus reserved for the exceptions, for the spoilers.

But, of course, UN-mandated interventions tend to be ordered when there is a catastrophic absence of national consensus and when public institutions have manifestly lost public confidence. Thus, international interventions are by default guided by the basic premise that when this kind of political consensus and trust in public institutions are absent it is a deficiency that can be over-ridden by sheer force. But experience calls that premise into questions. In the absence of a concerted focus on political, governance, economic, social and disarmament measures that are designed to gradually build collective trust, it is genuinely naïve to assume that military forces, no matter how robust, will be able to force consent and thus compliance. Afghanistan is in the process of demonstrating the point.

On the methodology question, the security community continues to be torn on the relative merits of, on the one hand, search and destroy operations against mobile insurgents and, on the other, geographically focused efforts to secure areas and communities where there is a reasonable prospect that it can be sustained. [iv] In Afghanistan, it must be said, the tide may be turning toward the latter.

A recent ICG report argued that international forces “should focus on securing and protecting population centres and roads rather than on large-scale sweeps through areas with a limited Afghan institutional presence.”[v] Canadian officials were also recently reported as saying the focus will increasingly turn to reinforcing security in communities where it can be sustained and allow reconstruction to take hold, rather than expending military resources in pursuing Taliban in far-flung areas of the province where, even if they are located and driven out, there is no possibility of maintaining a continuous presence.[vi]

The UN Secretary-General’s most recent report takes up the issue of military methodology, especially the use of air power and civilian casualties: “It is critical that this fight be conducted in a way that weakens the terrorist threat and boosts popular support. I am profoundly concerned about the risk posed by an increase in civilian casualties and by a type of military conduct that alienates the population from the international community.”[vii]

Similarly, the US General who now heads ISAF has issued a new “tactical directive,” making the point that international forces “must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.[viii]

So, what would a commission on multilateral military intervention look into? Well, it would look into these very questions of the utility, limitations, conditions, and methodology of multilateral intervention.

In a recent discussion hosted by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Canadian NGOs working in conflict zones agreed that the international community would benefit from a collective study that focused on “the efficacy of, limitations of, and institutional arrangements for the military component of UN-led and UN-authorized peace operations.  This would include examining much more closely and systematically the role of multilateral security forces under a Chapter VII mandate for the direct protection of civilians with a view to developing doctrine, standard operating procedures and training.”

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty concluded that in extraordinary circumstances the responsibility to protect vulnerable people from crimes against humanity would have to include the collective resort to force. Now it is time for a successor commission to examine the methodologies and conditions needed to make the resort to force a genuinely constructive contribution to the pursuit of peace and stability in failed or failing states and in support of the safety and well-being of vulnerable people.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes


[i] International commissions are almost as ubiquitous as Canadian Royal Commissions once were. Their impact, which is mixed, is explored in:  Andrew Cooper, John English, and Ramesh Thakur, International Commissions and the Power of Ideas, United Nations University Press, 2005.

[ii] The most recent Secretary-General’s report on “The Situation in Afghanistan” (A/63/892-S/2009/323, 23 June 2009) is straight forward in its overview: “The security situation has continued to deteriorate” (para 6).

[iii] The well known and oft quoted study by Seth Jones for the Rand Corporation, How Terrorist Groups End, examined almost 650 terrorist groups from 1968 to 2008. Of those, 268 ended during that period, and the report offers what its authors call “stark” results: “Terrorist groups end for two major reasons: members decided to adopt nonviolent tactics and join the political process (43 percent), or local law-enforcement agencies arrest or kill key members of the group (40 percent) (pp. 18-19). Only seven percent of the groups were defeated by military means. Most groups in the study were relatively small urban organizations and thus not amenable to military action or attacks, but clearly amenable to police and law-enforcement action. (The study defines “terrorism” as  involving “the use of politically motivated violence against noncombatants to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience” – p. 3. Only non-state groups are counted, although the authors acknowledge that states do a times engage in the same kinds of acts – but the current study was confined to looking at non-state groups.) In 10 percent of the cases the “terrorist” groups achieved their aims (an example of the latter being the ANC of South Africa). Indeed, the larger the groups were, the more likely they were to achieve their goals – among large and very large groups, 35 percent and 20 percent respectively achieved their aims. The study also found that the prospects for effective military action against groups increased the larger the groups were. So, larger groups, like the Tamil Tigers and the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan, are at the same time more vulnerable to military defeat and more likely to achieve their goals. Even so, the Rand study found that among large and very large groups, only 12 percent and 15 percent respectively ended because they were militarily defeated. [Seth G. Jones and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida, Rand Corporation 2008, 225 pp.http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf.]

The 2008 edition of the annual peace process yearbook produced at the University of Barcelona comes to similar conclusions in its examination of 78 armed conflicts dating from the 1970s, of which 33 had ended (another 15 were in the process of being resolved, while the rest remained active). Of the 33 that had ended, 27 (or 82%) ended through negotiated peace agreements, while 6 (or 18%) were ended militarily (in five cases the Governments won, and in one the “rebel force” won – that case being the Rwandan Patriotic Front).[Vicenç Fisas, 2008 Peace Process Yearbook, School for a Culture of Peace, University of Barcelona, 1988. http://reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/db900sid/SODA-7GB8PS/$file/08anuarii.pdf?openelement.]

And a 2004 issue of the Journal of Peace Research focused on the “duration and termination of civil war,” also concluded that the military defeat of rebel groups is the exception in civil wars. Many factors are obviously involved, but because rebels or insurgents can win by not losing – that is, to be successful in pressing their case they have to be able to prolong war, not win it – they are able to force governments into negotiations and then to continue the pursuit of their objectives through political processes. And, by the way, the evidence also suggests that as insurgent or rebel groups enter into negotiations, their demands tend to moderate over time, yielding to accommodation and compromise. [“Duration and Termination of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3. 3 May 2004. http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/3/243.]

[iv] For example: “Consolidating security and advancing well-being in areas of the country nominally under Government control are critical to prevent the civil war from spreading. So, what is needed is ongoing security assistance to protect reconstruction outside the current war zones and to train and reform Afghan forces—not for counterinsurgency war, but to provide security services that win the trust of local communities.” Ernie Regehr, “A peace to keep in Afghanistan,” The Ploughshares Monitor, Spring 2008, volume 29, no. 1.

[v] “Afghanistan: New U.S. Administration, New Directions.” International Crisis Group, Asia Briefing N°89, 13 March 2009. http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6007&l=1.

[vi] “Canadian officials are planning to direct aid to the most receptive neighbourhoods in and around Kandahar city, leaving out places deemed too far-flung or ‘empathetic’ to the Taliban insurgency….[O]fficials said past mistakes have taught them to apply a ‘direct focus on specific, small areas.’ The intent is to provide the villages enough security and assistance to allow normal daily life to unfold as the Afghan government intends – something that happens in very few places at present….’We can’t be everywhere at once, so where do we want to be?’ said Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Turenne, the base’s military commander. Delivering aid to key areas of Kandahar city, he said, will likely prove a better investment than setting up outposts in restive rural regions. Several such bases were set up by Canadian soldiers a couple of years ago in hope of taking the fight into outlying regions. But many have since been abandoned or dismantled after proving to be lightning rods for insurgent attacks.” [Colin Freeze, “Canada to focus efforts on Kandahar city,” The Globe and Mail, 21 May 2009. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canada-to-focus-efforts-on-kandahar-city/article1143158/]

[vii] Para 57 (see note ii).

[viii] NATO/ISAF. Tactical Directive. 6 July 2009. International Security Assistance Force, Headquarters, Kabul.http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/official_texts/Tactical_Directive_090706.pdf.

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Revisiting, and Reviving, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

Posted on: July 17th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

The UN General Assembly will take up the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” next week, reviewing the Secretary-General’s 2009 report[i] on implementation and launching a general debate. It may only be more words, but this is an issue on which words can really be a matter of life and death.

Since it was formally adopted at the 2005 Summit meeting of the General Assembly, R2P has been a doctrine honored rather more in principle than in practice. The victims of that continuing abstraction are well known. Today they live and die especially in Afghanistan, the Congo (Kinshasa), Iraq, Somali, Sudan, and Zimbabwe – these being among the locations where people are still prominently targets of at least one of the four key crimes from which the people of the world were promised protection through R2P – genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity.

In each case the national Government is manifestly failing to protect its own people, often for myriad reasons that are certainly not all of their own doing or not doing, and in each case the international community is having only spotty, if any, success in effectively protecting people in extraordinary peril.

Those who bear the brunt of those crimes are unlikely to be heartened by the prospect of another debate at the United Nations, but without debate, without some concerted diplomatic, political, and intellectual push to forge new ways of, and commitments to, responding, their particular crises will only deepen and others will be added.

A core suspicion that still attends R2P debates is the worry that the noble objective of protecting vulnerable people will simply be appropriated by the big powers as one more justification for their interference in the affairs of smaller and weaker states. But, at the same time, the main impediment to operationalizing R2P with some measure of consistency is the reluctance of those same big powers to accept any binding obligation to intervene on behalf of vulnerable people outside their own jurisdiction.

One positive consequence of this mutual wariness of intervention is that the doctrine’s attention to non-military remedies has been strengthened. The 2005 UN Summit, which formalized the R2P principle or doctrine, places the primary responsibility for protecting people on national governments, the sovereignty as responsibility principle. When states “manifestly” fail in meeting that responsibility, the international community then has the responsibility to use “diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII [regional multilateral organizations] of the [UN] Charter,”[ii] to come to the aid of those threatened with genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.

And only when those peaceful means are clearly failing does the R2P doctrine allow for (it does not require it), with Security Council approval according to the Charter, more coercive measures under Chapter VII – and even in those cases the debate centres increasingly on the imposition of nonmilitary coercion through measures like diplomatic and economic sanctions and arms embargoes before accepting, as the Secretary General puts it, “the application of coercive force in extreme situations” that relate specifically to any of the four crimes covered by the R2P doctrine.

The R2P principles are by now well established, thus, as the Secretary General (SG) points out in his report, “the task ahead is not to interpret or renegotiate” this doctrine, but it is “to find ways of implementing [it] in a fully faithful and consistent manner” (para 2).

But faithful and consistent implementation of the responsibility to protect is impeded by a “paucity of will” (para 63) that is rooted in part in that extreme reluctance of the major powers to allow themselves to be formally bound to act in response to unforeseeable external circumstances. That reluctance has resulted in a refusal to clearly define the conditions, the warning signs, that should trigger specific actions in a process of gradually escalating responses to escalating conflict and growing vulnerability. In fact, the SG’s report, probably anticipating the resistance, specifically rejects the pursuit of “a rigidly sequenced strategy or tightly defined ‘triggers’ for action” (para 50).

At the same time, the SG’s report makes an important case for undertaking investigations and fact-finding missions “early in a crisis” (para 53) as part of an early warning and response process. But for that to happen early on and consistently in an environment that generally lacks the political will to act, there is a need for some way to trigger such investigations that is not dependent on a heavily politicized decision-making process. The Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council, for example, all have investigative powers, but there is not a process that automatically triggers or mandates investigations when certain conditions obtain. In the absence of such triggers to launch investigations, responses remain subject to highly politicized decisions on a case-by-case basis. As a result the international community will continue to avoid acting in too many cases – to the extraordinary peril of vulnerable people in the affected countries or regions.

The need for certain kinds of reasonably objective triggers for action is reinforced by a study reported in the Washington Post which indicates a general tendency for individuals and the public to react much more strongly and to show greater concern for small-scale suffering than large-scale suffering. The more victims, it seems, the easier it is to look the other way. It is a phenomenon similar to the impact of changes brought by a small amount of light – the difference between darkness and a five watt bulb is dramatic; the difference between a 90 watt bulb and a 100 watt bulb is hardly noticeable, even though the latter change is twice the watts of the former.[iii]

The coming General Assembly debate will not be decisive for the millions who still face threats of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. It will nevertheless be an opportunity for states to reaffirm the basic principle of sovereignty as responsibility and to reaffirm the international community’s obligations toward vulnerable people. Above all, it should mark a transition from abstract principle to efforts to carefully track abuses and to delineate avenues of concrete, consistent action – in short, the words should ultimately lead to saved lives.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] United Nations. “Implementing the responsibility to protect,” Report of the Secretary-General. 12 January 2009. Follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit (A/63/677).http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A%2F63%2F677&Submit=Search&Lang=E.

[ii] Repeated in para 1 of the Secretary General’s report (2009).

[iii] Shakar Vedantum, “Mass Suffering and Why We Look the Other Way,” Washington Post, 5 January 2009.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401307.html


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Sri Lanka and counterinsurgency wars

Posted on: July 8th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

Does the Sri Lankan Government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers call for a reassessment of the prevailing wisdom that military counter-insurgency campaigns rarely work?

In some wars, victory is as devastating as the alternative. In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, according to the UN, 2.6 million people have fled their homes[i] in the face of the recent military action that the Government says has largely driven out Taliban insurgents and brought the major centres in the valley back into Government hands.[ii] In Sri Lanka estimates of civilians killed in the final few months of fighting range from 7,000 to 20,000,[iii] with some 300,000 driven from their homes.[iv]

Both involve desperate measures to do what the evidence suggests can’t really be done. The prevailing wisdom, repeated from time to time in this space, is that insurgencies are rarely defeated on the battlefield; rather, insurgencies most often end through political negotiation and accommodation. Consider the evidence gathered in three separate reports.

The well known and oft quoted study by Seth Jones for the Rand Corporation, How Terrorist Groups End,[v] examined almost 650 terrorist groups from 1968 to 2008. Of those, 268 ended during that period, and the report offers what its authors call “stark” results: “Terrorist[vi] groups end for two major reasons: members decided to adopt nonviolent tactics and join the political process (43 percent), or local law-enforcement agencies arrest or kill key members of the group (40 percent) (pp. 18-19). Only seven percent of the groups were defeated by military means. Most groups in the study were relatively small urban organizations and thus not amenable to military action or attacks, but clearly amenable to police and law-enforcement action.

In 10 percent of the cases the “terrorist” groups achieved their aims (an example of the latter being the ANC of South Africa). Indeed, the larger the groups were, the more likely they were to achieve their goals – among large and very large groups, 35 percent and 20 percent respectively achieved their aims.

The study also found that the prospects for effective military action against groups increased the larger the groups were. So, larger groups, like the Tamil Tigers and the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan, are at the same time more vulnerable to military defeat and more likely to achieve their goals. Even so, the Rand study found that among large and very large groups, only 12 percent and 15 percent respectively ended because they were militarily defeated.

The 2008 edition of the annual peace process yearbook produced at the University of Barcelona comes to similar conclusions in its examination of 78 armed conflicts dating from the 1970s, of which 33 had ended (another 15 were in the process of being resolved, while the rest remained active). Of the 33 that had ended, 27 (or 82%) ended through negotiated peace agreements, while 6 (or 18%) were ended militarily (in five cases the Governments won, and in one the “rebel force” won – that case being the Rwandan Patriotic Front).[vii]

And a 2004 issue of the Journal of Peace Research,[viii] focused on the “duration and termination of civil war,” also concluded that the military defeat of rebel groups is the exception in civil wars. Many factors are obviously involved, but because rebels or insurgents can win by not losing – that is, to be successful in pressing their case they have to be able to prolong war, not win it – they are able to force governments into negotiations and then to continue the pursuit of their objectives through political processes. And, by the way, the evidence also suggests that as insurgent or rebel groups enter into negotiations, their demands tend to moderate over time, yielding to accommodation and compromise.

After a quarter century of fighting[ix] – a full generation of violence that was not appreciably mitigated by the declared, but not honored, ceasefire of 2002 – the Government of Sri Lanka launched a heightened and brutal campaign to deliver the final blow and thus avoid political compromise – at least for now.

Not all believe it is the final blow. As the International Crisis Group has observed, “the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians – while their family members watch from afar [in the Diaspora]  – is a recipe for another, possibly more explosive generation of terrorism.”[x]

Sadly, talk of “victory” is premature. Recidivism in civil wars can be as high as 25 percent in the first five years[xi] after a war. In Sri Lanka the dangers of renewed war must be taken seriously. The Tamil Tigers have been defeated as a conventional armed force, but their capacity for guerilla war probably remains strong. They may well continue to be supported by a dedicated international Diaspora[xii] and the Tamil community’s grievances remain, and it is likely that their aspirations for some level of self government also continue.

The Government of Sri Lanka has yet to set out a concrete program for dealing with the immediate humanitarian crisis that is the aftermath of war, let alone any movement toward reconciliation and addressing ongoing Tamil grievances and aspirations.

Notwithstanding the public characterization of Sri Lanka’s recent military campaign as the defeat of a 25-year insurgency, it hardly meets the requirements for a compelling counterinsurgency model.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

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[i] “Camps straining under weight of massive Pakistani displacement – UN agency,” The UN News Centre, 5 June 2009.http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31037&Cr=Pakistan&Cr1=UNHCR.

[ii] Farhan Sharif and Khalid Qayum, “Gilani Says Pakistan Will Revive Swat as Army Overcomes Taliban,” Bloomberg, 5 June 2009.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aYyGDA_pY6d4&refer=india.

[iii] “Civilian casualties in Sri Lanka conflict ‘unacceptably high’ – Ban,” The UN News Centre, 1 June 2009.http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30984&Cr=sri+lanka&Cr1.

[iv] “UN scaling up efforts to facilitate return home of displaced Sri Lankans,” The UN News Centre, 2 June 2009.http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30990&Cr=Sri+lanka&Cr1.

[v] Seth G. Jones and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida, Rand Corporation 2008, 225 pp.http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf.

[vi] The study defines “terrorism” as  involving “the use of politically motivated violence against noncombatants to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience” (p. 3) Only non-state groups are counted, although the authors acknowledge that states do a times engage in the same kinds of acts – but the current study was confined to looking at non-state groups.

[vii] Vicenç Fisas, 2008 Peace Process Yearbook, School for a Culture of Peace, University of Barcelona, 1988.

http://reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/db900sid/SODA-7GB8PS/$file/08anuarii.pdf?openelement.

[viii] “Duration and Termination of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3. 3 May 2004.http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/3/243.

[ix] Background on the conflict is available in the Project Ploughshares Armed Conflicts Report, and annual update on word conflicts which includes a web-accessible data base at http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePage.html. For details on the Sri Lankan conflict go to http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRBriefs/ACRBrief08-SriLanka.html.

[x] Mark Tran, “Taming of Tamil Tigers threatens to breed fiercer creatures,” Guardian.co.UK, 17 May 2009, quoting the International Crisi Group. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/17/sri-lanka-tamil-tigers-analysis.

[xi] Astri Suhrke and Ingrid Samset, “What’s in a Figure? Estimating Recurrence of Civil War,” International Peacekeeping, 14:2, 195 – 203. Available at  http://www.cmi.no/publications/file/?2599=whats-in-a-figure.

[xii] C. Bryson Hull, “Deciphering the end of Sri Lanka’s war.” Reuters, 17 May 2009. http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54G1NX20090517.

NPT PrepCom ends on a positive, though not triumphant, note

Posted on: July 7th, 2009 by Ernie Regehr

The 2009 NPT PrepCom managed to get beyond the rancor and discord that has characterized other recent NPT meetings and to focus instead on concrete discussions and proposals – not enough to guarantee success for the 2010 Review Conference, but certainly enough to set a base for a serious and cooperative effort toward consensus.

Even on its good days, the international review process to assess progress in implementing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) amounts to an exercise in being grateful for small mercies. At the just concluded NPT preparatory committee meeting (PrepCom) in New York, there were indeed some mercies to be enjoyed, small though they still were, followed by all around gratitude that they weren’t even smaller.

This PrepCom was the last of three two-week sessions (2007 through 2009) tasked with setting the stage for a productive formal Review Conference in May 2010, and its most noteworthy achievement was to approve the formal agenda for next year’s conference. By any standard that does fit into the category of small achievements, but in the context of the rancor and discord that have characterized recent NPT meetings, and in the context of the 2005 Review Conference which foundered on more than a week of wrangling over a contentious draft agenda, advance agreement on the agenda is a significant accomplishment that reflects a tangible and promising change in attitude and morale.

There was hope that this new atmosphere of cooperation would be enough to yield a breakthrough agreement on an extensive set of recommendations to be forwarded to the 2010 Review Conference (see posts here for May 12 and 13), but, in the end, that was not to be. Agreement was tantalizingly close and the debate reflected broad areas of common ground[i] along with a new willingness to acknowledge the concerns and expectations of particular groupings, but the old divides prevailed. The nuclear weapon states once again gave assurances that they were making genuine progress on their Article VI disarmament obligations and promised renewed energy in that direction, but they also wanted more focus on strengthened safeguards and new limits on access to proliferation sensitive technologies. Non-nuclear weapon states, those within the non-aligned movement in particular, gave assurances that their disavowal of nuclear weapons remained firm, but insisted that acceptance of additional restraints, as well as the long-term viability of the Treaty, depended on much more significant progress on disarmament.

The PrepCom Chair, Boniface Chidyausika of Zimbabwe, remained confident that with more time consensus could have been reached,[ii] and despite the differences there was certainly a prevailing sense that extensive changes in US policy and diplomatic style were fostering hopes for more balanced attention to the three pillars of the NPT – disarmament, non-proliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. US President Barack Obama sent a message to the PrepCom in which he acknowledged “that differences are inevitable and that NPT Parties will not always view each element of the Treaty in the same way.” He added, however, that “we must define ourselves not by our differences, but by our readiness to pursue dialogue and hard work to ensure that the NPT continues to make an enduring contribution to international peace and security.”[iii]

In particular, the international nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation environment now includes heightened expectations, promoted by both the US and Russia, that the newly-convened US-Russia disarmament talks will yield significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals and set the stage for further reductions involving all the nuclear-armed signatories to the Treaty, and at some point the nuclear armed states outside the Treaty – a prerequisite for many for balanced implementation of the Treaty. The PrepCom produced an agenda for the 2010 conference; it and the 2007 and 2008 sessions produced an impressive array of recommendations to guide deliberations in 2010, even if they did not win consensus; and the session displayed a new sense that all the recent prominent proclamations of the goal of a world without nuclear weapons are having an impact on real world expectations and negotiations – three mercies which warrant some genuine gratitude.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] See the Chairman’s draft recommendations (NPT/Conf.2010/PC.III/CRP.4/Rev.2) which were not approved as a formal action of the PrepCom. Available at Reaching Critical Will, http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/prepcom09/papers/CRP4Rev2.pdf.

[ii] Press Conference by Preparatory Committee Chairman, 15 May 2009, UN Department of Public Information. http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2009/090515_NPT_Chair.doc.htm.

[iii] Statement by the United States to the 2009 NPT PrepCom, 5 May 2009. http://www.un.org/disarmament

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