Archive for December, 2010

Facing the India-Pakistan contest in Afghanistan

Posted on: December 29th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

From the earliest days of the current, and by all accounts undiminished, insurgency in Afghanistan, conventional wisdom has regarded Pakistan as a key, if not the key, to Afghan stability. But for Pakistan to become a part of the solution in Afghanistan, India will have to be recognized as part of the problem.

The recent White House review of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan[i] does not deviate from the conventional wisdom. Pakistan is once again declared to be central to US-ISAF[ii] counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan. At the same time a recently leaked intelligence estimate,[iii] also to no one’s surprise, reports that the Government of Pakistan remains unwilling to end its covert support for the Afghan Taliban and thus for ongoing instability.

Conventional wisdom isn’t wrong because it’s the convention, so it is hardly surprising that there are those who seek an escalation of US military operations in Pakistan,[iv] beyond the current drone war and operations by CIA-backed militias. Others find it more compelling to address what is behind Pakistan’s apparent determination to continue fomenting instability in Afghanistan.[v]

One of those more sober voices was that of the late Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region. Not long before his death he told Time Magazine writer Joe Kline that “the conflict [in Afghanistan] would only be resolved diplomatically, that equilibrium could only be reached in Afghanistan if the Pakistanis and Indians established better relations, and stopped seeing Afghanistan as a strategic prize.” Klein describes Holbrooke as “frustrated by the inability of all the regional players to understand that peace was in their best long-term interests (especially the Pakistanis, whose obsession with military matters–and paranoia about India–was crippling their ability to build the buoyant economy necessary for a stable state).”[vi]

In other words, justified or not, rational or not, Pakistan’s obsession with India – and vice versa – cannot help but be played out in Afghanistan. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Jessica Mathews recently reminded a forum on Afghanistan, “Pakistan’s principal strategic worry is not Afghanistan. It’s India.”[vii]

That does not need to imply that peace in Afghanistan must await the establishment of sweet harmony between India and Pakistan. Such a peace is obviously not imminent, but it is realistic, make that necessary, to work more effectively toward insulating the Afghan national conflict from surrounding regional conflicts and competition.

As Holbrooke suggested, the issue is not to first build Pakistani/Indian peace, rather it is to help both understand that to make Afghanistan an arena for their enduring conflict serves the interests of neither of them. Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation calls for a three-track diplomacy effort on Afghanistan: “talks with the Taliban groups, talks with the neighbours, and talks among all Afghan parties. Some efforts are already under way, but none is backed by a serious commitment from the key players: the Afghan government, the United States, Pakistan, India, Iran and China.[viii]

Reports that President Barack Obama used his recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh[ix] to appeal for a more constructive regional approach on Afghanistan are encouraging, as is Canada’s decision to include regional diplomacy as one of its four priorities for the next stage of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s involvements in Afghanistan are multi-dimensional, but it is unlikely to end its destabilization tactics as long as it fears that a stable Afghanistan will be aligned to India. Pakistan has a history, as US General David Petraeus also noted recently, of supporting non-state extremist groups as a hedge in its rivalry with India.[x]

And destabilization in Afghanistan, a country brimming with both grievances and weapons, is and will continue to be easy to foment. Pakistan will continue to have no difficulty finding political/military aspirants in Afghanistan ready to accept “help” and to undermine any government in Kabul that is potentially hostile or unfriendly to Pakistan. No military operation will be able to prevent it as long as Pakistan regards an unstable Afghanistan to be more in its interests than would be a stable Afghanistan with strong links to India.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

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[i] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,

[ii] International Security Assistance Force.

[iii] Ken Dilanian and David S. Cloud, “U.S. intelligence reports cast doubt on war progress in Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/dec/15/world/la-fg-afghan-review-20101215.

[iv] Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins, “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan,” The New York Times, 20 December 2010.

[v] Nicole Waintraub, “India-Pakistan relations and the impact on Afghanistan,” The Ploughshares Monitor, Winter 2010, p. 13-15. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/pdf2010winter.pdf.

[vi] Joe Klein, “Holbrooke’s Last Words, Take Three,” Time Magazine Blog, 14 December 2010. http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/14/holbrookes-last-words-take-three/.

[vii] Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Afghanistan Strategy Review,”  The Diane Rehm Show, 15 December 2010. http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=42146#.

[viii] Patrick Doherty, “Rethink ‘fight then talk’ in Afghanistan,” New America Foundation, Special to CNN, 16 December 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/16/doherty.afghan.strategy/index.html.

[ix] Haroon Siddiqui, “Obama plays Indian wild card on Afghanistan,” The Toronto Star, 19 December 2010. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/909121–siddiqui-obama-plays-indian-wild-card-on-afghanistan.

[x] “Mullen: Taliban Hideouts Can Be Shut Down,” Associated Press, 17 December 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132086633.

“New START” an essential new start to nuclear arms control

Posted on: December 23rd, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

It was genuinely a landmark moment yesterday (December 22) when the US Senate voted of 71 to 26 to ratify the New START Treaty. Of course, in the ponderously slow path toward nuclear disarmament no single success is ever enough – and the same goes for this one. But without this ratification there would have been little hope for further progress, at least in the near term, in taking up the other key measures awaiting attention on the long and onerous disarmament agenda .

The New START Treaty, as the now US-ratified US-Russia agreement is known, will reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads down to 1,550 on each side – a total of  3,100 deployed strategic warheads.

And the next big challenge? There are many and among them is the need to get working on that bigger nuclear number – 22,000.

That is roughly the total number of nuclear warheads worldwide. In other words, only about 15 per cent of the weapons in global arsenals are covered by the Treaty. START puts a ceiling on the number of strategic or long-range warheads that are actually deployed – it doesn’t address non-strategic (short-range or battlefield nuclear weapons) deployed by the US and Russia; it doesn’t address the warheads that are in storage; and it obviously doesn’t address the warheads held by other nuclear powers (since it is a bilateral US-Russia Treaty only).  

Besides its deployed strategic warheads, the US has roughly an additional 500 non-strategic warheads deployed, another 2,500 warheads are held in reserve and available for deployment, and about 4,200 are in storage and awaiting dismantlement – about 250 to 400 weapons are dismantled each year. Russia has another 2,000 deployed non-strategic warheads and about 7,300 warheads in reserve and waiting to be dismantled. Roughly another 1,000 warheads are held by the other states with nuclear weapons (the UK, France, China each maintain between 150 and 400 warheads; and India, Pakistan, and Israel collectively have another 300).

Reducing those numbers will take further US-Russia negotiations and serious attention to regional conflicts in North East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.

There are two other major global nuclear Treaties that are pending and on the arms control priority list.

The first is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has been agreed to since 1996 and signed by all the major nuclear weapon states. The United States and China still have to ratify it, and President Barack Obama has said ratification is a priority – not a sentiment likely to be shared by most Republicans coming into the US Congress in 2011. Israel has signed but not ratified it. India, North Korea, and Pakistan have yet to sign it.
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The second major Treaty is yet to be negotiated – a global agreement to halt all further production of fissile materials for weapons purposes. It has long been on the global arms control agenda but has been held hostage to a dysfunctional Conference on Disarmament, the Geneva-based disarmament forum that is mandated to host the negotiations.

But START ratification by the US Senate is a celebration-worthy achievement (now it’s the Russians’ turn). US civil society organizations had a huge hand in getting this done. Joined by a broad range of political leaders and security professionals, civil society led a compelling coalition of the willing. As one of the leading organizations, the Arms Control Association put it after the vote: “New START advocates include a range of supporters from the Air Force Association to the Arms Control Association, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the National Assn. of Evangelicals, from retired generals to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, plus a long list of former Secretaries of State, former Secretaries of Defense, former national security advisers, former presidents, and all major U.S. allies urging approval of the treaty this year.”[i]

It turned out be an effective community of support for White House and Congressional champions of the Treaty.

Now civil society will mark the accomplishment and then turn attention to the next items on the nuclear disarmament agenda.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Notes

[i] Daryl Kimball press statement — http://www.armscontrol.org.

Holbrooke’s final command on Afghanistan

Posted on: December 19th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

“You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” These are said to have been the last words of US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke.[i] He didn’t say how to do it, but he left behind enough other words to make clear his view that the focus of his country’s efforts would have to shift from fighting to talking.

In a tribute to Holbrooke, Canada’s Chris Alexander, who offered extraordinary service in Afghanistan, both as Canada’s Ambassador and as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, called his passing “a tragedy for Afghanistan.” Interestingly, Alexander then went on to say, in The Globe and Mail, that Holbrooke “had seen enough to know that reconciliation could never involve the appeasement of terrorists with little to lose, now bent on wrecking both the Afghan and the Pakistani states.”[ii]

There is little doubt that Holbrooke did not favour an appeasement strategy, indeed it’s hard to imagine that anyone might, given the World War II etymology of that term, but, intended or not, Alexander’s account of Holbrooke’s rejection of appeasement should not be taken as evidence that Holbrooke also rejected negotiations or diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and other elements of the Afghan insurgency.

Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars,[iii] portrays Holbrook as having joined Vice President Joe Biden in opposing escalation of the war through a military surge (Location 2968).[iv] While he didn’t then see the way open to high-level treaty or cease-fire talks with the top Taliban leadership, he expressed frustration with much of the background briefing that failed to acknowledge a central truth — namely that America would not produce a military victory in Afghanistan (L2963).

The recent White House review of US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan,[v] as well as President Barack Obama’s accompanying statement,[vi] once again makes clear that the defeat of the Taliban is not the objective. Instead, President Obama has defined the core objective as defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and as preventing it from threatening the US or others from that base.

Indeed, it can be credibly argued that the Taliban and their Pashtun base are central to keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in the future. In the long run, only the Pashtun community can ensure that al Qaeda is not harboured in its midst.

And, according to Woodward, Holbrooke understood that keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan did not require that the Taliban also be kept out of Afghanistan. He agreed with Vice President Biden that “even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them” – it was a conclusion that, Holbrooke remarked, might have been “the single most important intellectual insight of the year” (L2970).

The question thus becomes not whether the Taliban return to governance in some form in some parts of Afghanistan, but how that return is to be managed so as to preserve hard won constitutional and practical gains in human rights, especially the rights of women and access to education for females. Holbrooke may not have answered that challenge directly, but he was on a promising track when he urged that much more emphasis be placed on good governance at provincial and district levels, instead of focusing only on Karzai and Kabul (L4094).

As difficult and irascible as Holbrook apparently sometimes was, by all accounts he would have continued to be a major asset in pursuit of the goal that was his final command – “you’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”

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Notes


[i] “Richard Holbrooke’s last words: ‘You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan’,” The Telegraph, United Kingdom, 14 December 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8201988/Richard-Holbrookes-last-words-Youve-got-to-stop-this-war-in-Afghanistan.html.

[ii] Christopher Alexander, “Afghanistan: A critical task Holbrooke would want us to finish …,” 15 December 2010 (Former Deputy Special Representative to the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan and formerly Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan).

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/afghanistan-a-critical-task-holbrooke-would-want-us-to-finish/article1838231/

[iii] Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Kindle Edition.

[iv] Instead of page numbers, these references are to Location numbers in the Kindle edition.

[v] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,

[vi] President Barack Obama, Statement by the President on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Annual Review, 16 December 2010, The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/statement-president-afghanistan-pakistan-annual-review.

Canada’s Parliament Endorses a Nuclear Weapons Convention

Posted on: December 10th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

As the US White House and Senate continue to wrangle over a complex set of compromises that may or may not lead to ratification of the New Start Treaty,[i] elsewhere, notably in the Parliament of Canada, there is growing recognition that before too long global nuclear disarmament will require the guidance of a formal roadmap – i.e. a nuclear weapons convention.

In an extraordinary show of unity in support of nuclear disarmament, earlier this week the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution (which had already gone through the Senate) encouraging the Government of Canada to join “negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention” and to “deploy a major world-wide Canadian diplomatic initiative in support of preventing nuclear proliferation and increasing the rate of nuclear disarmament” (full resolution below).

While the idea of a nuclear weapons convention has wide public appeal, some governments which support the idea in principle, including Canada’s to date, argue nevertheless that now is not the time. First, they say, existing commitments need to be fulfilled and more of the specifics of the agreed nuclear disarmament agenda need to be completed – notably the entry into force of the test ban treaty and the negotiation of a treaty to halt production of and establish controls over fissile material for weapons purposes. When more of those basics are settled a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention will become feasible. But others argue that the convention is precisely what is needed to re-energize the pursuit of those specifics and to guide the disarmament measures that are yet to come.

The same ambivalence was present at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference earlier this year,[ii] but most states concluded that a clear roadmap is needed – that is, there needs to be an agreed legal framework for disarmament and a clear time line. Those are, after all, two key missing ingredients that a nuclear weapons convention would bring to the disarmament effort.

The fact that the Parliament of Canada, both the Senate and the House of Commons, now clearly agrees that such a convention should be pursued does not mean that the global ambivalence will be swept aside and that negotiations will begin. Internationally, most states support the call for a nuclear weapons convention, but of course the states with nuclear weapons are not among them.

While that means serious negotiations will not be beginning soon, it also means that the idea has enough international support, and in Canada a strong Parliamentary mandate, to prompt the arms control community, including expert and civil society policy groupings, to redouble its efforts in exploring the wide range of conditions and agreements that will be essential to the achievement of a nuclear weapons convention. Studies are needed to clarify the likely focus, scope, and verification measures for a convention, and in April 2011, for example, an Ottawa seminar will look at ways to further advance the setting of the legal, technical, and security foundations on which the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons can rest.

And, given Parliament’s strong statement, we can now hope, and even expect, that the current Government of Canada will also mandate the Department of Foreign Affairs to redouble its diplomatic and technical work in pursuit of conditions conducive to nuclear disarmament.

The Parliamentary resolution is essentially the product of an initiative by Murray Thomson, a Canadian disarmament veteran, in which he (along with former Disarmament Ambassador Douglas Roche and Nobel Laureate John Polanyi) invited Order of Canada recipients to sign the following statement:

“We call on all member States of the UN – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his five point plan for nuclear disarmament.”

The project grew to more than 535 signatures – all signatories being Members, Officers, or Companions of the Order of Canada – including a broad range of leaders from business, finance, political, arts, and arms control communities.[iii] One of the signatories, Sen. Hugh Segal, began the Parliamentary process with the resolution in the Senate, inviting the House to take the same action. All-party agreement in the House of Commons was assured through the efforts of a number of people from all parties. The resolution was then introduced in the House of Commons by MP Bill Siksay, Chair of the Canadian Section of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, and passed without objection.

The resolution specifically supports the five-point plan of the Secretary-General which makes the pursuit of a convention or a broad framework for disarmament measures its central feature:[iv]

The full resolution:

That the House of Commons:

                (a) recognize the danger posed by the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology to peace and security;

                (b) endorse the statement, signed by 500 members, officers and companions of the Order of Canada, underlining the importance of addressing the challenge of more intense nuclear proliferation and the progress of and opportunity for nuclear disarmament;
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                (c) endorse the 2008 five point plan for nuclear disarmament of Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations and encourage the Government of Canada to engage in negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the United Nations Secretary-General;

                (d) support the initiatives for nuclear disarmament of President Obama of the United States of America;

                (e) commend the decision of the Government of Canada to participate in the landmark Nuclear Security Summit and encourage the Government of Canada to deploy a major world-wide Canadian diplomatic initiative in support of preventing nuclear proliferation and increasing the rate of nuclear disarmament.

eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

Notes

[i] See posts here: November 6, 2010 – http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/11/06/new-start-messy-but-urgent/; November 18, 2010 – http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/11/18/why-the-international-silence-on-new-start/.

[ii] For references to a nuclar weapon convention in the 2010 NPT Review Conference see June 16, 2010 post. http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/06/16/the-npt-review-conference-i-more-than-empty-promises/.

[iii] Signatories include: William Daniel, former president, Shell Oil; Adam Zimmerman, former president of Noranda and chair of the CD Howe Institute;  Henry Jackman and Lincoln Alexander, former Lieutenant Governors of Ontario;Bruce Aikenhead, the architect who designed the Canadarm used in space; Ralph Barford, president of GSW, Inc.;  Timothy Brodhead, President of the McConnell Foundation; Purdy Crawford, corporate philanthropist; John Ellis, former vice-chairman, Bank of Montreal; Richard W. Ivey, CEO and chair, Ivest Corporation; and Pierre Jeanniot, general manager of IATA and former president of Air Canada; Margaret Atwood, Tommy Banks, Romeo Dallaire, Atom Egoyan, Graeme Gibson, Mel Hurtig, Norman Jewison, Peter Newman, Michael Ondaatje, Christopher Plummer, Fiona Reid, Veronica Tennant, John Turner, Jean Vanier.

[iv] A five-point plan to rid world of nuclear bombs by Ban  Ki-moon. http://www.un.org/sg/articleFull.asp?TID=105&Type=Op-Ed.

1. Pursue negotiations in good faith – as required by the NPT – on nuclear disarmament, either through a new convention or through a series of mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a credible system of verification.

2. Strengthen security in the disarmament process, and…assure non-nuclear-weapon states against nuclear weapons threats.

3. Ensure that disarmament is rooted in legal obligations through universal membership in multilateral treaties, regional nuclear-weapon-free zones, a new treaty on fissile materials, and ratification and entry into force of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.

4. Ensure disarmament is visible to the public through greater accountability and transparency – thus countries with nuclear weapons should publish more information about what they are doing to fulfill their disarmament commitments.

5. Recognize that nuclear disarmament also requires eliminating other weapons of mass destruction and limiting missiles, space weapons and conventional arms.

More on NATO’s Strategic Concept: Forward steps amid lost opportunities

Posted on: December 5th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

The new Strategic Concept of NATO is certainly no nuclear abolitionist document, nevertheless it does, as Canadian NGOs urged a year ago, situate NATO nuclear policy unambiguously under the disarmament imperative of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In January 2010 a group of Canadian civil society organizations[i] hosted an Ottawa conference of 65 experts, including academics and civil society representatives, and officials, from the UN, NATO, and the US and Canadian governments, to explore “Practical Steps to Zero Nuclear Weapons.” The sponsoring organizations, taking into account the deliberations at the conference, followed up with a set of recommendations directed at the Canadian Government.[ii]

Several of the recommendations dealt with the new Strategic Concept (SC) that NATO was then in the process of developing. Each of the recommendations is repeated below, and is followed by references to the new Strategic Concept[iii] and an assessment of the extent to which the recommended action is addressed. The recommendations were formulated as a message to Canada, but were focused on the changes to the NATO Strategic Concept.

1. The Canadian Government should…encourage a NATO Strategic Concept that: welcomes and affirms the groundswell of calls for a world without nuclear weapons; confirms NATO’s commitment to the objectives of the NPT; and declares that the intent of Article VI is a world free of nuclear weapons.

While not referring to the groundswell of calls for nuclear zero, the new SC does state unambiguously that NATO States “are resolved to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons…” (para  26). That is a new collective statement for NATO and the previous Strategic Concept lacked even basic references to arms control.

Also new is the added statement that a world without nuclear weapons is “in accordance with the goals of the NPT” (para 26). That essentially meets the second and third demands of the above recommendation, namely, that NATO confirm its commitment to the NPT and that the intent of Article VI is a world free of nuclear weapons. The 1999 SC[iv] had only one reference to the NPT (para 19) which acknowledged its indefinite extension and the accession to it of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

In line with the last part of the above recommendation, the new SC includes a new commitment to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation – and that includes the statement that “NATO seeks its security at the lowest possible level of forces” (para 26 – a welcome allusion to Article 26 of the UN charter).[v]

Two of the civil society recommendations focused on removing US nuclear weapons from the territories of European NATO states:

2. The Canadian Government should…encourage a NATO Strategic Concept that: commits NATO to security and arms control policies that ensure full conformity to Articles I and II of the NPT [by eliminating nuclear sharing], and that are designed to achieve the nuclear disarmament promised in Article VI).

3. Support new initiatives within Europe and publicly indicate its support for the removal of all remaining non-strategic nuclear weapons from European soil, in support of longstanding international calls that all nuclear weapons be returned to the territories of the states that own them.

Articles I and II prohibit the transfer of weapons to non-nuclear weapons states and prohibit the receipt of such weapons – and thus the reference to these Articles in the recommendation is a call for the US to remove all nuclear weapons from the territories of non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS) in Europe.

NATO clearly lost a major opportunity in rejecting that move, but there has been a welcome movement away from NATO’s earlier claim that nuclear weapons in Europe are essential to security and to North Atlantic solidarity. Thus the new SC says the Alliance will “maintain an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces” (para 19), but it drops the earlier reference to such forces being based in Europe.

NATO claims credit for already having “dramatically reduced the number of nuclear weapons stationed in Europe” (para 26) and then promises to “seek to create the conditions for further reductions in the future” (para 26). It then says any decision on future reductions “should take into account the disparity with the greater Russian stockpiles of short-range nuclear weapons” (para 26).

None of this supports the NGO proposal that the elimination of all NATO weapons from Europe, weapons that have no military or deterrent utility, should be undertaken unilaterally as a required action to conform to Articles I and II of the NPT. It is worth noting that the refusal to take such action is undoubtedly related at least in part to domestic US politics and the struggle to get the START treaty through Senate ratification. Part of the Republican opposition to START is premised on the Treaty’s failure to address Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons – so the formulation in the SC is in part an effort to provide evidence that Russian non-strategic weapons are on the radar.

In short, the removal of nuclear weapons from Europe would have been a significant step toward conformity with the NPT and would have signalled a major change in NATO. As it is, the new SC makes a modest but discernable shift. By removing language about the necessity of nuclear weapons in Europe it allows for at least the possibility of withdrawal – but the position taken is rather less than bold, or, more to the point, less than what full compliance with the NPT requires.

Another recommendation addressed relations with Russia.
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4. Support the development of an improved strategic relationship with Russia including initiatives such as upgrading the NATO-Russia Council; promoting continuing strategic dialogue between the US and Russia in support of a new nuclear disarmament treaty; and follow-on measures that engage other states with nuclear weapons, including China.

The new Strategic Concept offers a welcome posture toward Russia along the lines called for. It promises to “use the full potential of the NATO-Russia Council for dialogue and joint action with Russia” (para 34). Two paragraphs (33 and 34) emphasize the importance of cooperation with Russia and NATO declares: “we want to see a true strategic partnership between NATO and Russia” (para 33). There is no reference to China in the Strategic Concept.

There were two additional, broadly formulated, recommendations:

5. Work to forge a consensus within NATO and its NWS member states in support of the global norm, which has existed since 1945, against the use of nuclear weapons; and

6. Encourage the Alliance to take advantage of the present climate of global support for nuclear disarmament to phase out any role for nuclear weapons in its security policies.

Contrary to these recommendations, the new Strategic Concept reaffirms the role of nuclear weapons in the alliance. That said, it also says, as did the earlier version, that “the circumstances in which any use of nuclear weapons might have to be contemplated are extremely remote” (para 17). It claims to “have dramatically reduced the number of nuclear weapon stationed in Europe and our reliance on nuclear weapons in NATO strategy” (para 26).

The 2010 SC adds a reference to ballistic missile defence in one significant sub-paragraph (para 19), a link to the 1999 reference (para 64) to the need for future changes that respond to the changing security environment. the new SC says the Alliance will “develop the capability to defend our populations and territories against ballistic missile attack as a core element of our collective defence, which contributes to the indivisible security of the Alliance.” That reference is at least tempered by the added promise that “we will actively seek cooperation on missile defence with Russia and other Euro-Atlantic partners.”

The declaratory policy of NATO has improved. It is not yet fully in line with the NPT, and NATO continues to be out of step with the global support for zero nuclear weapons. But policy and intention have changed, now its time for civil society to convert intention into implementation.

 eregehr@uwaterloo.ca

 Notes

[i] The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Canadian Pugwash Group, Physicians for Global Survival, Project Ploughshares, and World Federalist Movement – Canada.

 [ii] Practical Steps to Zero Nuclear Weapons: Conference Report, January 25-26, 2010, Ottawa, Canada. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Abolish/ZeroNukesConfReptJan2010.pdf.

[iii] Active Engagement, Modern Defence: Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of The Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation adopted by Heads of State and Government in Lisbon, November 19, 2010. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68580.htm.

[iv] The Alliance’s Strategic Concept: Approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. 24 Apr. 1999. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm.

[v] Article 26 of the UN Charter reads: “In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.”