Posts Tagged ‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference’

The following commentary by Douglas Roche and Ernie Regehr appeared in today’s Embassy, available at: http://www.embassymag.ca.

There are two ways of looking at the outcome of the month-long Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which wrapped up last Friday at the United Nations in New York with a standing ovation for its president, Ambassador Libran Cabactulan of the Philippines.

Was it a minor diplomatic triumph or was it yet another delay on the long and tortuous road to the elimination of nuclear weapons?

Undoubtedly, nuclear disarmament activists will be deeply disappointed that the final document does not contain a commitment to immediate negotiations on a time-bound program for comprehensive and verifiable nuclear disarmament. We are in that camp.

Yet we recognize that the political divisions in the world are so deep that only minor steps can be taken in a 190-nation forum where consensus is required. Thus progress is agonizingly slow, far too slow considering “the catastrophic humanitarian consequences,” as the conference put it rhetorically, of any detonation of the 23,000 nuclear weapons still in existence.

The fact that the review conference put a Nuclear Weapons Convention on the international political agenda for the first time was definitely a progressive step. So was the commitment to convene a conference of all Middle East states in 2012 “on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.”

Those two steps were enough to mark the review conference a success compared to the debacle at the last meeting in 2005 when American intransigence and Egyptian ire collided, producing paralysis. Thus Egypt proclaimed this conference a “historic success.” The US said the final document “reflects President Obama’s vision.” France said, “It relaunched momentum.” The UK: “A breakthrough after a decade of failure.” Canada: “A modest product,” but containing “seeds of hope.” The best characterization of the conference came from Mexico: “While not bringing us to heaven, it does distance us from hell, the hell of nuclear war.”

There are 64 actions listed in the 28-page final document, covering an array of measures connected to the NPT’s three pillars: nuclear disarmament, stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and furthering peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

But the passage that will be focused on intensely over the next five-year cycle says: “The Conference notes the Five-Point Proposal for Nuclear Disarmament of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which proposes inter alia consideration of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention or agreement on a framework of separate mutually reinforcing instruments, backed by a strong system of verification.”

Translated to plain English, this means a verifiable global treaty to ban all nuclear weapons is now possible.

This passage is supported by another section, which says: “The Conference affirms that the final phase of the nuclear disarmament process…should be pursued within an agreed legal framework, which a majority of States parties believe should include specified timelines.”

Unfortunately, neither of these references is contained within the action steps, leaving the nuclear weapons states with the ploy that they are not committed to specific action.

Moreover, when an earlier draft stated that a Nuclear Weapons Convention “contributes towards the goal,” of a nuclear-weapons-free world, even this soft affirmation was removed as the result of a frontal attack by the US, Russia, the UK and France, all of whom united in gutting earlier drafts of decisive action steps.

The nuclear weapons states stoutly stood together in removing a condemnation of nuclear weapons modernization and a call for the closing of all nuclear test sites.

Nuclear weapons states have through the years resisted the “good faith” negotiations on disarmament that are required of them under the NPT’s Article VI. So it is legitimate to question their “good faith” regarding the basic pledge coming out of the 2010 conference: “to seek a safer world for all and to achieve the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” That may be the Obama agenda, but one would never know it by watching his officials in action.

The nuclear weapons states will, of course, be central players in the 2012 Middle East conference and it doubtless would not have even been agreed upon without the approval of President Obama.

Israel will have a hard time maintaining credibility if it refuses to participate in the 2012 conference, the terms of reference of which are the NPT’s 1995 resolution on the Middle East, which calls for a zone free of nuclear weapons as a way to strengthen the Middle East peace process.

For its part, Iran set out an 11-point plan at the conference for “the complete elimination of nuclear weapons within a specified timetable.” The Israel-Iran showdown on the possession of nuclear weapons looms.

Since India, Pakistan and Israel, which all possess nuclear weapons, shun the NPT, a new legal framework that is truly global is desperately needed to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That, in fact, is where the Middle East question and a Nuclear Weapons Convention are linked.

A successful Middle East conference may pave the way to global action beyond the NPT. The situation is urgent, but the process torpid.

Canada made a modest effort to strengthen the institutional machinery of the NPT, a worthy goal considering that there is not even a home office for the world’s most important arms control and disarmament treaty. But the biggest opponent of this reform was the US. The end result was the approval of a dedicated staff officer to organize NPT meetings.

A significant Canadian contribution was the presentation to Ambassador Cabactulan, the conference president, of the signatures of 515 members of the Order of Canada calling for work to begin on a Nuclear weapons Convention. Ambassador Cabactulan called this action “meaningful input.”

Former senator and Canadian ambassador for disarmament Douglas Roche’s forthcoming book is How We Stopped Loving the Bomb. Ernie Regehr is co-founder of Project Ploughshares.  His blog, “Disarming Conflict,” is at http://www.cigionline.org/publications/blogs/disarmingconflict.

Canada has managed the extraordinary feat of presenting its opening statement to the NPT Review Conference without any substantive reference to “disarmament” – one of the three foundational pillars of the Treaty.

Actually, the statement by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon did make one, and only one, mention of disarmament – a reference to the DPRK’s “complete disregard for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament objectives.”

It is fair to describe Canada’s opening speech to the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as extraordinary in the sense of it being starkly out of the ordinary – out of sync with the focus and urgency with which other speeches of the opening day (May 3) spoke of disarmament and of the opportunities now before the international community.

For example, the European Union Statement[i] began by pointing out that the NPT is “based on the three mutually reinforcing pillars of non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” Canada’s 10 paragraph speech devoted 3 paragraphs to pillar one (nonproliferation), one paragraph to pillar three (peaceful uses), and none to pillar two (disarmament). There was one paragraph on North Korea, two on Iran, one on universality (urging the three states outside of the Treaty – India, Israel, and Pakistan – to join the Treaty as non-nuclear-weapon states, but linking that to the resolution of regional security issues). There was one paragraph on Canada’s important NPT institutional reform proposals, and a final paragraph noting that this is a time of challenge and opportunity. To Mr. Cannon’s credit he added a spoken phrase, not included in the written and distributed document, linking challenge and opportunity to “support of the common goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

But on the substance of disarmament there was nothing.

The European Union welcomed the new US/Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and called for “its swift ratification.” The EU also “encouraged both States concerned to work towards new agreements for further, comprehensive reductions of their nuclear arsenals, including non-strategic weapons.”

The Indonesian Foreign Minister spoke on behalf of NAM states and called for “full implementation of the Treaty in a balanced [all three pillars] manner.” The Minister acknowledged the new START agreement but said that the obligations of nuclear weapon states under the NPT required further “reductions applying the principles of transparency, irreversibility and verifiability at a significantly faster pace.”

The Dutch Foreign Minister raised the issue of US nuclear weapons in Europe and said “American sub strategic nuclear arms in Europe are going to be subject of arms reduction talks between the United States and Russia.[ii] Nonproliferation and disarmament,” he said, “are mutually reinforcing.”

Brazil’s Minister of External Relations said that “Brazil is convinced that the best guarantee for non-proliferation is the total elimination of nuclear weapons. As long as some states possess nuclear arms, other states will be tempted to acquire or develop them. We may deplore this perverse logic, but we cannot deny it.”

Ireland, through its Foreign Minister, addressed the urgency of nuclear disarmament: “The horrors which nuclear weaponry can unleash on mankind and on the planet we inhabit defy description. In addition to death and destruction on a massive scale, the environmental costs are profound and long-lasting. Scientists tell us about the effects on the Earth’s stratosphere of the detonation of nuclear weapons. A ‘nuclear winter’ caused by sunlight being blocked out for months or even years is a nightmare scenario which we must all work to prevent.”

Then he made the key point that perfectly illustrates the failure of vision on the part of the Canadian political leadership: “Selective approaches which stress the urgency of non-proliferation while downplaying the need for progress in relation to disarmament serve merely to weaken the Treaty. The NPT’s enduring role as the foundation of the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime requires that it be implemented inall its aspects.”

All of these and other speeches also spoke urgently about nonproliferation, in much the same vein as Canada, but what they managed to convey was the importance of balance – that disarmament and nonproliferation are mutually reinforcing; that the retention of nuclear weapons by some is not irrelevant to efforts of others to acquire them.

To be fair to Canada, the opening statement to the Review Conference is only a brief summary statement. Officials will make additional statements of substance as the three pillars are addressed in greater detail. Canada has submitted a report[iii] to the Review Conference on its actions in support of implementing the NPT, which includes an extensive account of Canada’s support for Article VI (the disarmament Article) and the 13 practical disarmament steps agreed to in 2000. So Canada’s policy commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons is not in doubt, and it is confirmed, as the Canadian report points out, by virtue of Canada’s co-sponsorship of, and vote in favour of, the General Assembly resolution on “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons” (resolution 64/47).

What is in considerable doubt is the level of enthusiasm within the political leadership of the current Government of Canada for any determined push on nuclear weapons states to accelerate their implementation of the disarmament pillar, while also pressing, of course, for strict implementation of the nonproliferation pillar.

Unfortunately, the statement by Foreign Minister Cannon continues the Harper Government’s unsoiled record of silence in the public and political arenas on the subject of nuclear disarmament. If the objective was to sorely annoy non-nuclear-weapon states in the non-aligned movement, whose support is absolutely essential to any strong action on nonproliferation, then this must be judged a successful speech.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] All statements are available on the UN’s Website at http://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2010/ and the Website of the NGO Reaching Critical Will at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/revcon2010/statements.html.

[ii] The Minister failed to note, unfortunately, that on April 22 his own Parliament passed a resolution (tabled by the Socialist and Green Parties) requesting the Netherlands government to inform the US that the Netherlands does not regard the presence of American nuclear weapons as essential to the protection of Europe and regards the withdrawal of these nuclear weapons as desirable. Information provided by email by Socialist Party Researcher Karel Koster.

[iii] “Implementation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons,” Report submitted by Canada, 18 March 2010 (NPT/Conf.2010/9). http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/279/58/PDF/N1027958.pdf?OpenElement.

The report includes, in an Annex, the summary of the Project Ploughshares report on NPT Reporting: “Transparency and Accountability.” The full report on reporting is available at  http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Abolish/NPTreporting02-09.pdf.