Author Archive

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.

No statement or commentary about this NPT PrepCom, which runs through to May 11, begins without a reminder that the NPT is in serious trouble. And so it is.

And therein lies a disturbing irony. While the reasons behind the trouble are well-known – indeed, they can be summed up in a series of place names: Washington, Delhi, Tehran, London, Pyongyang, and many more – the nuclear disarmament agenda is actually very detailed, well-known, and very widely agreed. And it is also very stalled.

The agreed disarmament agenda

Of course, it is in those details where the devil will hold sway in the next two weeks, but, for the record, let’s at least acknowledge that at the general level, the nuclear disarmament agenda enjoys broad global support and the priorities that should engage Canada also seem clear.

That broad support is owed to the fact that the agenda has been painstakingly (or at least painfully) constructed through the consensus decision-making processes of the NPT review conferences, and the results are set out in the agreements reached at the 1995 and 2000 conferences. The agenda is confirmed and elaborated in the Blix Commission report[i] and it can be viewed as working toward three fundamental objectives: 1) preventing the use of existing arsenals, 2) preventing the expansion or enhancement of existing arsenals and making progress toward their elimination, and 3) preventing horizontal proliferation.

1. Preventing use

a) Abolition is the agreed aim, because the only way to finally prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them.

b) Negative security assurances are commitments by Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) party to the NPT – and what is now required is that such assurances be made legally binding.

c) To prevent accidental use, the US and Russia are required to de-alert (eliminate the possibility of them being launched within minutes of a warning – a warning that could turn out to be false).

2. Preventing and reversing vertical proliferation

a) Ratification of the already negotiated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to prohibit any further testing of nuclear warheads.

b) Preventing the expansion of stockpiles of fissile materials for weapons purposes requires the negotiation of a fissile materials cut-off treaty (FMCT) and preventing the use of existing stockpiles for weapons by progressively placing them under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

c) Make all nuclear weapon reductions irreversible and verifiable.

d) Promote transparency and accountability by regular reporting to NPT meetings or conferences on progress made in implementing the disarmament agenda.

3. Preventing and reversing horizontal proliferation

a) Make the Additional Protocol to safeguards agreements, which allows for more intrusive and effective inspections, the minimum standard for national safeguard agreements with the IAEA.

b) Deal with the legacy of the unrestrained Cold War nuclear arms race through the global partnership to control and clean-up nuclear materials, especially in the former Soviet Union.

c) Maintain effective export controls over nuclear materials.

d) Explore means of exercising international and non-discriminatory control over the proliferation sensitive elements in the manufacture of nuclear fuel for civilian reactors.

There is much more that needs doing, but these elements at least have met virtually universal support, in principle.

Priorities for Canada

Canada must obviously be active in pursuing implementation of all those elements of the global disarmament agenda, but it is also important give priority to particular issues that it is in a good position to influence.

The basic commitment to abolition is central. In 1999, through the official response to a report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Government of Canada declared that “Canada ‘s objective has been and remains the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”[ii] This position has been held through successive changes in Government and enjoys support across the political spectrum. 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.

From time to time there will necessarily be some shifts in priorities according to changing circumstances, but currently at least four of issues deserve the focused attention of Canada.

1. 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 mechanisms can themselves become obstacles to effective progress, and it is clear that in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and the NPT Review Process there are institutional arrangements and practices that serve to impede the disarmament progress. These impediments require urgent attention and Canada , having developed significant proposals to address the “institutional deficit” within the disarmament system, is well placed to work with likeminded states to press for constructive change.

2. The internationalization of the nuclear fuel cycle: The conflict regarding Iran ‘s uranium enrichment program raises important issues about the spread of sensitive civilian technologies – to which all states in compliance with non-proliferation obligations are legally entitled – that have immediate relevance for the pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is in the interests of nuclear disarmament that these technologies be severely restricted, but such restrictions must obviously be nondiscriminatory. Canada should take an active role in investigating and promoting international mechanisms toward that end.

3. Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines for civilian nuclear cooperation with de facto nuclear weapon states: The US-India civilian nuclear cooperation deal has led to proposals to exempt India from the current guidelines of the NSG, and Canadian technology and interests are directly engaged. Canada must be at the fore of international efforts to universalize the NPT and to bring India, Israel, and Pakistan under the rules and discipline of the nuclear nonproliferation system, ensuring that nonproliferation objectives are not only uncompromised but strengthened through any NSG action to modify its guidelines.

4. Resolving the NATO/NPT contradiction: As a NATO country Canada is juggling two conflicting commitments. Through NATO Canada insists that nuclear weapons are essential to its security and are thus to be retained for the foreseeable future; through the NPT and related disarmament forums Canada promotes the elimination of nuclear weapons at the earliest possible date. This conflict must be resolved in favour of the second commitment.

[i] Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. 2006. Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms. Stockholm. http://www.wmdcommission.org.

[ii] Government of Canada. 1999. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation: Advancing Canadian objectives. Government statement. April.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor explained the decision to extend Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan to 2009, the tone they set was one of hard-nosed defence of the Canadian interest.”Our rationale for being in Afghanistan is clear,” Mr. Harper told the House of Commons in the May 17/06 that preceded the extension vote. “It is in the interests of this country.”

Mr. O’Connor put it this way in the same debate: “The bottom line is that the mission in Afghanistan supports one of the enduring goals of Canada’s foreign and defence policy: to protect Canada ‘s national interest. We must commit to seeing our mission through. Our national interest is straightforward: to ensure the security and prosperity of the Canadian people. This government has summed it up in two words: Canada first.”

It was a very practical kind of talk, but when we receive home the bodies of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, the language of self-interest fails us. In these moments we quite properly reach for a larger and more ennobling purpose. When the ultimate sacrifice is asked and courageously given we are drawn to the more fundamental values of freedom and a common global humanity. In that same May 2006 debate, when Mr Harper spoke of sacrifice, he said ” Canadians accept risks when those risks are in the service of a greater good.” Some Canadian interests may well be included in that greater good, but they certainly don’t define it. And when, from the recent Vimy anniversary event in France, Mr. Harper announced the deaths of more Canadian soldiers, he said that “when the cause is just, Canada will always be there to defend our values and our fellow human beings.”[i]

The inadequacy of appeals to self interest when thinking about Canadian peace-making efforts abroad is also highlighted in the opening entries of a compelling on-line debate on peace support operations currently hosted by the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC).[ii]

Doug Bland, Chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s University, and Peggy Mason, Chair of the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee and a former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, both agree that the current ISAF operation in the south is “war.” Mr. Bland calls it a “stability campaign” by means of “warfare” and argues that Canada should join such campaigns/wars when the fight is in “our interests and those of our close allies.” But I find it interesting that when he makes a strong statement in support of Canada’s role in Afghanistan he calls it a “war of liberation” consistent with Canadian “traditions,” not interests.

There is no question that Canadian interests are involved, inasmuch as it is broadly within our interests to promote a rules-based international order that serves the well-being and safety of people, but when we ask our fellow citizens to make the extraordinary sacrifices that await them in Afghanistan, we quite rightly find we can’t bring ourselves to do it on the basis of the national interest. Instead, we appeal to more enduring values, all of which, we should be proud to acknowledge, find resonance within Canadian traditions.

That these traditions live within a national story of constructed mythologies is not in doubt, but the point of creating a national story is the expectation that it will help shape our action when it matters most. Collectively, we sometimes honor and frequently betray our myths, but it is still our aspiration and responsibility in particular circumstances like Afghanistan to muster the conviction and especially the skills to effectively serve the ideals of protecting fundamental rights and peacemaking that our national story invokes.

And that’s where Mason’s detailed attention, in the CPCC hosted debate, to peace processes comes in – to define the kind of intervention that is needed if we are to have any chance of meeting those ideals. Bland includes a description of continuous warfare, and it really proves Mason’s point that you don’t win the peace by entering one side of an ongoing civil war and fighting it out. Her argument and the lessons of peacebuilding make it clear that winning the peace is a political, social, economic, military enterprise – and the most immediate problem in Afghanistan is that the political component has fallen apart, and the social and economic components have fallen seriously short of expectations.

The Afghan Government that the ISAF operation supports has for a variety of reasons – some self-inflicted, some owing to the failure of the international community – lost the confidence of Afghans to such an extent that the essential ingredient of “a credible peace implementation process” is no longer present, certainly not in the south. Hence, the military operation has become an effort to militarily impose order – as Bland puts it, “to create ‚Äòharmonious law-based conditions'” – but it is predictably proving to be impossible because too many Afghans, especially in the south, believe that the particular Governing order that the foreign military intervention supports will lead neither to harmony nor the fair rule of law.

So, how to restore a credible peace process? Well, there are some good ideas around. Increasingly the talk about negotiating with the Taliban is getting serious [iii] and needs international support to generate a political culture of inclusion, rather than sticking to a strategy of exclusion. The lessons of the Dutch are also gaining credence – that is, focusing less on fighting the spoilers and more on making their cause irrelevant. The ongoing need to generate economic opportunity is well understood and needs to be well funded.

All this has to happen in a dangerous environment, reminding us that the resort to lethal force will remain a part of the reality for some time to come. Calling for a switch from a military to a diplomatic/humanitarian strategy, or focusing debate on military withdrawal deadlines, will not yield the strategy and insight needed to integrate the political, social, economic, and military elements of peacemaking in Afghanistan. But you can do what Peggy Mason counsels, and that is to “find the proper balance between coercion and consent” – recognizing that producing consent is a political process.

The key in peace operations is to ensure that the resort to military force is a support to the peace process rather than a substitute for it.

[i] Bruce Cheadle, “Harper breaks sombre news of deaths in Afghanistan on eve of Vimy anniversary” (http://www.brooksbulletin.com/news/world_news.asp?itemid=61829), Sunday, April 08, 2007.

[ii] http://forum.peacebuild.ca/content/view/13/27/

[iii] Afghan President Hamid Karzai has now asked a group of former Taliban to mediate with rebel Taliban. Terry Friel, “Only peace talks can save Afghanistan – former rebel,” Reuters, April 12, 2007 [http://today.reuters.com/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=SP206760].

Canada has figured prominently, if unwillingly, in five decades of Indian nuclear weapons development. Now that Washington has proposed changing the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) – rules that currently preclude nuclear cooperation with India – Canada has an opportunity to channel its historical involvement to support for multilateral rules that constrain India ‘s nuclear ambitions and promote non-proliferation objectives.

Canada supplied India its first heavy water nuclear reactor, the CIRUS, during the 1950s, exclusively for “peaceful purposes.” The CIRUS, over the protestations of Canada, nevertheless became the source of the weapons grade plutonium used to build India ‘s first nuclear warhead, which was detonated in 1974. Since then the CIRUS and the larger Indian-built Dhruva reactor, based on the CIRUS design, have supplied most of the weapons grade plutonium for India’s current arsenal of about 50 warheads and plutonium for another 50.

Through the NSG, established largely in response to India’s diversion of civilian technology and materials to military purposes, states agreed to refuse nuclear cooperation (e.g. trade) with non-nuclear weapon states party to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or states outside the NPT that are not under full-scope safeguards – that is, states that maintain nuclear programs and facilities that are not subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and are thus presumed to be used for military purposes.

But later this month the NSG will informally begin to explore an India-only exemption to the full-scope safeguards rule in order to accommodate the US-India nuclear cooperation deal reached in 2005.[i]

The proposed exemption is controversial partly because Pakistan and Israel, also states outside the NPT with nuclear weapons programs, will demand the same deal, and partly because it will embolden states within the NPT and suspected of harboring nuclear weapons ambitions, notably Iran, to defy the obvious double standard inherent in the accommodation to India’s nuclear arsenal while demanding Iran terminate uranium enrichment even for peaceful purposes. But even more controversial is the likelihood, indeed the certainty, that the proposed Indian exemption would, in the name of civilian cooperation, facilitate the accelerated expansion of India ‘s nuclear arsenal.

A 2006 report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials[ii], based at Princeton University , makes that very point. Currently India’s civilian and military programs are both constrained by their reliance on its own limited domestic uranium, so if India were to gain access to the foreign sources of uranium that the deal would open up for its civilian programs, it could then funnel all its domestic supplies into an expanded military program.

The CIRUS reactor, set to run until 2010, could then generate enough plutonium for another 10 warheads. The Dhruva reactor could deliver weapons-grade plutonium sufficient to build another five or six warheads per year. The new breeder reactor that India plans to bring on stream in 2010, could produce weapons grade plutonium from the spent-fuel of India ‘s other unsafeguarded CANDU-style reactors.

All told, under the changed rules, India could accumulate enough plutonium for an arsenal of more than 300 nuclear warheads within a decade – an arsenal to rival or exceed those of the UK, France, or China. The US-India deal will lead to more of India ‘s civilian facilities being brought under IAEA safeguards, but the CIRUS and several of the plutonium producing reactors built on the Canadian model are to be kept out of the IAEA inspections regime, which means that their spent fuel could ultimately be made available for producing fissile material for weapons purposes.

The opportunity for Canada to be a key player owes to its membership in the NSG, the fact that the NSG decision-making is by consensus – essentially giving each member a veto – and Canada ‘s recognized stake in ending the use of Canadian-origin technology for building nuclear weapons.

But there are risks to exercising that de facto veto without any acknowledgement of the unique situation of the three states outside the NPT. The nuclear status quo with regard to India, Israel, and Pakistan is not a compelling one. Refusing them civilian nuclear cooperation has obviously not prevented them from acquiring nuclear weapons, and keeping them out of the formal nuclear non-proliferation regime means they are subject to few legal constraints. The challenge is to create a place for these three de facto nuclear weapons states (North Korea is not a parallel case) inside the nuclear non-proliferation system and to require them in return to accept the same obligation to disarm as applies to those states bound by Article VI of the NPT, and to accept certain obligations and commitments consistent with the overall objectives of non-proliferation (which all three claim to support).

Two important places to start are the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and a freeze on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes, pending the negotiation of a treaty to make the ban permanent (generally referred to as the fissile material cut-off treaty – FMCT).

The CTBT has been agreed to but won’t come into force until it is ratified by all the nuclear weapons states and all states with nuclear reactors – a list that obviously includes India, Israel, and Pakistan (of the three, only Israel has signed and none has ratified it). The US-India deal stipulates that US bilateral cooperation will end if India tests another nuclear device, and at a minimum this commitment should be extended and multilaterialized to make CTBT ratification a precondition for civilian nuclear cooperation and to ensure any NSG exemption would be voided in the event of a weapons test.

Even though India already has enough fissile material to meet any requirements of its declared “minimum deterrence” doctrine, and even though it has declared its support for negotiations toward an FMCT, India appears determined to increase and accelerate fissile material production for weapons purposes while the Treaty negotiations drag on (assuming they ever get started), and for India the NSG exemption is essential to meeting that goal.

Canada has already signaled its opposition. In December 2005 Canada told US officials that while it welcomed efforts to deal constructively with states, like India, outside the NPT, it said “the deal would have been more positive if the United States had obtained an Indian commitment to freeze production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.”[iii] It is a mild statement that nevertheless embodies a principle that the NSG should make its own – that is, civilian nuclear cooperation with India or any de facto nuclear weapon state outside the NPT should also be conditional on them imposing a verifiable freeze on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes until their adherence to an FMCT that converts the freeze into a permanent ban.

Canada is in a position to insist on these conditions, and with forthright leadership others will follow.

[i]Regehr, Ernie. 2005. US-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement: A further threat to nuclear non-proliferation. Project Ploughshares Briefing 05/3.

http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/Briefingslist.html.

[ii] Mian, Zia, AH Nayyar, R Rajaraman & MV Ramana. 2006. Fissile Materials in South Asia : The Implications of the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal. International Panel on Fissile Materials, September. www.fissilematerials.org.

[iii] Squassoni, Sharon. 2006. U.S.Nuclear Cooperation With India : Issues for Congress. CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, updated 12 January. http://fpc.state.gov/fpc/c16427.htm.

What’s new after more than a decade of stalemate in the Geneva-based disarmament negotiating forum is that nothing has actually changed – except that now diplomats are tantalizingly close to a breakthrough regarding the CD’s program of work. In fact, they might just manage to get it approved before the end of April.

While they have been flirting with success, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to make the final advance by the end of the formal meetings of the CD’s first session of 2007 (on Friday March 30) – that advance being an agreement to finally begin substantive work (agreement on the matters of substance themselves being quite another matter). Many hesitations remained, but in the absence of any fundamental refusals to cooperate they did manage to agree to a special session in April in the hopes (even the expectation) of approving a way forward on four key issues on the CD’s agenda.[i]

The core of the work that is finally to begin is the start of negotiations on a treaty to ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (FMCT). Twice already the international community, through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conferences, has unanimously agreed that an FMCT is a top global priority.

In 1995 NPT signatories, which obviously includes all the NPT-acknowledged nuclear weapon states (NWS), agreed to negotiations, as well as their “early conclusion,” on “a non-discriminatory and universally applicable convention banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices.”[ii] Then in 2000, again with the concurrence of the NWS, states again resolved that the CD should “agree on a programme of work which includes the immediate commencement of negotiations on such a treaty with a view to their conclusion within five years.”[iii]

The United States, Russia, Britain and France have all announced a moratorium on the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes and China has given informal assurances that “it has not been producing these materials for weapons since approximately 1991.”[iv]

The three non-signatories to the NPT, India, Israel, and Pakistan, all of which are members of the CD, were clearly not part of the NPT consensus, but all three have given grudging support for FMCT negotiations[v] – which does not mean that they will join the moratorium on fissile material production (indeed it could mean accelerated production while negotiations drag on), nor does it guarantee that they will not later in April resist the formula before the CD. North Korea , also a CD member, is clearly not in a position to block consensus. Iran is also reluctant and has raised procedural questions. It could raise objections based on its earlier concerns about the absence of a specific reference to verification, but that would not be compelling objection given that the inclusion of the phrase “without any preconditions” in the CD formula means that verification would not be excluded, as the US has proposed.

Verification has been made a contentious issue by US opposition to it. In response, Canada has submitted a working paper in support of effective verification and arguing that an FMCT verification regime should be built on, though not necessarily confined to, the IAEA-based NPT safeguards regime.[vi]

If negotiations on an FMCT are finally agreed in the April special session, it will be in the context of agreed discussions, optimistically characterized as “substantive discussions,” on three linked issues:[vii]

-nuclear disarmament and the prevention of nuclear war,

-the prevention of an arms race in outer space ( PAROS ), and

-appropriate international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against them (negative security assurances or NSAs).

The start of actual negotiations on an FMCT would be a genuine breakthrough. It certainly wouldn’t end the disagreements and suspicions among the States party to the NPT, but it would help to brighten the mood on the eve of the first preparatory committee session (to run from April 30 through May11 Vienna) for the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

More important, work on the FMCT could help to put some pressure on India to join the official NWS in a moratorium on fissile material production for weapons purposes. It would in particular strengthen the case for linking any move toward the resumption of civilian nuclear trade with India to such a moratorium. If India were given leave to import uranium for its non-military nuclear facilities without such a moratorium it would allow India to devote all its domestic uranium to military production and thus expand its weapons arsenal at an accelerated pace (more on this shortly).

[i] See the Reaching Critical Will website for excellent and ongoing documentation of the CD debates (http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/speeches07/reports.html).

[ii]Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 1995. NPT Review Conference Package of Decisions. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/1995dec.html#2.

[iii] Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 2000. Final Document. 24 May.

http://f40.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Events/Npt/NPT_Conferences/npt2000_final_doc.pdf.

[iv]Hui Zhan and Frank von Hippel, ” Building confidence in a fissile materials production moratorium using commercial satellite imagery,” Disarmament Forum, No. 3, 2000 (UNIDIR), p. 72

[v] Shai Feldman, “Israel and the Cut-Off Treaty,” Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, University of Tel Aviv University, Strategic Assessment, Vol. 1, No. 4, January 1999; Rajesh Kumar Mishra, “India and the draft US FMCT text,” IDSA Strategic Comments, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, June 15, 2006.

[vi] Amb. Paul Meyer, “Introduction of Canadian FMCT working paper,” CD Plenary, March 20, 2007.

[vii] Presidential Draft Decision, Conference on Disarmament (document CD/2007/L.1), March 23, 2007.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, has written compellingly in the WashingtonPost[i]that the damage done by the phrase, War on Terror, “is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.” The persistent invocation of the phrase has created a culture of fear that “obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.”

It brings to mind a fleeting moment in the immediate wake of September 11, 2001 when it seemed that Canada would steer a radically different course.

In those deeply disturbing days, the dominant refrain was of course that the menace had arrived on our shores and we in North America would now all have to rise to the challenge and defend “our way of life.” But Prime Minister Jean Chr√©tien’s early message was different.[ii]” Our actions will be ruled by resolve but not by fear,” he told the House of Commons. “We will remain vigilant but will not give in to the temptation in a rush to increase security to undermine the values that we cherish and which have made Canada a beacon of hope, freedom and tolerance in the world.”

The focus was less on “defending” our way of life and more on “depending” on it: “Let our actions be guided by a spirit of wisdom and perseverance, by our values and our way of life. As we press the struggle, let us never, ever, forget who we are and what we stand for.”

But it was a distinction that went unnoticed where it counted most.[iii]Washington adopted the mantra that on 9/11 “everything changed” while CNN’s omnipresent banner headline trumpeted “America ‘s New War.” The claim that “everything changed” actively discouraged the idea that we could depend on the durable civil values and standards of our way of life in responding to the challenge of terrorism. The insistence that we were in extraordinary times fed the view that extraordinary measures were now required, that we should not be constrained or inhibited by the rules and values that guide us in normal times. The “everything changed” mood fostered the sense that we were in a new context in which the usual political rudders or navigational aids offered by established morality and the rule of law could not be relied upon and could thus be jettisoned in favour of new tools.

Within weeks of the attack CNN’s banner ceased to be a metaphor. The United States attacked Afghanistan claiming self defence, the UN Security Council implicitly agreed, NATO states invoked Article V of their alliance pact to declare the terrorist attack on the US an attack on them all, and Canada sent four ships to the war effort in symbolic but unmistakable acquiescence to the prevailing mood – not to mention in sanguine disregard for the Prime Minister’s earlier wisdom.

Five years on, we’ve seen a surfeit of innovative tools, used by the US as well as Canada: arrests without trial and security certificate detentions, violations of privacy through wiretap programs, illegal deportations, abuses of prisoners, and of course renewed warfare. In time, the “war on terror” spread to Iraq, this time in defiance of the Security Council and without even the pretext of legality, and, notably, without the political support of Canada. It is a war on terror that has successfully transformed Iraq from a murderously oppressive state that nevertheless eschewed Islamic extremism and refused cooperation with Islamic terrorism into a spectacularly failed state where lawlessness and unrestrained violence offer an open arena for the recruitment, training, and practice of terrorism.

In Afghanistan and Iraq , the all-out American attacks deposed the regimes of the day with impressive efficiency, but then things got a lot more complicated. Five years later, the security situation in Afghanistan continues its steady decline, as Canadians and Afghans have tragically learned, while the tragic chaos of Iraq renders the might of America impotent and searching above all for escape.

The end is not in sight, and it is a costly irony that these wars to build democracy and end terror follow more than a decade of lessons learned about what does and doesn’t work when trying to reverse state failure, build sustainable societies, and prevent violent conflict – peacebuilding, in other words.

The basic understanding that had emerged out of the peacebuilding decade that followed the end of the Cold War was that to prevent violent conflict, and especially to prevent backsliding in societies just emerging out of prolonged armed conflict, it was necessary to focus on building conditions in which the local population could see positive change and in particular would develop some confidence that the pursuit of positive change was being seriously engaged. Elections, as a means of demonstrating a commitment to political inclusiveness and power sharing, were an important component, but by no means the central strategy.

Inclusiveness had to be part of a much larger strategy: building local security institutions, like the police and judiciary, that were experienced by the people as fair and operating in the interests of all; building an infrastructure of basic services, notably humanitarian relief to the most stricken populations, as well as education and health care, transport and communication; the demobilization and disarming of combatants to give the civilian population the assurance of a serious effort to control crime and sectarian violence; and the start of economic development measures.

Complementing the peacebuilding lessons, the Canadian-sponsored report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS ), “The Responsibility to Protect,” was released in late 2001 and gradually became the focus and stimulus for an international effort to formally recognize the international community’s responsibility to come to the protection of highly vulnerable communities when their own governments failed or refused to provide such protection.

On the military protection of the vulnerable, the report had brief but explicit advice about a new kind of military intervention, for humanitarian purposes, that “involves a form of military action significantly more narrowly focused and targeted than all out war-fighting.” Winning the acceptance of civilian populations, says the report, “means accepting limitations and demonstrating through the use of restraint that the [military] operation is not a war to defeat a state but an operation to protect populations in that state from being harassed, persecuted or killed.”[iv]

Yet in both Afghanistan and Iraq wars were launched to defeat a state without any plan for how to protect the affected populations or how to successfully support a successor regime. They were both invasions intended toadvance the interests of the invaders, but as Brzezinski confirms, these two hot wars joined the mythical “war on terror” to violate the rule of law, to advance intolerance at home, and to “gravely damage the United States internationally.”

Echoing the famous and much earlier confession of “shame” by the Dixie Chicks[v] at the actions of their president, Brzezinski concludes that “someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.”

[i] “Terrorized by ‚ÄòWar on Terror’,” March 25, 2007.

[ii] Hansard, Government Orders, attack on the United States ,” September 17, 2001.

[iii] The following is drawn from, and is elaborated on, in: Ernie Regehr, ” Canada is ignoring its own advice,” Inroads: The Canadian Journal of Opinion, Issue No. 20, Winter/Spring 2007

[iv] International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001, December). The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa : IDRC. [Online]. Available: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/iciss-ciise/report-en.asp, pp. 37 and 63.

[v] In March 2003, during a now famous performance in London, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, a native of Lubbock, Texas, told the audience: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

The NWS have themselves defined what is required of them to advance the internationally agreed objectives of global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. That is not to say that they have unfailingly complied with their own requirements, but they have in fact left little doubt about their obligations. Three essential agreements that set out NWS commitments and obligations are the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) itself, the 1995 NPT Review Conference agreement on Principles and Objectives for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and the 2001 NPT Review Conference agreement on “practical steps for the systematic and progressive efforts to implement article VI of the NPT.”

NWS are under legal obligation, by virtue of Article VI of the NPT, to disarm. They have in fact, through Review Conference agreements, made unequivocal disarmament commitments – up to and including the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. They have affirmed the central importance of ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which cannot happen before all NWS, as well as other Annex 2 states (i.e. states with civilian nuclear technologies), have ratified it, and have committed to a moratorium on testing until that time.

The NWS have committed to negotiating a fissile material production cut-off treaty (FMCT) and to observing voluntary, unilateral moratoria on the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes pending the entry into force of such a Treaty.

The NWS have undertaken not to threaten or use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon state signatories to the NPT. They have agreed to reduce the operational status of their weapons and to diminish their role in their respective security policies. They have pledged to honour nuclear weapon-free zones (NWFZ). The NWS have agreed to place nuclear materials and facilities which are surplus to their security needs under permanent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. They are under legal obligation (again by virtue of the NPT) not to assist non-nuclear weapon states in the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They have agreed to regular reporting on their nuclear arsenals and on their progress in meeting their acknowledged disarmament objectives.

India describes itself as, and aspires to be recognized as, a NWS. Such formal recognition should not and will not be forthcoming, but there is certainly a movement toward treating India as if it were a NWS – essentially a de facto nuclear weapon state (DNWS).

Such a recognition would have seriously negative non-proliferation implications (an issue for another time), but the focus this time is the additional important question of the extent to which India as a DNWS is prepared to meet NWS disarmament commitments and obligations. There is certainly no non-proliferation advantage to treating India as if it were a NWS only to have it then proceed to mimic the intransigence of the current NWS. The nonproliferation regime is not in need of more states following the model of the current NWS – that is, being occasionally generous with the rhetorical commitments; but always intensely guarded in the implementation.

Thus, before the nuclear supplier group (NSG) acts on any Indian exceptions to nonproliferation regulations, the international community would do well to seek from India, at a minimum, a clear indication of how it intends to meet the commitments and obligations of the NWS and, indeed, how it intends to engage the NWS and DNWS in developing practical measures to implement the disarmament agenda and to move toward India’s stated goal of universal, nondiscriminatory disarmament.

So how is India doing with regard to its disarmament commitments?

1. Disarmament

India ‘s rhetorical commitment to total nuclear disarmament is unambiguous. Support for disarmament within a specified time frame separates India positively from the postures of the NWS. At the same time, India’s prominent insistence that disarmament must be “nondiscriminatory” and pursued “on the basis of equality” links India’s commitment directly to the behavior of NWS – a fairly reliable assurance that its rhetoric is not about to be put to the test. Unlike the NWS, India is not a signatory to the NPT and thus is not under a Treaty obligation to disarm, although its declared commitment to disarmament reflects its recognition of the global norm against any long-term retention of nuclear weapons.

2. CTBT

India’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing was made a bilateral political commitment in the July 18/05 joint statement with the United States, with US legislation (related to the joint statement) making it clear that the agreement would end in the event of further testing. India continues to reject the CTBT, but implies that in “a positive environment” it would sign on, suggesting that ratification of the CTBT should be a minimal condition for support for the deal in the NSG.

3. FMCT

India supports negotiations toward an FMCT but refuses to join a moratorium on the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes. US legislation includes a (non-binding) policy statement to pursue a moratorium on Indian production of fissile materials for weapons purposes, but links it to a similar moratorium in Pakistan and India. Given the NWS moratorium and India’s insistence on being treated on an equal basis, it would be reasonable to insist that an Indian exemption to NSG guidelines be contingent on India joining that moratorium.

4. NSA’s

India currently stands by a qualified, unilateral NSA declaration, and supports legally-binding NSAs. Its NSA declaration is qualified because it reserves the right to respond to chemical or biological threats/attacks with a nuclear threat/attack, thus its commitment falls short of the 1995 and 2000 commitments made by the NWS.

5. Reduced operational status

Indian nuclear forces appear to be on a substantially reduced readiness status, meaning India is currently in essential compliance with the NWS commitment.

6. Diminished role for nuclear weapons

It would be hard to argue that India is on trajectory of diminishing importance of nuclear weapons in its national security calculus.

7. NWFZs

India is supportive of NWFZs and has expressed its willingness to sign protocols giving such zones security assurances against threats from NWS, however, inasmuch as such a formal signature would implicitly recognize India as a NWS, any security assurances given by India to NWFZs will have to come through unilateral declarations.

8. Safeguarding surplus fissile materials

India does not regard itself to be in position to declare any fissile materials for weapons purposes to be surplus to its military needs.

9. Trade and Assistance

India appears to be in full compliance with the obligations of NWS in Article I of the NPT, and also adheres to MTCR and NSG guidelines and has reported on its compliance with Resolution 1540 (a 2004 Security Council resolution requiring states to strengthen or enact legislation to and regulatory mechanisms for controlling weapons of mass destruction and related materials to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of non-state actors). In the 2005 joint statement with the US, India goes further and agrees with the US not to transfer enrichment and reprocessing technologies to states that do not already have them.

10. Reporting

India is highly wary of transparency in matters related to its nuclear arsenal. Transparency in civilian programs is a declared objective of the US-India deal, but India links transparency in military nuclear programs to agreement on transparency measures with “all States.”

In summary, India can be said to be meeting, or willing to meet, NWS standards in terms of declared commitments with regard to reduced operational status of weapons systems, nuclear-weapon-free zones, and trade and assistance regulations. On disarmament broadly India has accepted the obligation to disarm, though is not party to any legally-binding agreement to that end. On the CTBT, FMCT, NSAs, a diminished role for nuclear weapons, safeguarding surplus materials, and reporting, India’s declared commitments fall short of the formal commitments and obligations (as distinct from behavior) of NWS.

This summary is elaborated in a paper prepared for a forthcoming consultation on the implications of the US-India nuclear cooperation deal hosted by the Simons Centre of UBC’s Liu Institute.

UN Security Council consensus on Iran is a major achievement, except that it may turn out to be the wrong consensus at the wrong time.

Iran’s failure to comply with the Council’s unanimous demand that it suspend all uranium enrichment, again confirmed in the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has become the focus of a rapidly escalating international confrontation, even though an end to Iranian enrichment activity is not anyone’s formal objective. The Security Council’s most recent resolution says clearly and simply that the aim is to “guarantee that Iran ‘s nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

Both the IAEA and the Security Council introduced the call for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment as an interim confidence-building measure, not an end in itself. The challenge is to recognize when that call undermines the real objective: complete and unfettered inspections in Iran that enable the IAEA to provide the guarantee of peaceful purposes that the Security Council and all who support nuclear non-proliferation seek.

The Security Council does not dispute Iran ‘s claim that it has a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to conduct uranium enrichment. At the same time, Iran has not challenged the fundamental principle of transparency or its legal obligation to be in full compliance with NPT-mandated IAEA safeguards. Iran is currently in violation of both the principle and the obligation, but Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, appears to recognize that avoiding IAEA requirements will not be tolerated indefinitely: “What should be important is to have Iran’s activities within the framework of the IAEA and under the supervision of the inspectors of the Agency” (Aljazeera.net 2007). In other words, Iran ‘s long-term obligation under the NPT is not to forgo enrichment, but to allow the IAEA the access it needs to confirm that any enrichment is for peaceful purposes.

Why then is Iran ‘s suspension of a legal activity‚Äîuranium enrichment for civilian purposes‚Äîmade a precondition for remedying its illegal activity‚Äîflouting IAEA safeguards? Iran ‘s refusal to make the goodwill gesture of suspending enrichment until the achievement of satisfactory IAEA access is, at the very least, shortsighted, but it is in no one’s interests to elevate a gesture not made, even one mandated by the Security Council, into a global confrontation and tripwire to a military showdown.

Increasingly, elements of the non-proliferation community doubt the wisdom and question the motives behind the single-minded focus on a suspension of uranium enrichment. It is time to refocus on the real objective‚Äîthat is, to ensure that Iran does not use its growing capacity in nuclear technology for weapons purposes. “What matters,” says Gareth Evans (2007) of the International Crisis Group (ICG), “is not whether Iran has full enrichment capability, but whether it has nuclear weapons.”

The ICG (2006) has called for a change in diplomatic strategy by which the international community would explicitly acknowledge that it is Iran ‘s prerogative under the NPT to enrich uranium to fuel civilian nuclear energy plants, provided it meets stringent inspection requirements. In what the ICG calls a “delayed limited enrichment plan,” the international community would call on Iran to confine itself to its current, limited, experimental level of enrichment and only gradually phase in industrial-level enrichment as the international community develops confidence that it is in compliance with a full and effective inspections regime.

Earlier the German Defence Minister, Franz Josef Jung, expressed a similar view, namely, that Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium if it remained for now at the experimental level and if it was under the reliable scrutiny of the IAEA: “One cannot forbid Iran from doing what other countries in the world are doing in accordance with international law. The key point is whether a step toward nuclear weapons is taken. This cannot happen” (Porter 2006).

A related approach, offered by Harvard nuclear expert Matthew Bunn (2006), would place the Iranian enrichment facility in a stand-by mode that would halt actual enrichment but would preserve the machinery in an operational mode to facilitate an efficient restart of operations.

The point is that there is room to explore options on the uranium enrichment question‚Äîoptions that would not compromise the core objective of bringing Iran into unambiguous, verified compliance with its obligations under the NPT and IAEA safeguards. There is also wide agreement that verified compliance would require, as both the IAEA and Security Council have rightly insisted, Iran ‘s adoption and ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol and the more intrusive inspections it facilitates.

It would, of course, be best if Iran neither pursued nor acquired any of the sensitive fuel cycle technologies that are potentially adaptable to weapons purposes. But restrictions on such technologies are unlikely to be successful if the strategy is tosingle out Iran. The IAEA has been exploring plans whereby enrichment and reprocessing for civilian purposes would be brought under international control to produce fuel for an IAEA fuel bank, from which the operators of civilian power plants anywhere in the world in need of such fuel would be supplied. Last fall, in fact, Iran offered to have an international consortium put in charge of its enrichment program.[i]

Until that happens, however, the Iran-specific restriction on uranium enrichment remains a confidence-building measure‚Äîa sign of cooperation rather than an essential element of compliance. Iran’s refusal to agree to this gesture should not be defined as a fundamental challenge to Security Council authority and thus grounds for military action. But on the universal principle of full disclosure and on Iran ‘s obligation to permit full and unfettered inspection of all its nuclear activity and facilities there can obviously be no compromise.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay (2007) expressed Canada’s deep disappointment “that Iran has refused to meet the international obligations required of it,” emphasizing that “Canada still believes that the package of incentives offered to Iran in June 2006” by the six states managing negotiations with Iran (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) “offers an excellent basis for a negotiated solution.” While the details of the 2006 package have not been released, published reports indicate that it was genuinely generous to Iran (Kerr 2006).

The proposed deal,[ii] which included offers of joint energy projects, economic cooperation, and technology transfers to Iran, required three basic and significant measures from Iran : full cooperation with the IAEA and its investigations on outstanding issues, resumed implementation of the Additional Protocol, and suspension of all enrichment-related activities (Kerr 2006). Arms Control Today further reports that Iran had indicated willingness to cooperate on the first two, but rejected the third, and, notably, that there were indications at the time that China and Russia, and possibly Germany, may have supported a compromise to allow Iran to maintain a minimal enrichment operation.

It took the Security Council a long time and a lot of compromises and arm twisting to reach consensus on the demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, but it is a consensus that now could beblocking a potential solution to the crisis. If suspension of enrichment were taken off the table and replaced by a requirement that enrichment be confined to research levels, the international community would be in a position to call Iran’s bluff‚Äîto see whether Iran, with the challenge to its right to enrichment technology removed, would indeed honour its obligation of full disclosure and unfettered IAEA access.

In the meantime, Iran is reportedly making progress in its effort to move from the current experimental level of enrichment to industrial-level activity (Sanger & Broad 2007). The latter does not automatically mean weapons-grade enrichment. If, in the future, expanded enrichment is carried out under full IAEA safeguards, it will be possible to confirm that such enrichment is confined to civilian purposes‚Äîif the IAEA has access and all outstanding questions and issues have been cleared up. At the moment, however, the focus on a suspension of all enrichment activity provides Iran a cover under which it both accelerates enrichment activity and drags its feet on cooperation with the IAEA and implementation of Additional Protocol inspection arrangements – and. as a consequence. frustrates the international community’s right to unambiguous confirmation that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.

References

Aljazeera.net. 2007. Iran nuclear report due. 21 February 21.http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/420AE469-30CB-4F06-8C7E-F549318B58D6.htm.

BBC News. 2006. Iran ‚Äòpositive’ on nuclear offer. 6 June. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5048956.stm.

Bunn, Matthew. 2006. Placing Iran’s Enrichment Activities in Standby. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University , June.http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/BCSIA_content/documents/

bunn_2006_iran_standby.pdf .

Evans, Gareth. 2007. It’s not too late to stop Iran. International Herald Tribune, 15 February. http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4662.

Hoagland, Jim. 2007. Fighting Iran—with patience. TheWashington Post, 25 February.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301701.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns.

International Crisis Group. 2006. Iran: Is There a Way Out of the Nuclear Impasse? Middle East Report N° 51, 23 February.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/middle_east___north_africa/

iraq_iran_gulf/51_iran_is_there_a_way_out_of_the_nuclear_impasse.pdf .

Kerr , Paul. 2006. U.S., allies await Iran’s response to nuclear offer. Arms Control Today, July/August.http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_07-08/IranResponse.asp.

MacKay, Peter. 2007. Statement by Minister MacKay on Iran’s non-compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1737. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada , News Release No. 29, 22 February. http://w01.international.gc.ca/minpub/Publication.aspx?isRedirect=True&publication_id=384878&language=E&docnumber=29.

Porter, Garth. 2006. German official urges compromise on Iran enrichment. Inter Press Service, 4 July. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=9238.

Sanger, David E. & William J. Broad. 2007. Report finds Iran in breach of U.N. order. TheNew York Times, 22 February. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/middleeast/22cnd-iran.html?ex=1329800400&en=6197fad3f448b6a0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&

emc=rss.

[i] “Last autumn, Iran’s Ali Laijani told European Union negotiator Javier Solana that Iran could accept the Russian-E.U. proposal for an international consortium to enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel for Iran‚Äîif the enrichment and reprocessing were done on Iranian soil” (Hoagland 2007, p. B07).

[ii] “Western diplomatic sources” described the following incentives: “permission for Iran to buy spare parts for civilian aircraft made by US manufacturers, and the provision of light water nuclear reactors and enriched fuel. Other incentives are said to include the lifting of restrictions on the use of US technology in agriculture and support for Iranian membership of the World Trade Organisation” (BBC News 2006).

In the run up to the current NPT PrepCom, ¹ the United States issued a number of background policy documents, ² at the core of which is a narrow, literal reading of the Treaty’s disarmament agreement (Article VI – see the text). ³ It is a reading sharply and obviously out of sync with the mainstream disarmament community and it waves another red flag in an arena that should now be all about sober discernment and the search for common ground.

Washington promotes a fundamentalist approach to Article VI inasmuch as it isolates the text from disarmament diplomacy’s evolving understanding of it and from the global consensus that has gradually formed around what the Treaty’s disarmament mandate means today.

Excuse the appeal to theological categories, even though they are not really out of place in an endeavor that is doctrinally arcane and undeniably concerned with life and death issues, but the idea of “progressive revelation” recognizes that foundational texts, in this case Article VI, written in another time and another context, need to be progressively re-interpreted and elaborated by virtue of a community’s subsequent experience and accumulating wisdom.

There are two primary sources of such further elaboration and interpretation of Article VI of the NPT – the World Court and the NPT Review Conferences.

In 1996 the World Court said that under international law the Article VI requirement for “negotiation in good faith” includes “an obligation to…bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In other words, the Treaty requires more than the “pursuit” of disarmament, as the text says, it requires disarmament to be accomplished.

The Review Conferences have also yielded additional interpretations and commitments that elaborate the NPT’s disarmament mandate and bring it contemporary relevance. They set out a broad range of measures needed to accomplish nuclear disarmament. ⁴ In the 2000 final document the NWS themselves clarified the nature of their disarmament obligations under Article VI with this unanimous commitment: “An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

This accumulated experience and wisdom has led to an updated and now prevailing understanding of the current obligations that the Treaty places on states. That understanding, reiterated in the opening session of the current PrepCom by Canada’s Ambassador Paul Meyer, ⁵ sees the Treaty as based on three inter-related pillars: “the norm against nuclear proliferation; the legal obligation to pursue good faith negotiations to nuclear disarmament; and the framework for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” These are three parallel “core commitments” that are “equal, inseparable and mutually reinforcing,” because, as the Canadian statement put it, “the Treaty is only as strong as its weakest link.” ⁶

Now listen to Washington’s view of the bargain, provided by Christopher A. Ford, the US Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation. “Both the plain meaning of the text of Article VI and its negotiating history,” he says, “make clear that the disarmament provisions of the NPT are not substantively equivalent to the Treaty’s nonproliferation obligations….For better or worse, Article VI actually does not contain concrete disarmament requirements….” ⁷

He argues that “the primary motivation of the NPT was to reduce the risk of nuclear war,” and that this was to be accomplished “by obligations designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional states.” Thus, the negotiators agreed that “rather than requiring anything concrete with respect to disarmament, the Treaty would merely express the clear intention of the nuclear weapon states to move toward it in the framework of a treaty on general and complete disarmament,” adding that the phrase “pursue negotiations” confirms that nothing is required of these negotiations other than that they be “pursued.”

Insisting that only the original NPT Text is relevant, Mr. Ford used the pre-PrepCom background statements issued by the US State Department to try to persuade others to quit talking about Review Conference conclusions. He described references to the results of Review Conferences as destructive procedural devices that “spark controversy and difficulty and risk reviving acrimony…of past meetings” and “reopening longstanding disputes.” But of course the unanimous support of NPT States Parties for the decisions of 1995 and the final document of 2000 are not examples of longstanding disputes but of longstanding agreements. Disputes do arise when states try to retreat from those agreements.

Mercifully, Mr. Ford did not bring his fundamentalist reading of Article VII directly into his opening statement to the current PrepCom. In fact, he emphasized American support for the ultimate objective of nuclear disarmament, but of course without acknowledging any obligation to accomplish it.

As long as this gap between the fundamentalist and progressive reading of the nonproliferation regime’s foundational text remains it will continue to bedevil the disarmament process.

1. The meeting of the NPT Review Conference Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) in Vienna, April 30 through May 11.

2. “Procedure and Substance in the NPT Review Cycle: The Example of Nuclear Disarmament,” Dr. Christopher A. Ford, United States Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation, Remarks to the Conference on “Preparing for 2010: Getting the Process Right,” Annecy, France, March 17, 2007
(http://www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/rm/81940.htm).

3. Article VI of the Treaty reads: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
4. See previous post: Pushing a stalled nuclear disarmament agenda (April 27).

5. Canada, Opening statement, 2007 NPT PrepCom, Vienna, 30 April, 2007 (http://www.un.org/NPT2010/statements/Canada_E_30_04_am.pdf).

6. Articles I, II, and III establish the norm against the proliferation or spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) and set out safeguards requirements to verify non-proliferation. Articles IV and V set out provisions for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, consistent with the obligations under the first three Articles (Article V is essentially non-operative inasmuch as it refers to “peaceful nuclear explosions” — the current consensus being that there are no such things;if it explodes it’s a weapon). Article VI sets out the disarmament obligations of the NWS.

7. A Work Plan for the 2010 Review Cycle: Coping with Challenges Facing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, by Dr. Christopher A. Ford, United States Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation (Opening Remarks to the 2007 Preparatory Committee Meeting of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferationof Nuclear Weapons, April 30, 2007, Vienna, Austria).

When the six party talks[i] finally produced an agreement to reaffirm the common goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula , along with setting out specific measures to be taken toward that end, there were two primary reactions to the deal. Some welcomed it, saying it was far too long in coming and was a deal that could have been won already in 2002. Others disparaged it, saying it rewarded North Korea ‘s bad behavior.

It is certainly true that with the cooperation of the United States the current deal could have been reached much earlier. The basic elements of the deal go back, not only to 2002, but to 1994 and are really a slightly altered version of the 1994 Framework Agreement reached by the Clinton Administration. And what the deal actually rewards is not bad behavior but an end to bad behavior. This time the deal is linked specifically to behavior and refers to the principle of “action for action” – that is, neither side takes action on the basis of a declaration by the other, but each party acts on the basis of concrete action by the other.

That means in the next 60 days there will need to be verified evidence of action. North Korea, or the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), must shut down production in the one declared facility it has that is capable of producing fissile materials and must allow it to be placed under the seal and verification of the International Atomic Energy Agency.[ii] That is really the main and essential requirement of Pyonyang. It is a clear and unambiguous action and it is intended to produce another pretty clear action, an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.

The February 13, 2007 agreement is partly new and mostly old because it is intended to implement the September 19, 2005 agreement, which in turn more or less updated the 1994 deal.[iii] As the BBC put it: “Prominent members of the US President George W. Bush’s administration make no secret of their contempt for [the Clinton deal, but] now, after years of confrontation, they have signed up to something that looks suspiciously similar – a nuclear freeze in return for economic and diplomatic incentives.”[iv]

A primary difference between 1994 and 2007 is that in 1994 it was a bilateral agreement between the United States and the DPRK, while in 2007 it is a six-party agreement, giving key neighbors, China, South Korea, and Japan, a stake in assuring success this time round.

Success is far from guaranteed. DPRK is required to produce “a list of all its nuclear programs” (Feb. 13/07) and that will prove a challenge. In 2002 the United States accused the DPRK of a clandestine uranium enrichment program. The DPRK at first seemed to admit such a program, but then denied it and has steadfastly denied it since. Washington has never presented public evidence to back up its accusations, which in turn have become increasingly vague over time. The DPRK is unlikely to list what it says does not exist, to which Washington and other skeptics are likely to reply that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Things could go on in that vain at some length. In the end, to build confidence that an enrichment program truly does not exist will require extensive with cooperation with IAEA inspectors. Public discussion of the matter now suggests that the North Koreans did try to acquire enrichment equipment, contrary to the provisions of the 1994 deal, but there is no evidence of the extent to which they were successful and Pyongyang continues to deny the program.

The Globe and Mail carried an op-ed by John O’Sullivan[v] of Washington’s Hudson Institute that typified the claim that the downfall of earlier deals was simple matter of North Korea ‘s cheating and that the new deal rewards bad behavior. In 2002, however, it was the Bush Administration that cut off the energy assistance element of the 1994 agreement amidst Washington ‘s aggressive accusations of another advanced but hidden weapons program (uranium enrichment). Kim Jong-il responded predictably, expelling the international inspectors and pulling out of the NPT.

O’Sullivan also reflected the views of other critics when he wrote that the 1994 Clinton Framework Agreement with North Korea is the reason Kim Jong-il now has “more nuclear weapons.” In fact, the Clinton deal shut down North Korea ‘s plutonium operation, and throughout the deal’s eight-year run not an ounce of weapons material was produced there. That all ended in 2002 with the Bush Administration’s dispute with Pyongyang. It was under the Bush Administration that Pyongyang resumed production of fissile material and successfully (at least partly so) weaponized it.

A number of elements of the agreement involve bilateral issues – between the DPRK and the United States and the DPRK and Japan. Others require unspecified levels of economic, energy, and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK.

The regime that Washington had labeled part of an Axis of Evil is now to enter into bilateral talks and normalized relations with the US: “The DPRK and the US will start bilateral talks aimed at resolving pending bilateral issues and moving toward full diplomatic relations. The US will begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK.”

This welcome turnaround by Washington is seen by some as a deliberate decision to go easy on the DPRK and focus the heavy hand on Iran. On the other hand, the new approach to North Korea could also become a model for dealing with Iran – or would that be too much to expect.

[i] The six are, DPRK, ROK, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States .

[ii] The facility in question is the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and accompanying reprocessing facility. The six-party Joint Statement of February 13, 2007 says this facility will be “shut down and seal[ed] for the purpose of eventual abandonment.” The joint statement is available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/february/80479.htm.

[iii] See Ploughshares Briefing 06/6, Ernie Regehr, “Responding to the North Korean bomb” (October 2006).

[iv] Charles Scanlon, “The end of a long confrontation,” BBC News, Feb 13, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6357853.stm).

[v]”No question, this is a bad deal,” Feb. 21/07.