Nuclear Disarmament

The five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council are of course also the five nuclear weapon states that are recognized as such by the NPT. They have made few collective disarmament commitments, but there are some important ones and it is worth looking at the evolution of their collective disarmament language, up to and including yesterday’s (24 Sept 09) historic Security Council resolution.[i]

The foundational collective commitment is obviously in Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). All the P5 are now signatories, although they weren’t when the NPT first entered into force in 1970, and in it they say: “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.”

For the P5 the operative word was “pursue,” and in the wake of their new commitment they embarked on the most intense arms race in human history, a nuclear arms race which led to their collective acquisition of some 70,000 nuclear weapons by the mid-1980s (up from just under 40,000 when the Treaty entered into force in 1970, and compared with the roughly 24,000 that remain today). Throughout, the P5 have argued they are in compliance with their Treaty obligations inasmuch as they are “pursuing” nuclear disarmament but that the conditions haven’t favored it. In fact, the P5 tended to argue that the Article VI reference to “general and complete” disarmament was really intended to mean that nuclear disarmament could be accomplished only in the context of general and complete disarmament.

Of course, other signatories to the NPT, the non-nuclear weapon states, argued that it was nuclear disarmament that would enhance global peace and security and thus both precede and contribute to the more distant goal of general and complete disarmament.

In 1992 the P5, through a formal Statement approved by the Security Council, went some way toward acknowledging that nuclear disarmament has a higher priority than general and complete disarmament, when the Council declared that “the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction constitutes a threat to international peace and security,”[ii] assuming that “proliferation” can be understood as “vertical” proliferation as well.

In 1995, through the NPT Review Conference, the P5 strengthened its language further in acknowledging that a requirement for implementing Article VI is the “the determined pursuit by the nuclear-weapon States of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons, and by all States of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The implication that nuclear disarmament must await general disarmament is not present in that formulation.

Then in 1996 the World Court, in its formal opinion on the Treaty, said that the obligation was not only to “pursue” negotiations, or presumably the “determined” pursuit of negotiations, toward nuclear disarmament, but that the obligation is to actually “conclude” negotiations and to achieve the goal of nuclear disarmament.[iii]

In 2000 the P5, along with all other NPT signatories, agreed to 13 “practical steps” – these were described as “systematic and progressive efforts to implement article VI of the Treaty” – and the sixth of these steps was, and is, “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 formulation obviously affirms the Court’s interpretation of Article VI as imposing an obligation on NWS to actually achieve or accomplish, not just pursue nuclear disarmament. It also separates nuclear disarmament from the general and complete disarmament effort. In other words, in 2000 the P5 said that they had an obligation to eliminate their nuclear arsenals and that they intended to fulfill that obligation.

In 2008 the P5 said through another Security Council statement that nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation are “necessary,” among other measures, “to strengthen international peace and security.”[iv]

That brings us to yesterday’s action. UN Security Council Resolution 1887, is a genuinely historic achievement for many reasons,[v] but it explicitly reverts to the language of pursuing, rather than accomplishing, nuclear disarmament. In the first preambular paragraph it says: “Resolving to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons….” In the main operative paragraph on disarmament, as approved by the P5, the Security Council “calls on the Parties to the NPT, pursuant to Article VI of the Treaty, to undertake to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to nuclear arms reduction and disarmament….”

It is important to resist the temptation toward excessive negativity about what is a major and positive diplomatic move to light a fire under nuclear disarmament, but it is hard to avoid the thought that the language here is the definition of equivocation. First, it is a “call” rather than a commitment. Second, it is a call, not to accomplish disarmament, and technically not event to pursue it, but to “undertake” to pursue it – in other words, we are back at the 1970 NPT formulation without the benefit of the subsequent clarifications.

And by once again using the Article VI formulation that includes the reference to general and complete disarmament, the P5 invite a glass-half-empty interpretation that has them once again implying that nuclear disarmament must await conditions of global peace – rather than, as has been gradually clarified through the statements in 1992, 1995, 2000, and 2008 and through the World Court opinion, that nuclear disarmament is essential to and a means toward greater global peace and security.

One’s disappointment in the language is somewhat mitigated by subsequent paragraphs which reaffirm the 1992 and 2008 statements, but silence on the 1995 and 2000 commitments is telling.

None of this means that Resolution 1887 is not hugely important. It profiles nuclear disarmament as a global priority, it formally envisions a world without nuclear weapons, and it acknowledges at least implicitly that non-proliferation, that is, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, cannot be de-linked from disarmament. It is future action which will determine whether Resolution 1887 reflects a new and vigorous political will for disarmament among the P5, or whether the language of re-equivocation betrays a commitment to business as usual.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] The resolution was heavily focused on controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, measures that bear further discussion, but for now, a look at the more limited disarmament commitments.

[ii] Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/23500, 31 January 1992.

[iii] The Court’s Opinion is summarized by John Burroughs in, “The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons:  A Guide to the Historic Opinion of The International Court Of Justice.” International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, Lit Verlag, 1997, Muenster. Available athttp://lcnp.org/wcourt/adlegalintro.htm.

[iv] Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/2008/43, 19 November 2008.

[v] See previous posting here, Sept 15, http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/9/first-ever-un-security-council-resolution-nuclear-disarmament.

September 24 promises a couple of encouraging firsts. It will be the first time a US President has chaired a session of the UN Security Council, and for the first time the Council is expected to pass a resolution that will include substantive disarmament elements relevant to the nuclear arsenals of its five permanent members – all of which are nuclear weapon states. It is an important new start for the Security Council, even if on matters of practical substance it will be a fairly modest effort.

The UN Security Council has certainly not been shy about pronouncing itself on nuclear nonproliferation, or about imposing strict conditions on states viewed to be in violation of nonproliferation requirements, but it has been essentially silent on nuclear disarmament.[i] That will change when President Barack Obama chairs a session of the Security Council on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.

The US has now circulated a draft resolution[ii] which strongly affirms nuclear disarmament and the objective of “a world without nuclear weapons.” It recalls the Council’s 1992 Presidential Statement,[iii] not a resolution, which asserts that “the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction constitutes a threat to international peace and security,” and both the 1992 statement and the draft resolution for the 24th “underline the need for all Member States to fulfill their obligations in relation to arms control and disarmament.”

The draft resolution for the September 24 session affirms the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as “the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament,” again “underlining the need to pursue further efforts in the sphere of nuclear disarmament, in accordance with Article VI of the NPT.”

A major virtue of the resolution, and it is a big one, is that it marks a sharp American departure from the style, rhetoric, and substance of the Bush Administration’s approach to nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament. In the Bush years the US was focused on denying that the NPT’s disarmament Article, Article VI, actually requires disarmament,[iv] but the current draft states clearly that the NPT rests on three pillars – disarmament, nonproliferation, peaceful uses. And it says there is a need to strengthen all three. Indeed, the draft resolution sees disarmament as a means “to enhance global security” – a formulation that harkens back to the 1992 statement that identified proliferation (including, implicitly, vertical proliferation) as a threat to security.

So far so good[v] – but then the focus clearly shifts to the nonproliferation pillar. Disarmament is the focus of only five of the 25 operational paragraphs of the draft. To be sure, many of the nonproliferation references and measures have important and positive disarmament implications, but direct commitments or calls for disarmament are confined to calls for further disarmament of existing arsenals, for the entry into force of the nuclear test ban Treaty, negotiation of a treaty on the production of fissile materials, a call for all states outside the NPT to join it, and a reaffirmation of negative security assurances.

All are important, but one unnamed European diplomat is quoted on Politico.Com as emphasizing that this resolution “should contain no wording that could be seen as weaker than what was agreed in previous resolutions.”[vi] It is a test the draft resolution does not pass. Inasmuch as the Security Council has not passed previous resolutions referencing disarmament by nuclear weapon states, this resolution is an important step forward, but the language here is certainly much weaker in important instances than that contained in commitments made by nuclear weapon states in the context of the NPT review process.

There is a welcome call for the Conference on Disarmament (CD) to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes, but of course this is a call that is now decades old. There is almost universal agreement that there should be such a treaty, but it is largely the peculiarity of the CD process that keeps negotiations from happening.[vii] Paul Meyer’s recent review of this collective failure says it is time “to challenge CD member states’ apparently infinite capacity to tolerate stalemate at the [CD],” and he challenges nuclear weapon states, perhaps using the forthcoming Security Council session, to finally take action, for example by convening a diplomatic conference dedicated to a fissile materials treaty and focused on how best to get around the still moribund CD.[viii]

And even though the nuclear weapon states have all indicated that they are no longer producing fissile materials for weapons purposes, the draft does not call for a universal moratorium on such production pending the negotiation of a treaty (a call that would be directed toward India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan). The draft’s call for the test ban treaty to finally enter into force does call for a testing moratorium in the meantime.

The draft resolution refers to the Security Council resolutions on North Korea and Iran, but is silent on Resolution 1172 (1998), which called on India and Pakistan, in the wake of their 1998 test explosions of multiple nuclear devices, to end their nuclear weapons programs. Ignoring Resolution 1172 is a way of implicitly acquiescing to the nuclear weapon state status of India and Pakistan, yet, at the same time, the resolution calls on them, as well as Israel and North Korea, to join the NPT. That would mean joining as non-nuclear weapon states – again, it is an old call that has been, and will continue to be, utterly ignored. Yet another such call has little meaning. Promoting universality of the NPT is obviously welcome, but given that it is not about to happen, the urgent task now is to find ways of bringing the outliers meaningfully into the collective pursuit of the envisioned “world without nuclear weapons.”

The draft resolution notably makes no references to the substantial agreements reached in the 1995 and 2000 NPT review conferences. At those events nuclear weapon states not only committed to total nuclear disarmament, they promised interim measures to enhance transparency related to their arsenals, to undertake regular reporting to NPT member states on progress made in implementing Article VI, to de-alert deployed systems, to undertake unilateral disarmament initiatives, to make disarmament irreversible, to pursue more effective verification measures, to place surplus fissile materials under IAEA inspections, and so on – none of these pre-existing promises receive acknowledgement in the draft resolution.

The UN Security Council’s attention to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is to be celebrated, and that it will be led by the United States is doubly worthy of celebration. On matters of substance it will be a modest start, but on the political level it promises a genuinely new beginning.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] For an account of the UNSC’s approach to disarmament, see: Ernie Regehr, “The Security Council and nuclear disarmament.” Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds. The United Nations and Nuclear Orders, United Nations University Press, 2009, pp. 31-51.

[ii] The September 14 draft by the US is available at Politico.Com:   http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27123.html.

[iii] “Note By The President Of The Security Council, S/23500, 31 January 1992.

[iv] Christopher A. Ford, “Debating Disarmament: Interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, November 2007.http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol14/143/143ford.pdf.

[v] A good statement on what the UNSC resolution should include is offered by the Middle Powers Initiative (September 2009). http://www.gsinstitute.org/mpi/archives/UNSC.pdf.

[vi] Laura Rozen, “Obama’s UN nonproliferation resolution,” 14 September 2009.http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0909/Obamas_nonproliferation_resolution_to_the_UN_the_text.html?showall.

[vii] Two recent postings here focus on the CD stalemate:  “Finally, the UN’s Geneva disarmament forum gets to work,” 1 June 2009. http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/6/finally-un%E2%80%99s-geneva-disarmament-forum-gets-work. “Has the stalemate returned?” 13 August 2009.  http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/8/has-cd-stalemate-returned.

[viii] Paul Meyer, “Breakthrough and Breakdown at the Conference on Disarmament: Assessing the Prospects for an FM(C)T. Arms Control Today, September 2009. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_09/Meyer.

“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.”

This statement has at last count been signed by more than 300 Canadians named to the Order of Canada.[i]The initiative, led by Ploughshares co-founder Murray Thomson,[ii] himself an Officer of the Order, has won the support of a wide cross-section of Canadians from scientific, cultural, business, NGO, and political communities, including: aerospace engineer Bruce Aikenhead; writer Margaret Atwood; physician Harvey Barkun; NGO leader Gerry Barr; former UN Ambassador William Barton; artist Robert Bateman; theologian Gregory Baum; fisheries scientist Richard Beamish; Senator and musician Tommy Banks; politician and human rights leader Ed Broadbent; singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn; journalist Peter Desbarats; fashion designer Marielle Fleury; business entrepreneur Margot Franssen.

And that is just a brief selection of names from the first quarter of the alphabet.[iii]

While the idea of a nuclear weapons convention (NWC) has wide public appeal, it has yet to be embraced by the Government of Stephen Harper. While it supports the proposal in principle,[iv] Canada says now is not the time. The Government insists that before an NWC can be credibly advanced, other treaties to prohibit the development and production of nuclear weapons should  be in place, thus apparently seeing the convention more as a way of commemorating the completion of disarmament negotiations than as providing a comprehensive guide, as envisioned by the Secretary-General’s approach, to those negotiations.

Officials generally, and with some credibility, argue that the prospects for adopting an NWC are not promising as long as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is not fully effective, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has not entered into force, and negotiations on a fissile materials cut-off treaty (FMCT) remain stalled. But by this very logic, the basic conditions for launching negotiations for a NWC are actually in place.

The NPT, for example, is far from ineffective. It has been and remains a successful bulwark against proliferation. Only one state party to the NPT, North Korea, has persistently violated it and withdrawn from it. Of course, the NPT has proven least effective in producing timely nuclear disarmament as required under Article VI. In this case, serious work toward an NWC and a disarmament road map would significantly enhance the effectiveness of the NPT.

And, while the CTBT is not yet in force, it is no longer a matter of serious contention. Negotiations have been successfully concluded. All of the nuclear weapon states that are party to the NPT (China, France, Russia, UK, US) have signed the treaty, with the US and China yet to ratify it, and are adhering to a moratorium on testing pending the Treaty’s entry-into-force. Of the four other states with nuclear weapons, only North Korea has explicitly rejected a moratorium.

Meanwhile, the international community, through the Geneva-based UN Conference on Disarmament, has agreed to begin negotiations on an FMCT. The nuclear weapon states within the NPT have all already halted production of fissile materials. Negotiations within the perennially-deadlocked Conference on Disarmament still need to overcome procedural hurdles, raised most recently by Pakistan, but basic support for a treaty is in place.

Now is, in fact, the ideal time to begin to frame an NWC. It would consolidate multilateral disarmament gains and set out the full requirements, including verification mechanisms, to secure the goal of a world without nuclear weapons within an agreed time frame.

What could Canada constructively contribute if it were to embrace the immediate pursuit of a nuclear weapons convention?

1. The first priority would be to reestablish Canada’s active support for a world without nuclear weapons. The Harper Government has certainly not rejected that goal, but neither has it promoted it. So, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister should each make an early and prominent speech in which they address nuclear disarmament and reaffirm Canada’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.
2. The Government should also acknowledge that while progress toward a world without nuclear weapons will obviously involve a variety of key measures (such as the key agreements mentioned above), ultimately all those measures must be brought together in a single umbrella or framework convention. Thus, Canadian policy should explicitly call for the start of negotiations toward such a convention that sets a clear timeline for irreversible and verifiable nuclear disarmament.
3. Next Canada could and should convene an informal international consultative process involving a core group of like-minded states and representatives of civil society to thoroughly explore the focus, scope, verification, and other elements relevant to a nuclear weapons convention. One outcome of this consultation could be an informal international Contact Group or Nuclear Weapons Convention Action Group to systematically press the issue on the international stage.
4. In the meantime Canada should be thinking about the particular contribution it could make to the international process. The UK, including some joint work with Norway, has for example been focusing on verification measures linked to a nuclear weapons convention.[v] Canada was once active in this area, and still is involved in CTBT seismic verification. Consideration could be given to reviving the verification unit within Foreign Affairs to work with and bolster the UK-Norwegian initiative.
5. Canada could also credibly focus on the development of appropriate transparency requirements and identification of the kinds of institutional and governance arrangements needed to ensure an effective and effectively managed nuclear weapons convention. Canada has championed reporting in the NPT review process as a means of promoting accountability, has put forward proposals to overcome the institutional deficit of the NPT, and has supported the institutionalization of enhanced civil society participation in multilateral disarmament efforts.

There is no shortage of things to do and no credible reason to wait. The pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons requires Canada’s energetic engagement.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Jeff Davis, “Order of Canada Recipients Demand Worldwide Ban on Nuclear Weapons,” Embassy (Ottawa, 26 August 2009). http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/ban_weapons-8-26-2009.

[ii] He is supported by former Senator and Ambassador for Disarmament Douglas Roche and Nobel Prize laureate John Polanyi. The author is a signatory.

[iii] There are plans for the complete list to be available online soon.

[iv] At the UN Canada was one of only two NATO countries to abstain (generally indicating agreement in principle but objection to specific details) on resolution A/Res/63/49 in the General Assembly which calls on states to immediately begin “multilateral negotiations leading to an early conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons and providing for their elimination.” All other NATO states voted “no.” Canada joined its NATO colleagues to vote “no” on another resolution calling for negotiations on such a convention (A/Res/63/75) – in this case the resolution also affirmed that any use of nuclear weapons would be in violation of the Charter (a legitimate affirmation but not one likely to be supported by members of a military alliance whose doctrine claims nuclear weapons are essential to their security).

[v] The UK together with Norway is undertaking research, for example, on the verification of nuclear warhead reductions and hosted a meeting of nuclear weapon states (September 3-4, 2009) to “discuss confidence building measures including the verification of disarmament and treaty compliance.” Seehttp://www.fco.gov.uk/en/fco-in-action/counter-terrorism/weapons/nuclear-weapons-policy/disarmament.

“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.”

This statement has at last count been signed by more than 300 Canadians named to the Order of Canada.[i]The initiative, led by Ploughshares co-founder Murray Thomson,[ii] himself an Officer of the Order, has won the support of a wide cross-section of Canadians from scientific, cultural, business, NGO, and political communities, including: aerospace engineer Bruce Aikenhead; writer Margaret Atwood; physician Harvey Barkun; NGO leader Gerry Barr; former UN Ambassador William Barton; artist Robert Bateman; theologian Gregory Baum; fisheries scientist Richard Beamish; Senator and musician Tommy Banks; politician and human rights leader Ed Broadbent; singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn; journalist Peter Desbarats; fashion designer Marielle Fleury; business entrepreneur Margot Franssen.

And that is just a brief selection of names from the first quarter of the alphabet.[iii]

While the idea of a nuclear weapons convention (NWC) has wide public appeal, it has yet to be embraced by the Government of Stephen Harper. While it supports the proposal in principle,[iv] Canada says now is not the time. The Government insists that before an NWC can be credibly advanced, other treaties to prohibit the development and production of nuclear weapons should  be in place, thus apparently seeing the convention more as a way of commemorating the completion of disarmament negotiations than as providing a comprehensive guide, as envisioned by the Secretary-General’s approach, to those negotiations.

Officials generally, and with some credibility, argue that the prospects for adopting an NWC are not promising as long as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is not fully effective, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has not entered into force, and negotiations on a fissile materials cut-off treaty (FMCT) remain stalled. But by this very logic, the basic conditions for launching negotiations for a NWC are actually in place.

The NPT, for example, is far from ineffective. It has been and remains a successful bulwark against proliferation. Only one state party to the NPT, North Korea, has persistently violated it and withdrawn from it. Of course, the NPT has proven least effective in producing timely nuclear disarmament as required under Article VI. In this case, serious work toward an NWC and a disarmament road map would significantly enhance the effectiveness of the NPT.

And, while the CTBT is not yet in force, it is no longer a matter of serious contention. Negotiations have been successfully concluded. All of the nuclear weapon states that are party to the NPT (China, France, Russia, UK, US) have signed the treaty, with the US and China yet to ratify it, and are adhering to a moratorium on testing pending the Treaty’s entry-into-force. Of the four other states with nuclear weapons, only North Korea has explicitly rejected a moratorium.

Meanwhile, the international community, through the Geneva-based UN Conference on Disarmament, has agreed to begin negotiations on an FMCT. The nuclear weapon states within the NPT have all already halted production of fissile materials. Negotiations within the perennially-deadlocked Conference on Disarmament still need to overcome procedural hurdles, raised most recently by Pakistan, but basic support for a treaty is in place.

Now is, in fact, the ideal time to begin to frame an NWC. It would consolidate multilateral disarmament gains and set out the full requirements, including verification mechanisms, to secure the goal of a world without nuclear weapons within an agreed time frame.

What could Canada constructively contribute if it were to embrace the immediate pursuit of a nuclear weapons convention?

1. The first priority would be to reestablish Canada’s active support for a world without nuclear weapons. The Harper Government has certainly not rejected that goal, but neither has it promoted it. So, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister should each make an early and prominent speech in which they address nuclear disarmament and reaffirm Canada’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.
2. The Government should also acknowledge that while progress toward a world without nuclear weapons will obviously involve a variety of key measures (such as the key agreements mentioned above), ultimately all those measures must be brought together in a single umbrella or framework convention. Thus, Canadian policy should explicitly call for the start of negotiations toward such a convention that sets a clear timeline for irreversible and verifiable nuclear disarmament.
3. Next Canada could and should convene an informal international consultative process involving a core group of like-minded states and representatives of civil society to thoroughly explore the focus, scope, verification, and other elements relevant to a nuclear weapons convention. One outcome of this consultation could be an informal international Contact Group or Nuclear Weapons Convention Action Group to systematically press the issue on the international stage.
4. In the meantime Canada should be thinking about the particular contribution it could make to the international process. The UK, including some joint work with Norway, has for example been focusing on verification measures linked to a nuclear weapons convention.[v] Canada was once active in this area, and still is involved in CTBT seismic verification. Consideration could be given to reviving the verification unit within Foreign Affairs to work with and bolster the UK-Norwegian initiative.
5. Canada could also credibly focus on the development of appropriate transparency requirements and identification of the kinds of institutional and governance arrangements needed to ensure an effective and effectively managed nuclear weapons convention. Canada has championed reporting in the NPT review process as a means of promoting accountability, has put forward proposals to overcome the institutional deficit of the NPT, and has supported the institutionalization of enhanced civil society participation in multilateral disarmament efforts.

There is no shortage of things to do and no credible reason to wait. The pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons requires Canada’s energetic engagement.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Jeff Davis, “Order of Canada Recipients Demand Worldwide Ban on Nuclear Weapons,” Embassy (Ottawa, 26 August 2009). http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/ban_weapons-8-26-2009.

[ii] He is supported by former Senator and Ambassador for Disarmament Douglas Roche and Nobel Prize laureate John Polanyi. The author is a signatory.

[iii] There are plans for the complete list to be available online soon.

[iv] At the UN Canada was one of only two NATO countries to abstain (generally indicating agreement in principle but objection to specific details) on resolution A/Res/63/49 in the General Assembly which calls on states to immediately begin “multilateral negotiations leading to an early conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons and providing for their elimination.” All other NATO states voted “no.” Canada joined its NATO colleagues to vote “no” on another resolution calling for negotiations on such a convention (A/Res/63/75) – in this case the resolution also affirmed that any use of nuclear weapons would be in violation of the Charter (a legitimate affirmation but not one likely to be supported by members of a military alliance whose doctrine claims nuclear weapons are essential to their security).

[v] The UK together with Norway is undertaking research, for example, on the verification of nuclear warhead reductions and hosted a meeting of nuclear weapon states (September 3-4, 2009) to “discuss confidence building measures including the verification of disarmament and treaty compliance.” Seehttp://www.fco.gov.uk/en/fco-in-action/counter-terrorism/weapons/nuclear-weapons-policy/disarmament.

The entry into force on July 15 of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba, was largely ignored by the world’s mainstream news media.[i]That’s too bad. It is a significant development and a further nudge toward a world without nuclear weapons.

It was South Africa’s historic decision to destroy its nuclear arsenal of up to six warheads and to accede, in 1990, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state that made possible the realization of the decades-old African objective of formalizing its status as a zone free of nuclear weapons. Already in 1964 the heads of State of the OAU had issued a “Declaration on the Denuclearization of Africa,” affirming their “readiness to undertake in an International Treaty to be concluded under the auspices of the United Nations not to manufacture or acquire control of nuclear weapons.”^[ii]

The Treaty was agreed to in 1995,[iii] and since then all 53 African states have signed on and it entered into force when Burundi became the 28^th nation to ratify it.

The Pelindaba Treaty, named after South Africa’s central nuclear research complex, confirms key provisions of the NPT, including the pledge of all signatories not to develop, produce, or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, as well as the commitment to enter into comprehensive safeguard agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency as ongoing verification of each state’s non-nuclear-weapon status (21 states have yet to conclude such agreements). But the Treaty also creates legally-binding obligations that go further. It prohibits testing of any nuclear explosive device and in effect fulfills the basic conditions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on the African continent. The Treaty also prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons on the territory of any state party to the treaty – the kind of key provision which, if it were in place in central Europe, would require the removal of all US nuclear warheads from the territories of non-nuclear-weapon states in Europe. In Africa it raises serious questions about Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is the largest Island in the Chapos Archipelago, which is considered by its parties to be bound by the provisions of the Pelindaba Treaty as a part of the territory of Mauritius. Its sovereignty is in dispute in that the UK regards Diego Garcia as part of its British Indian Ocean Territory and has of course given the US leave to build a major US military base there. The Americans in turn use it as, among many other things, a staging base for strategic bombers. These are nuclear-capable bombers with the US neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons. That puts Mauritius in violation of its Treaty obligations.[iv] The Treaty establishes the African Commission on Nuclear Energy to manage the Treaty and see to its full implementation – meaning that we will be hearing more about Diego Garica now that the Treaty has entered into force.

The Treaty also prohibits the dumping of radioactive waste in Africa and requires African states to apply the “highest standards of security and effective physical protection of nuclear material, facilities and equipment to prevent theft or unauthorized use and handling” of such materials and facilities. It prohibits any armed attack on nuclear installations within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone.

Africa’s nuclear-weapon-free status is given added importance by virtue of it being one of the world’s prominent uranium producing regions.[v] Africa currently holds something like 20 percent of exploitable uranium reserves, concentrated in Niger, Namibia, and South Africa,[vi] but deposits are also found in[vii]Algeria, Botswana, Central African Republic, DRC, Gabon, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The Pelindaba Treaty’s entry-into-force is also especially noteworthy in that it means to all sovereign territories in the southern Hemisphere, plus Antarctica, are now within legally-binding nuclear-weapon-free zones – South America through the Tlatelolco Treaty, the South Pacific through the Rarotonga Treaty, Southeast Asia through the Bangkok Treaty, and Antarctica through the 1961 Antarctic Treaty. In the northern Hemisphere the  Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone came into force in 2008 and covers Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

The Treaty of Pelindaba was a long time in the making, a process that was kept alive at least in part by persistent civil society attention – the South African Institute for Security Studies and the Monterey Center for Nonproliferation Studies maintained a continuing watch on and encouraged the Treaty’s slow progress. A visit to Burundi and Namibia earlier this year by a delegation of the World Council of Churches and the Africa Peace Forum, specifically to encourage ratification of the Treaty, helped to spur the Burundi action, and there are indications that Namibian ratification is close at hand.

The nuclear-weapon-free zone question is not as directly linked to the security and stability of the Africa continent as it is to the Middle East, but Sola Ogunbanwo, a Nigerian non-proliferation expert, makes compelling points that the Treaty’s entry into force will yield significant security benefits by reducing proliferation risks and improving verification measures.^[viii] Most notably, Protocol I of the Treaty provides for assurances from states with nuclear weapons that they will “not…use or threaten to use a nuclear explosive device against…any Party to the Treaty,” and Protocol II provides for assurances that they will “not…test or assist or encourage the testing of any nuclear explosive device anywhere within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone.” China, France and the United Kingdom have ratified both protocols. The US has signed, but along with Russia, has not ratified.[ix]

The Blix Commission on weapons of mass destruction called the concept of nuclear-weapon-free zones “a success story.” They “complement and reinforce” the non-proliferation commitments made through the NPT, and they fill in “gaps” left by the NPT.[x] In other words, the entry-into-force of the Pelindaba Treaty should be registered as a significant advance in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.

Notes

---

[i] IAEA, “Africa Renounces Nukes: Treaty’s Entry Into Force Makes Entire Southern  Hemisphere Free of Nuclear Weapons,” International Atomic Energy Agency News Center, 14 August 2009.http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2009/africarenounces.html.

[ii] OAU declaration July 17-21, 1964, Cairo. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Documents/Decisions/hog/bHoGAssembly1964.pdf

[iii] Noel Stott, Amelia du Rand, and Jean du Preez, A Brief Guide to the Pelindaba Treaty: Towards Entry-into-Force of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, Institute for Security Studies, South Africa, 2008, 36 pp.http://www.iss.co.za/dynamic/administration/file_manager/file_links/RATPAKPELINDABATREATYOCT08.PDF?link_id=3&slink_id=6957&link_type=12&slink_type=13&tmpl_id=3.

[iv] Peter H. Sand,  “African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Force: What Next for Diego Garcia?,” ASIL Insight, 28 August 2009. The American Society of International Law. http://www.asil.org/files/insight090827pdf.pdf.

[v] Fareed Mahdy, “Africa Becomes World’s Nuclear Free Continent,” IDN – In Depth News,http://www.egyptiangreens.com/docs/general/index.php?eh=newhit&subjectid=18130&subcategoryid=268&categoryid=37.

[vi] “Uranium in Africa,” World Nuclear Assoaciation, August 2009. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf112.html.

[vii] “Uranium Science,” Cameco. http://www.cameco.com/uranium_101/uranium_science/uranium/#two.

[viii] Sola Ogunbanwo, “Accelerate the Ratification of the Pelindaba Treaty,” The Nonproliferation Review, Spring 2003, p. 132.

[ix] Liviu Horovitz, “African nuclear-weapon-free zone Enters into Force,” 12 August 2009, Center for Non-Proliferation Studies. http://cns.miis.edu/stories/090812_africa_nwfz.htm.

[x] Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission Report, p. 79. The full text is available athttp://www.wmdcommission.org/.

An American energy industry journalist anticipates a Canada-India nuclear cooperation deal — an umbrella agreement to govern a variety of trade, research, and development arrangements — will be signed in time for the 2010 G8 meeting in Canada. It is a deal, says the report, which is unlikely to address the kinds of nonproliferation concerns put forward by DisarmingConflict and other nonproliferation experts..

Randy Woods, Senior Editor of the Nuclear Group of Platts, a McGraw Hill company that publishes energy sector news and analysis, writes that[i] “Canada and India could finalize a nuclear energy cooperation agreement within a year despite some concerns in Canada over proliferation risks, according to an industry source.” He reports that non-proliferation officials at DFAIT have managed to slow the advance of the deal in an effort to press nonproliferation issues, but that the Trade side of the department wants the deal, “as do the ministers.” While announcements this fall will likely be restricted to claims of progress, the deal is expected to be completed by June 2010 at the latest, in time for the G8 meeting in Canada.

The following excerpt addresses proliferation concerns:

“Ernie Regehr, policy adviser at the Canadian arms control group Project Ploughshares, said July 21 the deal’s potential to increase uranium supplies from Canada to India has caused concern among nonproliferation advocates. Some are worried that imports of Canadian uranium would allow India to set aside its own uranium production for military purposes. He said India may rush to produce weapons-grade uranium before signing on to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

“As a result, Regehr’s organization has asked the Canadian government to include language in the deal that would create explicit nonproliferation conditions. ‘The simple and obvious proposal’ is to include language threatening to kill the deal in the event India performs another nuclear weapons test, Regehr said. Canada also should seek a commitment from India to join a moratorium on production of fissile material or ‘at least’ get a commitment not to increase production, he said.

“But the industry source does not believe the final deal will include strong language on nonproliferation, as India’s government has ‘tough negotiators’ who are aware that Canada is eager to compete for India’s growing nuclear market. Regehr also said he would be ‘surprised’ if India signed on to an agreement that includes strong language on nonproliferation. Instead, there may be an unstated political threat to India, which could lose its right to trade nuclear technology with Canada if it tests another atomic weapon, Regehr said. ‘It would be a lot better,’ however, if such threats were written into the deal rather than implied, he said.”

Aside from uranium sales, the Platts article by Randy Woods notes that “Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, or AECL, could be an attractive partner for India if the South Asian country starts to export its nuclear technologies abroad….AECL announced in January this year that it had signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Indian engineering and construction company Larsen & Toubro, or L&T, to cooperate on the Advanced Candu ACR-1000 reactor. Under the agreement, the two companies could start talks to develop nuclear reactors in India under engineering, procurement and construction models.” But implementation of the AECL-L&T deal depends on the signing of the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Note

[i] Randy Woods, “Canada, India could finalize nuclear cooperation deal soon, Platts(http://www.platts.com/AboutPlattsHome.aspx), August 2009.

For the first time in fully a dozen years, the UN’s disarmament forum agreed last May to a program of substantive work, but in early August it has run into another obstruction.

The 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has become best known for being stalemated for more than a decade, unable to go beyond informal consultations because delegations could not reach consensus on what all would accept as a balanced program of work. Then, at the end of May, the Geneva-based negotiating forum finally agreed on a 7 point program that, among other topics, mandated the start of negotiations on a critically-important treaty to ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.[i] This did not mean there was consensus on the issues themselves, only that they would begin to formally address those issues.

Now the implementation schedule,[ii] the schedule for getting down to work on the issues that the May agreement included in the overall program of work, has run afoul of the Pakistani delegation – and because the CD works strictly according to consensus, which in that context has unfortunately come to mean that every member state has a veto, Pakistan’s dissent means everything is stalled once again.

So the stalemate continues.

While the point of Pakistan’s opposition is far from clear, it is not focused on the substance of the implementation plan. As reported by “Reaching Critical Will,”[iii] the current CD President, Australian Ambassador Caroline Miller, told delegates that Pakistan wanted changes, not specified by her, to the language of the chapeau or introductory paragraph to the document – a source of “puzzlement,” said Amb. Millar, since she had understood that all issues had been worked out and agreed to in the course of extensive advance consultations.

So that is where the matter stands, with delegates still hoping that this is a mere glitch and not the start of another prolonged period of inaction.

What’s at stake is not only the future of the CD, but also, not to be too dramatic about it, the future of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). If the time for the 2010 NPT Review Conference arrives without there having been any concrete progress in addressing key disarmament measures, the NPT will suffer a further and serious blow to its credibility as a nuclear disarmament instrument.

The CD’s agreed program of work now includes 7 elements:

1. Negotiations on a fissile materials treaty;
2. A working group for discussions on nuclear disarmament generally;
3. A working group to discuss preventing an arms race in outer space;
4. Another working group on negative security assurances (assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon state parties to the NPT);
5. The appointment of a coordinator to gather the views of states on new and emerging weapons;
6. Another coordinator to seek views on “comprehensive” disarmament; and
7. A coordinator to seek views on transparency.

Each of these issues is important, but work on fissile materials especially so. The need for immediate negotiations on a treaty on fissile materials was agreed to in 1995 (in fact, the centrality of controlling fissile materials, the core component of nuclear weapons, has been proposed and agreed to since the dawn of the nuclear age), and was in fact a key condition of converting the NPT into a permanent Treaty.

Failure, once again, to deliver on a disarmament promise would have major repercussions – but here’s hoping it’s too soon to panic.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Discussed here on June 1: “Finally, the UN’s Geneva disarmament forum gets to work.” http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/6/finally-un%E2%80%99s-geneva-disarmament-forum-gets-work

[ii] CD/1870/Rev.1, 6 August 2009. “Draft decision on the implementation of CD/1864 (that being the program of work agreed to on 29 May 2009.

[iii] Regular reports on the CD are available on the website of Reaching Critical Will, the pre-eminent NGO monitor of UN-related nuclear disarmament diplomacy.  http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/speeches09/reports.html.

Canada had more than a front row seat at the dawn of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project this country was a player in the bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago, providing both uranium and extensive scientific support for the first nuclear weapons.[i] Yet, right after World War II, Canada made a firm and lasting decision never to pursue the bomb for itself. And so began the nuclear ambivalence that still characterizes Canadian policy.

Canada’s nuclear abstinence was in no small measure born out of confidence in, or resignation to, the inescapable reality that Canada would be a permanent tenant in the widening geopolitical territory under the then emerging American nuclear umbrella. And from the start it was clear that space under that nuclear umbrella was never going to be rent free.

Early on, the US Strategic Air Command began using its base at Goose Bay, Labrador for elements of its strategic bomber fleet. The DEW line, the distant early warning line of radars, was soon installed across Canada’s north at the behest of the United States to join and then supersede the Mid-Canada and Pinetree Radar Lines to warn of any Russian bomber attack, and Canadian fighter/interceptor aircraft joined their American counterparts to stand ready to defend against any attack.

By dint of geography and an accommodating demeanor, Canada had become a strategic forefield in the MAD (mutually assured destruction) dynamics of the Cold War while, at the same time, earning a reputation as a stalwart nuclear disarmament advocate. It thus fell to successive governments in Ottawa to balance accommodation to America’s nuclear-centric security strategy with a commitment to the disarmament then being urged by the Canadian public and by a concerned international community.

The duality that Canada lived – that is, complicity in the nuclear weapons buildup joined with an active commitment to the elimination of the same weapons – was deeply imbedded within the United Nations itself. From the UN’s earliest days, the two leading permanent members of the Security Council were engaged in an intense nuclear weapons competition; at the same time, the first ever resolution in the UN General Assembly, with the support of the nuclear powers, established a “Commission to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy,” and directed it to “make specific proposals for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

This nuclear contradiction was of course keenly felt as an immediate political conundrum by Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson in the early 1960s. Diefenbaker chose as his Foreign Minister an ardent disarmament advocate, Howard Green, at the very time he was inviting the United States to install Bomarc missiles in Canada – missiles with only one function, and that was to carry nuclear warheads into the paths of Soviet nuclear bombers transiting Canada en route to targets in the United States. He never did authorize installation of the warheads; that was left for the Nobel peace laureate Pearson who had earlier opposed the move.

And that is why some 250-450 nuclear weapons[ii] were deployed with Canadian forces in Canada and Europe when Canada joined the NPT in 1968 as a non-nuclear weapon state pledging never to acquire nuclear weapons. Canada’s arsenal was numerically larger than is China’s arsenal today, and larger than the combined arsenals of India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan, the only states not party to the NPT.

Pearson’s agreement to deploy US nuclear weapons with Canadian Forces earned him the rebuke of the one who succeeded him, Pierre Trudeau, but it was not long before Trudeau too would become possessed of the same nuclear ambivalence. He went to the UN General Assembly’s first special session on disarmament in 1978 to present his plan to suffocate the nuclear arms race, a key element of which was his proposed ban on the flight testing of new strategic delivery vehicles. Just five years later he agreed to the flight testing of the US air-launched strategic cruise missile in Canada – which he in turn followed up with a high profile peace initiative on the eve of this final retirement from politics.

By the early 1980s Canada had divested itself of all nuclear weapons,[iii] but Canada’s direct participation in nuclear deterrence and planning operations continued and remains through its membership in NATO and NORAD.[iv]

Most Canadian Governments and officials have not regarded life under the American nuclear umbrella as contradictory to disarmament advocacy, though the specifics of the two roles have most certainly been in tension. Canada saw, and still sees, itself as contributing to nuclear deterrence while it is needed, and at the same time supporting disarmament toward the day when it will no longer be needed.

But 1945 and 1968 have become 2009, and today nuclear deterrence does not so much await disarmament as it actively prevents it. The most compelling nuclear certainty now is that the continued reliance by some on nuclear weapons increases the danger of their spread and ultimate use by either a state or a non-state group. This danger is now acknowledged by one-time Cold Warriors like Henry Kissinger and Richard Burt, by current political leaders like Gordon Brown and especially Barak Obama, and by figures of extraordinary international stature like Mikhail Gorbachev and current and former UN Secretaries-General Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Anan. In other words, nuclear ambivalence now presages nuclear disaster.

So, given Canada’s ongoing entanglement in nuclear strategies through NATO and NORAD, what would an end to Canadian nuclear ambivalence look like? Withdrawal is not really an option – geography won’t allow us to escape the US nuclear umbrella, and when it comes to the Americans, neither will our accommodating demeanor. Besides, the objective is not just to somehow sever Canada’s links to nuclear weapons; it is to dismantle the umbrella itself, en route to a world without nuclear weapons.

Ending nuclear ambivalence fundamentally means rejecting the double standard that nuclear weapons are OK for some, but not for others – NATO being a case in point. The alliance is now reviewing its security framework which currently insists that nuclear weapons are “essential” for the security of NATO states (para 46).[v] It is a claim that is obviously incompatible with contemporary disarmament imperatives that demand non-discrimination – and since NATO makes its decisions by consensus, Canada is in a position to prevent that doctrine from surviving in a new NATO strategic concept. Obviously no NATO member can singlehandedly force a new approach, but Canada can certainly work with other like-minded states to urge the alliance to finally and formally acknowledge that nuclear weapons threaten our security, rather than preserve it, and that it is disarmament that is “essential” to peace and security.

Similarly, another decisive rejection of nuclear ambivalence is available to Canada in its dealings with India. As a condition of selling uranium to India to fuel its non-military nuclear power plants, Canada should insist not only that India ratify the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but also that India offer verifiable assurance that it has joined the five officially recognized nuclear weapon states in halting all production of fissile material for weapons purposes.

Sixty-four years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an extraordinary array of former and current world leaders has finally joined a concerned civil society and an attentive arms control community to insist that in order to prevent the further spread and use of nuclear weapons they must be banned for all. Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirm it – the age of nuclear ambivalence must finally end.

eregehr@ploughhares.ca

Notes

---

[i] The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (http://www.ccnr.org/#topics) provides an overview of Canadian involvement.

[ii] John Clearwater is the leading documenter of nuclear weapons in Canada. In his 1998 book, Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal (Dundurn Press) he concludes that “at the height of the Canadian nuclear deployments, the greatest number of weapons which could have been available to Canada would have been between 250 (low estimate) and 450 (high estimate),” p. 23. The November/December 1999 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported (by Rpbert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr, pp. 26-35) on a Pentagon document received through the Freedom of Information Act entitled: History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons:  July 1945 through September 1977. One graph shows a peak of just over 300 nuclear weapons in Canada in the late 1960s. The Clearwater upper end estimate is higher because his totals include the weapons with Canadian forces in Europe, while the Pentagon report would show those as being in Germany.

[iii] It was also under Trudeau’s watch that all the nuclear weapons within Canadian territory and deployed with Canadian forces in Europe were withdrawn – a development that was primarily a function of technological advances in fighter-interceptor aircraft and conventional air-to-air missiles.

[iv] The North American Aerospace Defence Agreement — While the NORAD air defence role declined significantly when the main Soviet threat switched to intercontinental ballistic missiles from bombers, NORAD was and is also the primary ballistic missile early warning agency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

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

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

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

The United Nations and Nuclear Orders is a new volume of essays edited by Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss.

In his Foreword to this volume, Jayantha Dhanapala, whose extraordinary diplomatic career included his widely acclaimed service as UN Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs, attributes the current return of nuclear weapons to the place of prominence  they held in international relations during the Cold War to four factors:

• the emergence of global terrorism (as distinct from national terrorism);
• the nuclear “renaissance”, or growing interest in nuclear energy;
• instances of attempted weapons proliferation by states within the NPT and actual proliferation outside the Treaty; and
• the adoption by some nuclear weapon states of doctrines for the actual and pre-emptive use of  nuclear weapons, including against non-nuclear weapon states (pp. xiii-xiv).

The joint opening and context setting chapter by the editors points out that “although the United Nations may not be the central forum for negotiations and discussions concerning nuclear weapons, and it may not be living up to its full potential, it would be wrong to count the United Nations out of the nuclear weapons picture” (p. 4). They go on to set out the three core questions that focus the essays in this volume:

• “What is the nature of the current environment in which the United Nations is operating on these issues?
• Who and what are the actors and tools the United Nations has available to it with respect to questions about nuclear weapons?
• What do the answers to those two questions tell us about whether and how the organization could, or should, play a role in these issues, as well as the kind of role that it might assume?”

The book is in three sections, on the actors, the actual and potential tools, and looming threats and new challenges.

I contributed the chapter on the Security Council in the section on actors, and the following is taken from the introduction:

“It was never part of a formal plan that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the P-5) should also be the five nuclear weapon states (NWS), later to be recognized and accepted as such under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). By now, however, these two distinct attributes have been so fully fused in the multilateral consciousness that it seems as if nature intended it that way. Indeed, permanent membership in the Council could only have added to the drive by the United Kingdom, France, and China to follow the United States and the then Soviet Union to acquire credible nuclear arsenals. Possession of nuclear weapons was seen as a desirable if not essential accoutrement of the global gravitas attaching to any States assuming the mantle of ultimate custodians of international peace and security. And though this commingling of the P-5 with the nuclear five (N5) now seems normal, it is an arrangement that has bedeviled the Council’s performance in one key part of its assigned job of keeping the peace and enforcing global norms.

“The focus of this chapter is the Security Council’s attention to vertical non-proliferation, that is, nuclear disarmament, rather than horizontal non-proliferation. It begins by laying out the framework provided by the UN Charter before discussing the multilaterally defined disarmament agenda – the principles, objectives, and practical steps toward disarmament – that the P-5/N-5 have fully endorsed in forums or contexts outside the Council. The chapter then discusses the importance of disarmament efforts to curb horizontal proliferation. Next, two specific Council engagements – on negative security assurances and the response to Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons developments – are addressed. They provide valuable insights into considering ongoing impediments to the P-5/N-5 giving attention to the imperative of nuclear disarmament within the practical and more demanding business of the Security Council. The chapter concludes by exploring what the Council might realistically do to advance the agreed nuclear disarmament agenda” (pp. 31-32).

Other authors include the editors, David Cortright of the Joan B. Krock Institute (at Notre Dame), Randy Rydell of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs, Nicole Evans of Canada’s DFAIT, Rita Grossman-Vermas of the US Department of the Treasury, Ian Johnstone of Tufts University, and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu.

The United Nations and nuclear orders, Boulden, Thakur and Weiss (eds), United Nations University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-92-808-1167-4.

To order contact:

UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATIONS

2 United Nations Plaza,

Room DC2-853, Dept 174

New York, NY 10017

Tel: 212 963-8302,

800 253-9646 (credit card orders)

Fax: 212 963-3489

E-mail: publications@un.org