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After four years of weekly posts CIGI online, the Disarming Conflict blog is taking a break and will resume on this site in mid-October. Stay connected.

Postings will resume in October, in essence continuing to monitor the international community’s progress in making good on one of the boldest and far-reaching goals set out in the United Nations Charter in 1945. Article 26 mandates the Security Council to establish “a system for the regulation of armaments” as part of a larger effort to “promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.”

And the progress thus far in implementing Article 26?

• 80 million-plus men and women are currently under arms (regular armed forces, reserves, and para-military), plus hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more are linked to non-state armed groups;
• the world annually spends well over a trillion dollars on armaments and armed forces;
• the nuclear weapons that remain deployed and on high alert are still capable of obliterating the world several times over, and
• almost 30 wars are currently being fought, and to prosecute them governments collectively divert vast sums of scarce resources away from development, without delivering on the security promised.

But, as noted when Disarming Conflict was launched in 2006, that is not the whole story. The good news is that an international phalanx of politicians, diplomats, researchers, and advocates is focused on pursuing the kind of peace and security governance that the Charter envisions. The postings in this space have and will focus on initiatives, policies, regulations, and security cooperation measures that are designed to regulate and reduce arsenals, to reduce the incidence and impact of armed conflict, and to encourage states to devote a greater share of their resources to building conditions for sustainable peace.

The familiar push to continue to militarize the pursuit of security occupies the daily headlines, but it is the effort to ameliorate the insecurities that face most people on a daily basis that has the truly disarming effect on conflict. Attention to unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity is at the core of preventing and terminating armed conflicts. Security policy worthy of the name must therefore include the pursuit of economic justice and poverty eradication, human rights and political inclusion, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and control over the instruments of violence – i.e. disarmament.

More in September. In the meantime, many thanks to CIGI for hosting Disarming Conflict over the past four years.

The postings in this space continue the IGLOO Expert Blog, “Disarming Conflict,” which has appeared at http://www.igloo.org/disarmingconflict since September 2006. The current site is temporary while a new blog site is constructed at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (roughly by March 09).

Disarming Conflict is focused on initiatives, policies, regulations, and security cooperation measures that are designed to control and reduce arsenals, to reduce the incidence and impact of armed conflict, and to encourage states to devote a greater share of their resources to building conditions for sustainable peace.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the call of the United Nations Charter to demilitarize security has had about as much impact on international peace and security as would a Canadian call for the abolition of winter on the weather in January. But the framers of the Charter were not afraid of bold visions, so in Article 26 they mandated the Security Council to establish “a system for the regulation of armaments” as part of a larger effort to “promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.”

Article 26, like a no-winter policy, still awaits implementation:

· 80 million men and women are currently under arms (regular armed forces, reserves, and para-military), plus hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more are linked to non-state armed groups;

· the world annually spends more than a trillion dollars on armaments and armed forces;

· the nuclear weapons that remain deployed and on high alert are still capable of obliterating the world several times over, and

· almost 30 wars are currently being fought, and to prosecute them governments collectively divert vast sums of scarce resources away from development without delivering any of the security they promise.

But, of course, that is not the whole story. The good news is that an international phalanx of politicians, diplomats, researchers, and advocates is focused on pursuing the kind of peace and security arrangements that the Charter envisions. The postings in this space therefore focus on initiatives, policies, regulations, and security cooperation measures that are designed to control and reduce arsenals, to reduce the incidence and impact of armed conflict, and to encourage states to devote a greater share of their resources to building conditions for sustainable peace.

Topics addressed include:

· nuclear non-proliferation,

· controlling conventional weapons,

· current armed conflicts, and

· defence and human security.

To disarm conflict is to defuse it, and while the push to militarize the pursuit of security occupies the daily headlines, it is the effort to ameliorate the insecurities that face most people on a daily basis that has the truly disarming effect on conflict. Attention to unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity is at the core of preventing and terminating armed conflicts. The whole point of a “human” security framework is to challenge states to directly address the economic, political, and social conditions that render people and their communities insecure. Security policy worthy of the name must therefore include the pursuit of economic justice and poverty eradication, human rights and political inclusion, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and control over the instruments of violence.

It is this latter imperative, the need to control the instruments of violence or, in other words, disarmament, that is increasingly urgent and that is the focus of “Disarming Conflict.”

It is likely that in the first half of 2008 Canada will have to disclose its response to the US-India request that India be exempted from the Nuclear Supplier Group’s (NSG) current rule against nuclear cooperation with any country that operates nuclear facilities not subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

A group of 45 countries, the NSG seems to be leaning toward some form of accommodation with India. The real question is what, if any, non-proliferation conditions the NSG is willing to attach to its exemption. A second question is whether the same exemption with the same conditions should apply to Israel and Pakistan, the two other states outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with unsafeguarded (military) nuclear facilities – and thus also currently ineligible for nuclear trade and other forms of nuclear cooperation.

Opposition to the deal from the left within India charges that the deal already has too many conditions attached and because of that is an affront to Indian independence and even sovereignty. The United States has linked its proposed nuclear cooperation with India to the latter’s continued moratorium on nuclear testing, but it does not want the NSG to apply the same condition. Indeed, in a slightly bizarre twist, the US has promised India that in the event its access to nuclear fuel from the US is cut-off for any reason (testing being the most obvious), the US would help India acquire fuel from alternative sources.

But from the point of view of states within the NPT, the conditions are necessary to ensure that the deal produces the net non-proliferation and disarmament benefit that its proponents promise. If India were allowed to continue testing nuclear weapons and producing material for bombs, while gaining access to foreign nuclear fuel for its electrical programs, it would be in a position to steer all its domestic uranium toward its military program. The result would be that India could continue research and development and testing of new nuclear warheads and it would be able to accelerate the build up of stockpiles of fissile materials for current and future weapons production.

Thus a ban on further tests and on the further production of fissile materials for weapons purposes are most often the two conditions that are put forward. Without challenging India’s current arsenal and fissile materials stockpiles equivalent to about 100 nuclear warheads, the NSG could decide on an arrangement whereby nuclear fuel and technology would be provided for India’s safeguarded (civilian) facilities, even though it operates other facilities that are not safeguarded (military), on the condition that India ratifies the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and commits to a verifiable freeze on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes.[i]

There is little chance that India would accept such an arrangement, but such an offer would clearly acknowledge India’s current status as a de facto nuclear weapon state without denying it the opportunity to expand its civilian nuclear power generation facilities. The same formula would possibly become available to Pakistan and Israel, provided, in the case of Pakistan, it would clearly take responsibility for its facilitation of the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market activity.

All three should also be called upon to accept the basic obligation to disarm that applies to nuclear weapon states via Article VI of the NPT.

The India press follows the attitudes of NSG member states as to their likely approach to the request for an unconditional India-only exemption to current NSG rules. It characterizes the EU as undecided and states like Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Scandinavians as generally unsupportive or skeptical. Some reports add Brazil and Argentina to the uncertain list.[ii]

Canada, on the other hand, is not included in any list of states that are wary of the deal, and in at least one it is numbered among the enthusiasts. When China was still in the skeptical column, the Asia Times reported that “the Chinese criticism of the India-US nuclear pact is in contrast to the solid support for the deal from Russia, France, Britain and Canada.”[iii]

Canadian officials continue to insist that a Canadian decision has not been taken, that the issue of conditions is still being discussed, and that the position that Canada takes at the NSG will require a Cabinet decision. Furthermore, officials point out that even if the NSG would decide in favour of civilian nuclear cooperation with India, Canada would not necessarily end its own national policy prohibiting nuclear trade with India, and would do so only with a Cabinet decision.

But in the meantime, the writing seems to be on the wall, and in at least once case in a Foreign Affairs document. The 2006-2007 Foreign Affairs Departmental Performance Report, says in a section entitled, “Greater engagement with like-minded partners in the G8 as well as emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China” that “If the Nuclear Suppliers Group agrees to exempt India from its guidelines, Canada will pursue nuclear cooperation with India, which would provide substantial commercial opportunities for Canadians.”[iv]

Not much equivocation there. If the statement assumes that the NSG will support the exemption as is, that means there is also an assumption that Canada will not oppose it (since the NSG decides by consensus, technically only one dissenting voice could scuttle the exemption). Furthermore, the statement that Canada will trade in the event of a change in NSG rules assumes that the decision has already been made and that a supportive Cabinet decision will follow.

By all accounts, the statement in the DFAIT Performance Report was not vetted through its arms control and non-proliferation section. In fact, officials seemed surprised by the reference, nevertheless, both Canada and Australia’s new Labour government have given indications that they will not block an emerging consensus in the NSG in support of the an exemption for India. But reports in the Indian press indicate that Australia has made it clear that, regardless of any NSG exemption, “no Labour Government will supply uranium unless India signs the Non-proliferation Treaty.”[v] Canada, on the other hand, seems to be leaning to the position that it will not oppose the NSG India exemption, and, if it carries, Canada will move toward uranium exports.

As noted, both decisions, joining the NSG consensus and pursuing nuclear trade with India, will require Cabinet decisions, and the challenge now is to ensure that these decisions add conditions – that they in fact require non-proliferation benefits in the form of ratification of the CTBT, the cut-off of fissile material production, and a commitment to NPT disarmament obligations.

---

[i] This is the position taken in these pages (canadain and lookingf ), Briefings by Project Ploughshares (http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf071.pdf), and by the Canadian Pugwash Group (http://www.pugwashgroup.ca/events/documents/2007/2007.10.20-India-US_CPG_Statement.pdf).

[ii] “EU undecided on n-deal, trade pact with India next year,” NDTV, November 30, 2007 (http://www.newkerala.com/oct.php?action=fullnews&id=23051).

“Why the Left blinked on the N-deal,” Sify News, November 19, 2007 (http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14563147).

[iii] “Beijing blusters over India’s nuclear deal,” Asia Times, November 5, 2007 (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GK05Df01.html).

[iv] Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, “Departmental Performance Report 2006-2007, p. 50 (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/dpr-rmr/2006-2007/inst/ext/ext00-eng.asp).

[v] “India needs uranium import,” The Economic Times, November 29, 2007 (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Editorials/India_needs_uranium_import/articleshow/2580311.cms).

With Canada in a sustained ground war for the first time since Korea, it is not surprising that the debate over our role in Afghanistan has become thoroughly polarized.

The Prime Minister leads the charge for staying the course. Canada is at war, he says, and we don’t cut and run – we will stay in this war until the job is done. NDP Leader Jack Layton leads the call for withdrawal. It is the wrong mission for Canada; it is a war with unclear objectives and it can’t be won.

The Prime Minister sees Afghanistan as the kind of on-the-job experience that is making a better Canadian military. In fact, he implied in a CBC interview that the Canadian casualties are part of that process of shaping the military.[i] The whole experience, he said, is “certainly raising Canada’s leadership role.”

Mr. Layton in turn makes the point that withdrawing from the war and giving priority to reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan will allow Canada to “focus on building a made-in-Canada foreign policy that moves us toward reclaiming Canada’s place in the world.”[ii]

Both arguments make the place of Canada in the world a central issue, but is that really the primary preoccupation of Canadians when it comes to Afghanistan? And should it be?

Two recent polls suggest that Canadian attitudes towards the war have less to do with its impact on Canada as a player on the world stage, and more to do with its impact on Afghanistan. A Decima poll found that 59 percent of Canadians agreed with the pollster’s statement that Canadian soldiers are dying for a cause that can’t be won.[iii]And in September EKOS Research found thatCanadian views are not driven so much by the level of sacrifice as by a sense that “the mission is unlikely to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan.”[iv]

The evidence by now is well documented and mounting that the Canadian mission, indeed the entire International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation in southern Afghanistan, is not working. But neither of the two options in the polarized debate – stick with a failing enterprise no matter what; pull out because it is a failing enterprise – responds to a primary concern of Canadians, namely, how to build a safer Afghanistan.

In other words, we need a third option. Calls for new negotiations with the Afghan dissidents and for increased attention to reconstruction efforts point in that direction, and recently a “third way” proposal was put forward by Eugene Lang, a former chief of staff to two recent defence ministers and now chief policy advisor to Bob Rae.
The proposal is in fact close to the Layton/NDP option. The main difference is that the NDP calls for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Lang option calls for redeployment from the south to the north. Both, however, counsel withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and call for greater non-military assistance.[v]

So here are the main elements of an emerging third option: pull out of the south; redeploy to the north in support of training and provincial reconstruction teams; substantially increase non-military aid; review the strategy, objectives, and tactics used by the NATO-led ISAF; and re-open the political process in pursuit of a more inclusive and representative political order for the entire country.

Of the three options, the least convincing is the stay-the-course focus of the Prime Minister. Even the Defence Minister now acknowledges that the Afghanistan conflict will not finally be settled on the battlefield, but it is the military prosecution of the conflict that is getting all the attention. Canadians are telling pollsters it won’t work, and conflict analysts and Afghan specialists have long been pointing out that if the objective of the counter-insurgency war is to stabilize Afghanistan and advance the well-being of Afghans, it is not getting the job done.

That leaves the other two options, complete withdrawal or the withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and redeployment to peace support operations in the north while pursuing negotiations towards a more inclusive political order.Which of these options one supports depends on one’s understanding of the conditions that obtain in Afghanistan.

If the Government of Afghanistan has been discredited throughout the country and has lost the confidence of Afghans generally, and if the trend is thus toward outright and widespread civil war, then it is clear that foreign troops are there to support an illegitimate government and will themselves be regarded as illegitimate. In that case, foreign troops are more likely to fuel conflict than resolve it – with a pullout the logical conclusion.

If, however, the civil war is essentially confined to the south, and if in the north the Government still has the substantial support of the people, then the north is a post-conflict environment that, while still unstable, is amenable to security assisted peacebuilding efforts. In that case the redeployment of forces to the north to help in training security forces and in protecting newly funded civilian reconstruction operations would serve the greater well-being of Afghans.

Current reporting from Afghanistan is mixed, but it generally still suggests the latter situation prevails – with the clear implication that it will slide to the former unless major changes are made. That points to the urgent need to pursue the third option. But the fact that it is both urgent and prudent doesn’t guarantee, especially in the context of a polarized debate, that it will be chosen.

[i] “Canada’s military back on world stage: PM,” CBC News, September 19, 2006 account of interview on The National (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/19/harper-afghanistan.html).

[ii] ” Statement by NDP Leader Jack Layton on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan,” Aug 31, 2006 (http://www.ndp.ca/page/4119).

[iii] Keith Doucette, “MacKay slams Afghan poll,” The ChronicleHerald.ca, October 3, 2006 (http://www.herald.ns.ca/Canada/532054.html).

[iv] Bruce Campion-Smith, “Afghan mission impossible: Poll,” Toronto Star, Sept. 18/06 (available at http://25461.vws.magma.ca/admin/articles/TheStar18Sept2006.pdf).

[v] The Project Ploughshares materials have also called for an end to participation in a counter-insurgency war as counter-productive and a disservice to Afghans (e.g. “Towards counter-insurgency by other means,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf061.pdf; “From good intentions to sustainable solutions,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons06f.pdf).

Some may regard a United Nations Charter call for the demilitarization of security as having about as much impact on international peace and security as would a Canadian call for the abolition of winter on the weather in January. But the framers of the Charter were not afraid of bold visions, so in Article 26 they mandated the Security Council to establish “a system for the regulation of armaments” as part of a larger effort to “promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.”

Article 26, like a no-winter policy, still awaits implementation:

• 80 million men and women are currently under arms (regular armed forces, reserves, and para-military), plus hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more are linked to non-state armed groups;
• the world annually spends more than a trillion dollars on armaments and armed forces;
• the nuclear weapons that remain deployed and on high alert are still capable of obliterating the world several times over, and
• more than 30 wars are currently being fought, and to prosecute them governments collectively divert vast sums of scarce resources away from development without delivering any of the security they promise.

But, of course, that is not the whole story. The good news is that an international phalanx of politicians, diplomats, researchers, and advocates is focused on pursuing the kind of peace and security arrangements that the Charter envisions. The postings in this space will focus on initiatives, policies, regulations, and security cooperation measures that are designed to control and reduce arsenals, to reduce the incidence and impact of armed conflict, and to encourage states to devote a greater share of their resources to building conditions for sustainable peace. Topics addressed will include: nuclear non-proliferation, controlling conventional weapons, current armed conflicts, and defence and human security.

To disarm conflict is to defuse it, and while the push to militarize the pursuit of security occupies the daily headlines, it is the effort to ameliorate the insecurities that face most people on a daily basis that has the truly disarming effect on conflict. Attention to unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity is at the core of preventing and terminating armed conflicts. The whole point of a “human” security framework is to challenge states to directly address the economic, political, and social conditions that render people and their communities insecure. Security policy worthy of the name must therefore include the pursuit of economic justice and poverty eradication, human rights and political inclusion, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and control over the instruments of violence.

This latter imperative, the control over the instruments of violence or, in other words, disarmament, is increasingly urgent just at the time when the global mechanisms to pursue it are in serious disrepair. More on that another day.