Posts Tagged ‘nuclear disarmament’

When the German Government became explicit in calling for the removal of nuclear weapons from German territory^[i] some energetic backlash was to be expected. Now it’s started.

Most thought strong reaction to removing the remaining US tactical nuclear weapons from Europe would come from the likes of Poland – an east European country not yet fully confident that its alignment with the west has left it permanently beyond Moscow’s grasp. But now some exaggerated push-back has come from a former alliance Secretary-General – one safely ensconced in the UK. The former NATO leader George Robertson, also a former British Defence Minister, has authored a new briefing together with two US security analysts to give urgent voice to alarms deeply rooted in the 1980s.[ii]

Their bottom line is that the defence of the North Atlantic region, in spite of it being in possession of almost two-thirds of the world’s conventional military capacity, still requires nuclear weapons in Europe. Furthermore, if Germany wants shelter under a nuclear umbrella it needs to have nuclear weapons on its soil – anything less is “irresponsible.” The latter is a judgment that will come as a surprise to the likes of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Norway, and, incidentally, Canada, none of which has nuclear weapons on its soil and all of which are nevertheless gathered within the arc of America’s extended nuclear deterrence – to the genuine chagrin, it must be added, of majority populations that repeatedly tell pollsters they want nuclear weapons and umbrellas permanently eliminated.

Germany, having actually noticed the escalating demand for nuclear disarmament, and having absorbed an appreciation for the risks to the nonproliferation regime that come with a refusal to disarm, took a second look at the Cold War relics it hosts in the form of US nuclear gravity bombs and decided it could advance two policy priorities through a single initiative. By removing nuclear weapons from Europe, NATO could advance the pursuit of disarmament in sub-strategic weapons and it could shore up respect for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by bringing NATO states into full compliance with Articles I and II.[iii]

Pressing both of these issues in advance the NPT Review Conference coming in May, the German government explained that “we want to send a signal and fulfill our commitments under the NPT 100 percent.”^[iv]

Robertson et al regard that as a dangerous signal. They further worry that officials close to President Obama also support the repatriation of US tactical nuclear weapons back to the US mainland. No doubt Mr. Robertson and his co-authors would be even more troubled by the views of the late Michael Quinlan, a former Permanent Secretary of Defence in the UK who shared many of George Robertson’s assumptions about deterrence. Despite his commitment to nuclear deterrence, Quinlan expressed doubts about the value of US nuclear weapons in Europe – “I doubt whether their permanent presence remains essential nowadays either in military and deterrent terms or as a symbol of continuing US commitment to the security of its European allies.”[v]

Quinlan also rejected the argument advanced by Robertson that reductions to tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should be negotiated to win reciprocal and greater reductions in Russia’s larger arsenal of such weapons. Quinlan argued instead that the unilateral removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe would “have the effect of depriving Russia of a pretext she has sometimes sought to exploit both for opposing NATO’s wider development and for evading the question of whether and why Russia herself need continue to maintain a non-strategic nuclear armoury that is now far larger than that of anyone else.”[vi]

But Robertson puts the onus for reductions primarily on Russia, expecting it to reduce down to levels that produce Russian-American parity, ignoring the huge imbalance in conventional forces between Russia and NATO. Russia accounts for less than 6 per cent of world military spending while NATO states collectively account for more than 60 per cent.[vii] As long as Russia regards this overwhelming conventional force as, if not necessarily an overt enemy, then a challenge to its regional interests, it is unlikely to be amenable to significant further reductions to its substantial arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.

Robertson and his co-authors make a number of additional arguments why NATO nuclear weapons must remain in Europe, but their ultimate and surprisingly frank appeal is to what they regard as the shared interests of all nuclear weapons states – and that boils down to regarding partial arms reductions as tactical moves designed to ease disarmament pressures in the interests of long-term nuclear retention. “Russia, like the US and other nuclear powers, has an interest in preserving its right to hold nuclear weapons under the NPT while stemming their spread to other states” (emphasis added).

Mr. Robertson needs to check in with his own Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who sent the following message to the just concluded Global Zero meeting in Paris: “I believe that a world free of nuclear weapons is not only achievable, but one of the most important policy objectives of our times.”[viii]

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Oliver Meier, “German Nuclear Stance Stirs Debate,” Arms Control Today, December 2009,http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_12/GermanNuclearStance.

[ii] Franklin Miller, George Robertson and Kori Shake. “Germany Opens Pandora’s Box,” Briefing Note, Centre for European Reform. February 2010. http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/bn_pandora_final_8feb10.pdf

[iii] Article I requires nuclear-weapon states (in this case the US) not to transfer nuclear weapons to any other state, and Article II requires nuclear weapon states (in this case German, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Turkey) not to receive nuclear weapons from any state.

[iv] See note #18.

[v] Michael Quinlan, “The Nuclear Proliferation Scene: Implications for NATO,” in Joseph F. Pilat and David S. Yost, eds. NATO and the Future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NATO Defense College, Academic Research Branch, Rome, May 2007), http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0C54E3B3-1E9C-BE1E-2C24-A6A8C7060233&lng=en&id=31221.

[vi] See Note i.

[vii] International Institute of Strategic Studies. The Military Balance 2008. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008.

[viii] Messages from President Obama, President Medvedev, and Prime Minister Brown to the Global Zero meeting are available at: http://www.globalzero.org/en/opening-day-statement-global-zero-leaders.

This commentary by Douglas Roche and Ernie Regehr in the February 3, 2010 issue of Embassy: Canada’s Foreign Policy Newsweekly,  grows out of last week’s conference, “Practical Steps to Zero Nuclear Weapons.”

High-ranking officials of the US State Department, NATO and the United Nations were in Ottawa last week to meet with the leaders of five national nuclear disarmament groups and experienced civil society leaders. It was all designed to move the Canadian government to actively support US President Barack Obama’s commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world.

Did it? Time will tell and we want to remain optimistic.

The two days of speeches and panels were sobering. Entitled “Practical Steps to Zero Nuclear Weapons,” the conference noted at the outset that because of President Obama, a new opportunity exists to make substantive reductions in the 23,000 nuclear weapons still in existence, halt proliferation and set the world on an irreversible path to zero nuclear weapons.

But the president is fighting rearguard actions in his own country, and the international community is still focused on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons rather than negotiating their complete elimination as called for by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In short, Obama needs the help of friends. Canada should support the president by making it clear that this country does not want to be used as an excuse for the US maintaining its nuclear umbrella over allies, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association based in Washington, DC.

Similarly, participants argued that Canada should use its influence to have NATO stop calling nuclear weapons “essential,” and to harmonize its nuclear policies with not only the Obama goal but the legal requirement imposed by the NPT for total elimination.

Participants focused on the proposal by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that a model Nuclear Weapons Convention, drafted a number of years ago, now become the starting point for comprehensive negotiations. A Nuclear Weapons Convention would be a global treaty prohibiting the development, testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. Already, 124 states at the UN have voted for such a global ban. Mayors for Peace, representing 3,500 mayors around the world, has been calling for it. And polls show that a majority of citizens around the world would favour it.

The sponsors of the conference—the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Canadian Pugwash Group, Physicians for Global Survival, Project Ploughshares and World Federalist Movement-Canada—thus recommended that Canada press the forthcoming NPT Review Conference to begin preparatory work on a convention.

Though Obama spoke out for nuclear disarmament 10 months ago, the Canadian government has remained mute. While the government has certainly not rejected Canadian policy supporting the elimination of nuclear weapons, neither has it championed it at this new moment of opportunity. Officials from the departments of Foreign Affairs and National Defence attended the conference, but their contributions were limited to procedural matters because they had no instructions from their ministers.

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae gave a major speech calling for a new dynamic thrust in Canadian foreign policy, and NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar laid out a well-considered plan for Canada to support elimination by working on verification and related issues.

But no Conservative Party representative was in attendance. We personally delivered a formal letter of invitation in early December to a high-ranking Conservative official and were told the invitation would have to be relayed to the PMO. There was no response, and there was general surprise at the conference that the government was not represented.

The sponsors led off their recommendations by stating: “It is urgent that the prime minister and foreign minister find early and prominent opportunities to publicly address nuclear disarmament and reaffirm Canada’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.”

Canada’s chairmanship of the G8 and G20 meetings in Canada this year, the NPT Review Conference, and NATO’s current review of its policies all provide important opportunities.

Already, the opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons provided by President Obama shows signs of slipping away. Obama’s vice-president, Joe Biden, bragged in the Wall Street Journal that the US is increasing investments in its nuclear arsenal and infrastructure. The president is receiving insufficient support for his initiatives in his own country and, without demonstrable support, may not be able to sustain any momentum. The foreign ministers of Germany and Japan have come in behind him, but many other countries that should be championing his efforts are waiting to see what will happen.

It became clear at the conference that the world risks falling into a trap. Those who claim that nuclear weapons are still necessary do not usually oppose “eventual” nuclear disarmament, but they keep “eventual” so far over the horizon as to be meaningless.

In retaining “eventual,” nuclear defenders will so solidify the justification for nuclear weapons that proliferation to more states is bound to occur, and the more proliferation in the years and decades ahead, the harder it will be to even claim that nuclear disarmament has legitimacy.

The nuclear weapons cycle, 65 years old, must be broken now before a new and exceedingly dangerous spurt of nuclear proliferation takes place. That is why two of Obama’s priorities—ratification of the ban on testing and a permanent ban on the production of fissile material for weapons—now need Canada’s urgent support.

It is also important for Canada to commit now to preparations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. This is a direct request by 481 members of the Order of Canada, who represent a cross-section of Canadians deeply involved in the well-being of our country. In 2002, DFAIT began such work, but it lapsed in the Bush era. Obama provides a new opportunity. But will Canada seize it?

Retired senator Douglas Roche, is Canada’s former ambassador for disarmament. Ernie Regehr is senior policy adviser to Project Ploughshares. Both are Officers of the Order of Canada.

Earlier this week, January 25-26, a group of Canadian NGOs[i] sponsored a conference attended by officials and experts from the United States, Canada, and NATO headquarters to consider and critique a set of recommendations prepared by the sponsoring groups. The recommendations, which focused on issues related to the forthcoming review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the current review of the NATO Strategic Concept, were presented in the conference briefing paper.[ii] The following is my presentation on three disarmament promises made by NATO states which the current NATO strategic doctrine continues to ignore.

This morning’s focus on NATO is obviously a response to the important opportunity that comes via the current review of the NATO Strategic Concept (the review process is described in the briefing paper for this conference: Canadian Action for Zero Nuclear Weapons.

The review is an opportunity for NATO as well – a chance to make some clear changes (both symbolic and practical) to its declaratory policies and the posture and deployments that follow from them. We’ve argued in the paper that in some of the key elements of its nuclear policy NATO is at serious odds with the NPT and with the re-invigorated attention globally to the pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons.

My comments in the next few minutes will highlight some of the recommendations in the briefing paper, and it is worth noting that the paper does not call on NATO to do anything that individual NATO states have not already promised to do. And in that regard I hope Chris Westdal won’t mind me recalling something he said to the Toronto forum last fall. How about, he said, instead of asking states to make more and more new promises, we insist that they start keeping some already made.

So I want to remind you of three unequivocal promises that have been made by all NATO states, but which the current NATO Strategic Concept does not honor:

a) The first is the obvious promise, through the NPT’s Article VI, to disarm. If the wording of Article VI is a bit ambiguous, the unanimous decisions and declarations in 1995 and 2000, by all states parties to the NPT, clarify once and for all what it means – that is, it is an unequivocal commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons. The World Court added further clarity when it said that the promise to disarm is a legal obligation that requires not only the pursuit of disarmament, but its achievement.

But then we come to paragraph 46 of NATO’s Strategic Concept. It argues that given “the diversity of risks with which the Alliance could be faced…, the Alliance’s conventional forces alone cannot ensure credible deterrence.” So, the threat of nuclear attack is required to “render the risks of aggression against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable.”  And thus it concludes that nuclear weapons remain “essential to preserve peace.” So in its formal declaration, NATO insists that, rather than pursuing and achieving disarmament, it “will maintain for the foreseeable future an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces based in Europe” (para 46). So the promise is abolition, the commitment is indefinite retention.

b) A second promise is found in the agreement, reached during the NPT review process, that all states party to the NPT will seek to “diminish the role for nuclear weapons in [their] security policies [in order] to minimize the risk that these weapons will ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination.”

Now look at paragraph 62 of the NATO Strategic concept:  It says the purpose of nuclear weapons is broad – it is to “prevent coercion and any kind of war.” And to accomplish that purpose, NATO nuclear forces are given the “essential role” of “ensuring uncertainty in the mind of any aggressor about the nature of the Allies’ response to military aggression” (para 62). In other words, rather than a diminishing role, NATO continues to prescribe an expansive role for nuclear weapons, including their potential use in response to non-nuclear threats, and, by implication, first use. European-based nuclear weapons, it says, are directly linked, also in paragraph 62, to “the supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies,” namely the strategic nuclear forces of Alliance members.

Furthermore, there has in fact been a geographic expansion of the role of nuclear weapons in NATO, rather than a diminishing role, as a result of the post-Cold War expansion of NATO and its nuclear umbrella.

So for NATO to come into full conformity with the commitments made by its individually, the new strategic concept will have to scale back dramatically on the role assigned to nuclear weapons – a no-first-use commitment would be an appropriate case in point.

c) NATO states, in a third promise, have obviously also signed on to NPT Articles I and II, and thus accepted the treaty’s explicit prohibition on the transfer of nuclear weapons – the Treaty requires that nuclear weapon states not supply nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapon states; and non-nuclear weapon states are not to receive nuclear weapons.[iii]

In European NATO US nuclear weapons have been transferred to non-nucelar weapon states. Paragraph 63 of the current strategic concept insists, in effect, that there is justification for such transfers (despite the NPT’s clear prohibition) from NWS to NNWS in NATO because credible deterrence requires that European NNWS members of the Alliance “be involved in collective defence planning in nuclear roles” and that nuclear forces be maintained on European territory. Furthermore, those weapons on European soil are also said to be necessary to maintain “an essential political and military link between the European and the North American members of the Alliance.” Thus the current Strategic Concept of NATO promises the Alliance will continue to ignore Articles I and II (this arrangement actually goes back to the origins of the Treaty) and NATO will instead “maintain adequate nuclear forces in Europe” in NNWS (para 63).

So, we have at least three basic promises made which are not being honored through the current Strategic Concept. And NATO also says that, as of now, these promises will not be honored in the foreseeable future. The promise to disarm is met with a commitment to indefinite retention. The promise to reduce the role of nuclear weapons is met with a commitment to the continuing threat to be the first to use nuclear weapons, even in response to non-nuclear threats. The promise not to transfer nuclear weapons is met with the continuing deployment of  US nuclear weapons on the territories of non-nuclear weapon states.

The most immediate political repercussion of NATO’s essentially “non-compliant” nuclear posture can be expected to be found in nonproliferation dynamics, rather than in disarmament. After all, if it is legitimate for Canada and other NATO NNWS (all of which reside in the most stable neighborhoods of the world and are backed by the overwhelming conventional military superiority) – if such states can credibly claim that they are so vulnerable that their security requires an ongoing nuclear deterrent (against “any” threat), then it is really hard to think of any states anywhere that could not make a much more credible case for nuclear deterrence. Think especially of Iran and the Arab states in the Middle East who really do live in rather unstable and threatening environments. By what logic can Canada, while insisting that nuclear weapons are essential to its security, appeal to Pakistan, India, and Israel to forego nuclear deterrence and join the NPT as NNWS?

If we are going to insist that all states be subject to the same standards with regard to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, then NATO has some critically important changes to make (and the paper sets out what some of those changes should be). If we are prepared to make the argument that not all states need to be bound by the same nonproliferation and disarmament standards, then, I’m afraid will also have to be prepared to see the nonproliferation regime unwind.

The briefing paper and its recommendations are proffered as an appeal to the government of Canada to muster the courage of its promises and to insist that NATO, taking advantage of this timely review of its strategic concept, make changes that will honor the promises all NATO states have already made. We have generally summarized the needed change as follows:

Canada should encourage a new NATO Strategic Concept that a) welcomes and affirms the groundswell of calls for a world without nuclear weapons; b) confirms NATO’s commitment to the objectives of the NPT and declares that the intent of Article VI of the NPT, and of the Alliance, is a world free of nuclear weapons; and c) commits NATO to security and arms control policies that conform to Articles I and II (which prohibit transfers of nuclear weapons) of the NPT and that are designed to achieve the nuclear disarmament promised in Article VI.

These are the changes that NATO could make immediately, at no cost to the security of its members – indeed it would be to the security benefit of its members inasmuch as it would contribute to the strengthening of the nuclear disarmament imperative.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

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

[ii] Available at: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Abolish/ZeroNukesBriefPapJan2010.pdf.

[iii] Article I: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons…”

Article II: “Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons…”

Three states with nuclear weapons remain outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Now the Commission on “Eliminating Nuclear Threats” helpfully proposes treating them as if they were nuclear weapon states within the NPT; but only if they agree to “uphold non-proliferation and disarmament norms and practices at least as rigorous as those accepted by nuclear-weapon states under the NPT.”

India, Israel, and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons, yet all are, in the arcane logic of the NPT, non-nuclear weapon states. That’s because all three acquired nuclear weapons after the Treaty’s 1 January 1967 cut-off date for recognizing nuclear powers. That makes them states with nuclear weapons rather than nuclear weapon states (NWS), and under the normative terms of the NPT they are obliged to disarm and join the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states. Indeed, that was the call that was reiterated by the UN Security Council at its special meeting on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, chaired by US President Barak Obama, last September.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. The reality, of course, is that the three will not join as non-nuclear weapon states, and for them to join as nuclear weapon states would require an amendment to the Treaty – and that will definitely not happen.

Thus the international community is faced with a nuclear governance status quo that is counterproductive. It keeps three important states permanently outside the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime. Hence, the international community and, more recently, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND)[i] have been exploring alternative approaches.

India’s status as a state with nuclear weapons acquired a level of formality, approaching recognition of it as equivalent to a NWS, when the Nuclear Suppliers Group exempted it from its prohibition on civilian nuclear cooperation with any state not under fullscope safeguards – that is, any state that operates nuclear programs not subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Pakistan has arguably won a similar recognition by default. The UN Security Council Resolution (#1172 of 1998) that required India and Pakistan, in the wake of their 1998 nuclear tests, to end their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, was never heeded and was rendered irrelevant by the Nuclear Suppliers Group action.

So we now have a situation in which India and Pakistan are essentially accepted as nuclear weapon states, but without being formally bound by any of the obligations that accrue to Nuclear Weapon States in the NPT – notably the disarmament obligations under Chapter VI. Accepting the same “norms and practices” as those assumed by nuclear weapon states under the NPT does not set a very high bar, but it is nevertheless a standard to be met.

For example, all the NWS in the NPT have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), while India and Pakistan have not (US and China, as well as Israel, have signed but not ratified). The NWS have all declared moratoria on producing fissile materials for weapons purposes pending the negotiation of an FMCT,[ii] India and Pakistan have not. Indeed, India is positioned to accelerate production when it imports uranium – possibly from Canada – for civilian purposes because then its domestic supply can be more fully dedicated to military purposes. That in turn could put pressure on Pakistan to try to do likewise – the phrase for that kind of competition is a nuclear arms race.

Israel obviously also remains outside the constraints and obligations of the NPT – and NPT States have agreed that a remedy to Israel’s violations of nuclear norms will have to be pursued in the context of efforts toward establishing the Middle East as a nuclear weapons free zone and a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction.

Canada, of course, is actively pursuing a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with India, and we’ll see whether Foreign Affairs is able to attach any nonproliferation conditions.[iii] It should, for example, be clear, at a minimum, that any further test would immediately end all cooperation – the preference, of course, would be that India sign the CTBT.[iv] In particular India should be pressed to offer credible assurances that it has joined the five officially recognized nuclear weapon states in halting all production of fissile material for weapons purposes.

While Canada is unlikely to succeed in making these conditions part of the forthcoming deal, in trying it at least has the support of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). The Commission advocates an end to the long-term formal policy of trying to isolate the non-NPT states and to refuse to recognize the reality of their status as states with nuclear weapons. Instead, said the ICNND, recognize reality and find ways of drawing them into non-proliferation and disarmament arrangements. To that end, the ICNND encourages civilian nuclear cooperation with such states (something that was virtually universally rejected until the US and the Nuclear Suppliers Group cooperated to give India an exemption from that provision). But cooperation says the ICNND should not be without some conditions attached: like satisfying “certain objective criteria showing their general commitment to disarmament and non-proliferation…including ratification of the CTBT, and [a] moratorium on unsafeguarded production of fissile materials pending negotiation of a fissile material production cut-off treaty.”[v]

States with nuclear weapons that are not bound by the NPT constitute a major gap in the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime. It’s a gap that won’t be easily bridged, but the ICNND has got the basic architecture right.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] ICNND report was issued at the end of 2009: Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, co-Chairs (2009), Section 10-17, p. 99. WWW.ICNND.ORG.

[ii] Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), or a Fissile Materials Treaty (FMT), which would not only bar further production but would also put existing stockpiles under tight controls.

[iii] John Ibbotson, “Why Harper needs a nuclear deal with India,” 12 November 2009.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-harper-needs-a-nuclear-deal-with-india/article1360161/.

[iv] CTBT Annex II Signatories/Ratifications still required: NNWS in NPT—Egypt, DPRK, Indonesia, Iran (has signed); NWS in NPT—China (has signed), US (has signed); Non-NPT—India, Israel (has signed), Pakistan.

[v] Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, co-Chairs (2009), Section 10-17, p. 99. WWW.ICNND.ORG.

A November 13-14 public forum at Toronto City Hall looked at the opportunities and obstacles to nuclear disarmament. The program and details are available athttp://zeronuclearweapons.com/. The following notes are part 2 of my comments, focusing on Canadian disarmament diplomacy priorities.

The first, and really most urgent, priority is for Canada to rediscover its traditional of disarmament diplomacy.

Canada has an important history of active support for nuclear disarmament. Later today you’ll be hearing from two terrific former Canadian Ambassadors for Disarmament – they and many other Canadian diplomats and officials have been deeply engaged in bringing constructive Canadian influence to bear upon the NPT Review Process and other multilateral disarmament forums.

Of course, there has always been a strong element of ambivalence in Canadian disarmament policy. Remember that, when Canada joined the newly-negotiated NPT in 1968 as a non-nuclear weapon State, some 250-450 nuclear weapons^[i] were deployed with Canadian forces in Canada and Europe. Put another way, in numbers of warheads, Canada’s arsenal was a lot bigger than is China’s today. While all nuclear weapons had been withdrawn from Canadian territory or deployment with Canadian forces by the early 1980s,^[ii] direct participation in nuclear weapons-related operations continued, and remains today, through membership in NATO and NORAD.^[iii]

In recent years, certainly at the highest levels of Government, ambivalence seems to have turned to indifference. The Harper Government has not rejected Canadian policy in support of the elimination of nuclear weapons, but neither has it championed it. The first priority now needs to be a clear decision to re-assert Canadian disarmament diplomacy. It is urgent that the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, as should every Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, find early and prominent opportunities to publicly address nuclear disarmament and reaffirm Canada’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.

A second priority is to recognize that an important impediment to disarmament is a seriously flawed set of disarmament institutions.

The Conference on Disarmament has been famously deadlocked for more than a decade – and recent reports of a breakthrough turned out to be premature. Multilateral disarmament will continue to founder in the absence of disarmament machinery that is effective and trusted.

Canada has prominently advanced proposals for shoring up the disarmament institutional infrastructure. An innovative proposal to take key issues out of the CD and pursue them in specially created working groups mandated by the General Assembly, was a case in point a few years back. Canada’s effort to strengthen the NPT’s institutional and accountability mechanisms is an important initiative that Canada has persisted in throughout the current NPT review process. Some of the most energetic opponents of that effort are members of the G8 – which suggests using the forthcoming G8-G20 meeting in Canada to try to shore up support. To make headway will require Canadian leadership that has the courage of its formal policy declarations, supplemented by a coherent strategy and a diplomatic offensive to gather a credible supporting coalition of like-minded States.

A sub-element of institution building is the need to enhance and regularize the role of civil society in the NPT review process.

The research and public engagement work of disarmament NGOs and think tanks is widely recognized as an important element of developing the political will to act on the particulars of the disarmament agenda. In 2003 Canada submitted a working paper to the NPT to encourage a more prominent role for civil society and diplomats actively pursued support for the initiative. The Harper Government has not only given up on advocacy on the matter, but has ended the long-standing practice of including civil society representatives on its delegations to the NPT Review Conferences.

Canada has also championed Transparency and Reporting in the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime.

Institutional fixing and transparency regulations definitely lack an air of the heroic – these are not causes likely to enflame public passions. But this is a case of the mundane being not only important, but essential. These are foundational questions of accountability and of the ending of nuclear impunity. In 2000 the NPT Review Conference agreed on a provision for “regular reports” on progress made in implementing Article VI. The nuclear weapon States have actively resisted the idea that there is actually any actual multilateral transparency obligation involved (as distinct from bilateral transparency/verification), but the degree to which nuclear weapon States are prepared to report reflects the degree to which they regard themselves as accountable to other States Parties to the Treaty.

It is a principle that Canada has championed and needs to continue to press with some vigor.

Ultimately, disarmament will require a nuclear weapons convention.

Finally, we need the Government to acknowledge that while progress toward a world without nuclear weapons will obviously involve a broad range of incremental measures and agreements, ultimately, all such measures must be brought together in a single umbrella or framework convention. Thus, Canadian policy should explicitly call for, and work toward, a nuclear weapons convention that sets a clear timeline for irreversible and verifiable nuclear disarmament.[iv]

The nuclear threat is an eminently solvable problem. Compare it with all the other perils this troubled planet faces:  from the economic crisis, to climate change, energy deficits, burgeoning pollution, acute water shortages, unrelenting hunger, grossly inadequate health services, and chronic armed conflict. Solving these problems requires a vast array of complex social and behavioral transformations. But nuclear disarmament really only needs only a few clear decisions by a relatively small cadre of leaders. A very small number of leaders can decide to take weapons of high-alert and immediately make the world a much safer place. Similarly, it takes only a small number of leaders, most of whom have now declared their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, to make the decisions needed to progressively remove weapons from deployment and into the dismantling shops.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] John Clearwater is the leader in documenting the history 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.

[ii] 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.

[iii] 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 also the primary ballistic missile early warning agency.

[iv] What could Canada constructively contribute if it were to embrace the immediate pursuit of a nuclear weapons convention? Canada could and should institute informal international consultations 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. In the meantime Canada should be thinking about the particular contribution it could make to the international process. The UK, sometimes working with Norway, has been focusing on verification measures linked to a nuclear weapons convention.4 Canada was once active in this area, and still is involved in CTBT seismic verification. Consideration could be given to reviving some of this work to bolster the UK-Norwegian initiative.

A November 13-14 public forum at Toronto City Hall looked at the opportunities and obstacles to nuclear disarmament. The program and details are available athttp://zeronuclearweapons.com/. The following notes are my comments on some of the obstacles.

The current possibilities for finally locking in some significant gains in the slow movement toward zero nuclear weapons are truly unprecedented. The path toward a world without nuclear weapons is already well marked – many of the steps to be taken have been developed and agreed to in the multilateral review process linked to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – the NPT. To a surprising extent, we know who has to do what.

But the focus is not on what has to be done, rather, it’s on the obstacles to doing what must still be done. Four such challenges are identified. They are not necessarily the biggest obstacles – like the complex of military, industrial, scientific, and security constituencies that endure as complex centres of nuclear retentionism – but they are issues that need serious and sustained attention.

The first challenge is that posed by the real and potential proliferators within the NPT. As you know, the NPT is the core global law on nuclear weapons. The five states that had them when the Treaty was signed in 1968 are required to disarm; all other states must never acquire nuclear weapons. In one sense it has worked extremely well; of all the non-nuclear weapon states that signed the Treaty, only North Korea explicitly violated that commitment – pursuing a weapons capability while part of the treaty, then withdrawing and acquiring weapons. Some, like South Africa, pursued nuclear weapons, but then signed and moved into full compliance with the Treaty. Iran, as a Treaty member, has certainly not acquired nuclear weapons, but it is pursuing technologies, for a time it did it clandestinely, that raise serious questions as to its intentions.

So, out of 183 non-nuclear signatories, only two (North Korea and Iran) are now in formal noncompliance with their Treaty-related obligations.

The disarmament part of the Treaty has, of course, not worked nearly so well – but that shouldn’t detract from the new developments that indicate the disarmament agenda is finally starting to get some serious traction.

Now, disarmament advocates get justifiably impatient when nuclear weapon states keep changing the subject, away from disarmament and to nonproliferation. But, in the context of the priority objective of disarmament, we still need to affirm the central importance of getting the nonproliferation issue right. Few developments would be as durably devastating to disarmament hopes as would a pervasive and deep-seated suspicion that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is ultimately not reliable – that it is not up to the task of stopping or reversing the proliferators.

Disarmament requires a nuclear nonproliferation regime that earns the overwhelming confidence of the international community. In a world in which all nuclear weapons are finally banned, the system of monitoring and inspections will be the primary barrier to nuclear breakout and resumed arms competition. Nuclear technology, materials, and knowledge will continue to be present throughout much of the world via civilian programs, and more and more states will develop capacity, and there will also always be some who are tempted to convert that knowledge and material into weapons.

So, we need a detection and verification system that is continuously and indefinitely effective and has the confidence of the international community – and the successful resolution of the DPRK and Iran cases is essential to building that confidence.

During the course of the discussion there was a question as to the implications of Iran acquiring a weapon – but the ongoing dispute has serious repercussions even if Iran does not acquire a weapon. For the longer the IAEA has to say that Iran is not fully cooperating or that unresolved issues remain, the more the nonproliferation regime is undermined. Both the DPRK and Iran cases have benefited from a new infusion of more sensitive diplomacy and creative proposals, but they both continue to be very difficult problems, and as long as they fester, confidence in the nonproliferation regime continues to suffer. And already the fierce opponents of global zero in the US are bolstering their arguments against CTBT ratification, for example, on grounds that America should not lower its nuclear guard at a time when the nonproliferation regime is proving to be powerless to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to determined proliferators.

A second challenge is represented by the states with nuclear weapons that are outside the NPT. Threede facto nuclear weapon states have always been and still are outside the NPT (India, Israel, and Pakistan).

India’s status as a state with nuclear weapons was granted a level of formality when it was exempted from the Nuclear Suppliers Group prohibition on civilian nuclear cooperation with any state not under fullscope safeguards. Pakistan has really won the same recognition by default. The UN Security Council Resolution (#1172 of 1998) that required India and Pakistan, in the wake of their 1998 nuclear tests, to end their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, was never heeded and then rendered irrelevant by the Nuclear Suppliers Group action.

So we now have a situation in which India and Pakistan are essentially accepted as nuclear weapon states, but without being formally bound by any of the obligations that accrue to Nuclear Weapon States – notably Chapter VI (the disarmament chapter) of the NPT. Furthermore, while NWS in the NPT have signed the CTBT, India and Pakistan have not (US and China have signed but not ratified). And while NWS have put a moratorium on producing fissile materials for weapons purposes pending the negotiation of an FMCT, India and Pakistan have not (indeed, India is positioned to accelerate production when it imports uranium – possibly from Canada – for civilian purposes because then its domestic supply can be more fully dedicated to military purposes). That in turn puts pressure on Pakistan – and before you know it you’ve got a real nuclear arms race.

Canada, of course, is actively pursuing a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with India, and we’ll see whether Foreign Affairs is able to attach some nonproliferation conditions.[i] It should, for example, be clear, at a minimum, that any further test of a nuclear warhead by India would immediately end all cooperation (the preference, of course, would be that India sign the CTBT).[ii] In particular India should be pressed to offer credible assurances that it has joined the five officially recognized nuclear weapon states in halting all production of fissile material for weapons purposes.

Israel obviously also remains outside the constraints and obligations of the NPT – and it is clear that a remedy will have to be pursued in the context of efforts toward establishing the Middle East as a nuclear weapons free zone and a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction – that will be a difficult process, to put it mildly, but at least discussions have begun about appointing a special envoy, or about holding a special conference to give some energy to that agenda.

A third major challenge to nuclear disarmament is the steep imbalance in global conventional military forces. Current levels of US conventional military spending, along with the posture of NATO, will not incline Russia toward zero nuclear weapons. Look at the statistics (2007 military spending):[iii] The US spent (in its basic defence budget) $552 Billion, or 43% of world total. Russia was at $32 Billion, or 2.5% of the world total. Russia, India, and China combined made up 8% of world military spending, while NATO’s share was 67%. At an almost 20:1 disadvantage, Russia, justified or not, will obviously continue to look to nuclear weapons as the way to level the strategic playing field.

The point here is not that general and complete disarmament is a prerequisite to nuclear disarmament – not at all. But it does suggest that nuclear disarmament requires the pursuit of cooperative security rather than competitive security, and it requires a fundamental rebuilding of security relations between the West and Russia, and China. The overall security objective needs to shift from mutual deterrence, to mutual, and demonstrable, reassurance.[iv]

Fourth, NATO nuclear doctrine persists as another impediment to disarmament. There isn’t time to expand on this, except to say that nowhere is the need for reassurance as an alternative to deterrence greater than in NATO. And, of course, the current review of NATO’s Strategic Concept is the place to begin. Both the rationale and the language for a new approach to nuclear weapons are available in the growing anthology of nuclear abolition statements that has emerged in the last few years from figures like Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama, and many others.

Nuclear weapons, far from being “essential to preserve peace”, as the current NATO doctrine has it, are in the logic of the NPT an unacceptable risk to humanity; which means that it is their elimination, not their retention, that is essential to security.

Next, some Canadian policy priorities.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] John Ibbotson, “Why Harper needs a nuclear deal with India,” 12 November 2009.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-harper-needs-a-nuclear-deal-with-india/article1360161/.

[ii] CTBT Annex II Signatories/Ratifications still required: NNWS in NPT: Egypt, Indonesia, Iran (has signed);NWS in NPT: China (has signed), US (has signed). Non-NPT: India, Israel (has signed), Pakistan.

[iii] The Military Balance 2009, The International Institute for Strategic Studies (Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2009), pp. 447-452, re 2007 military spending: US ($552 Billion – 43% of world total); Russia ($32Billion – 2.5%); China ($46Billion); India ($27Billion); Russia, India, China combined (8%); NATO: $863Billion (67%); CSTO: $36Billion (Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan  (the Collective Security Treaty Organization); World Total: $1,280Billion.

[iv] Point forcefully made in, Steinbruner, John. 2009. Engaging with Russia: Managing risks, repairing rifts.Arms Control Today. January/February. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_01-02/Steinbruner.

Transparency and verification are central to sustainable nuclear disarmament and a compelling new report on nuclear weapons materials includes a look at ways in which “societal verification” can contribute to a more effective nonproliferation regime.

The just released 2009 report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials[i] (IPFM) examines, in addition to its main focus on global stocks of nuclear weapon materials, the verification challenges for nuclear disarmament pursued in a world where nuclear materials and knowledge are widely disseminated through civilian nuclear power programs. The report confirms the basic conclusion of the recent CIGI study,[ii] From Nuclear Energy to the Bomb – namely, that scientific knowledge acquired through a nuclear energy program provides the basic foundation of expertise and, especially, the core personnel and infrastructure on which a nuclear weapons program can be built. Justin Alger points out in his CIGI paper that “a state’s capacity to make the leap from power production to assembling a nuclear device is typically considered a matter of time rather than ability.”[iii]

The Global Fissile Material Report 2009 from the IPFM sets out the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons rather starkly in the opening paragraph of Chapter 8:  “A civilian nuclear power program provides a state a foundation to produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons. It allows a country to train scientists and engineers, to build research facilities, to construct and operate nuclear reactors, and possibly also to learn techniques of reprocessing and enrichment that could later be turned to producing weapons materials. Even small civilian nuclear energy programs can involve large stocks and flows of nuclear-weapon-usable materials.”

Nuclear power has serious proliferation risks, but regardless of those risks, and whatever its economic and environmental merits, existing and already planned nuclear power operations mean it will remain a prominent feature of the global energy and, by default, security landscape for a long time to come. That in turn obviously means that transparency and verification are of over-riding importance. The transparency objective, as the IPFM puts it, is to lengthen the time between a country’s decision to pursue a nuclear weapon and the achievement of the same. Legally mandated inspections are designed to detect a weapons program early on so as to give the international community maximum time to mount an effective preventive response. But the presence of a civilian nuclear program reduces that time – because it develops expertise and makes it easier to disguise a weapons program behind ostensibly legitimate civilian research and development.

The ninth chapter of the IPFM report then considers whether the inspections regime, and the time-lag between decision and fruition in a weapons program, can be enhanced and extended through societal verification. Can “non-governmental organizations and individual scientists and technologists” be encouraged and offered mechanisms through which to provide information related to national violations of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguard commitments? The IAEA is the agency mandated to inspect civilian nuclear energy programs and verify that no nuclear materials or technology are being diverted to weapons programs.

The IPFM report documents Joseph Rotblat’s promotion of this idea. Rotblat, the Nobel Laureate who resigned in protest from the Manhattan Project and was instrumental in starting the international Pugwash movement,[iv] argued that societal verification is needed to complement formal detection measures. Such reporting, or whistle blowing, he said, should be recognized as the right and duty of all citizens, and that scientists in particular should be, and generally are, committed to methods and ethics that transcend national loyalties and recognize a loyalty to all humanity. Indeed, he even argued that any global treaty or nuclear weapons convention[v] should include a clause mandating states to enact laws guaranteeing the individual’s the right and duty to report violations of safeguards to the IAEA.

As to NGO reporting, the IPFM acknowledges that many don’t have the technical capacity for such informal monitoring, but they do nevertheless frequently have relevant information. Over time, community based groups linked to particular nuclear sites, for example, “become very expert in understanding activities at the site they contest.” Other groups and institutes do develop technical capacities, for example, to measure radiation levels, and, “moreover, technological developments may significantly increase those capabilities. The cost of satellite imagery, for example, has declined considerably in recent years while its spatial resolution has increased” (p. 121).

Societal verification is certainly not new or unprecedented. The Landmines Treaty[vi] includes references to the implementation responsibilities of non-governmental organizations, and the Landmine Monitor[vii] is published annually through the non-governmental International Campaign to Ban Landmines and monitors a broad range of details related to implementation of the Treaty.

Of course, societal verification and links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons are but one small part of the Global Fissile Material Report 2009. The bulk of this year’s report focuses on documenting current stocks of fissile material, that is, weapons usable highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and their control and management in support of nuclear disarmament. Chapter headings, beyond the two discussed here, are: Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stocks and Production, Fissile Materials and Nuclear Disarmament, Declarations of Fissile Material Stocks and Production, Nuclear Archaeology, Verified Warhead Dismantlement, Disposition of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium, Verified Cutoff of Fissile Material Production for Weapons.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Global Fissile Material Report 2009, the fourth annual report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/gfmr09.pdf.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), experts from seventeen nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states, was founded in January 2006. The Panel examines and proposes technical requirements for securing, consolidating, and reducing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium – these being the key ingredients in nuclear weapons. Control of these materials, says the Panel, “is critical to nuclear disarmament, halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and ensuring that terrorists do not acquire nuclear weapons.” It is housed at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.

[ii] Justin Alger, From Nuclear Energy to the Bomb: The Proliferation Potential of New Nuclear Energy Programs, Nuclear Energy Futures Paper No. 6, September 2009, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Available at: http://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/Nuclear_Energy_Futures%206.pdf.

[iii] See the recent posting here, “Does nuclear energy lead to the bomb?”http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/10/does-nuclear-energy-lead-bomb.

[iv] Both Rotblat and Pugwash are celebrated in the current National Film Board film, “The Strangest Dream.”http://beta.nfb.ca/film/strangest-dream-trailer/.

[v] See the recent posting here, “Canada and a nuclear weapons convention,” 5 September 2009. http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2009/9/canada-and-nuclear-weapons-convention.

[vi] Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Treaties/MBT/Treaty-Text-in-Many-Languages/English.

[vii] http://www.lm.icbl.org/index.php/LM/Our-Research-Products/Landmine-Monitor.

The new German Foreign Minister has pledged to pursue the removal of the last of US nuclear weapons on German soil. It’s a move that will either signal the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons in Europe or the beginning of a new political quarrel within NATO.

It seems anachronistic in the extreme, not to mention silly, for NATO to get caught up in a serious quarrel over a few hundred, at the most, US nuclear gravity bombs still kept on European soil. But it could happen, as it did at the end of the 1990s – all in the name of trans-Atlantic NATO solidarity. The New York Times today quotes an un-named NATO diplomat as insisting that US nuclear weapons in Europe “are the foundation of [NATO] solidarity. Take them away and what have we left?”[i]

Just because Guido Westerwelle’s pledge is sensible and long overdue doesn’t mean it will be easy to fulfill. And whatever resistance it meets will not come from Washington. A big part of the resistance will rely on the slightly absurd, to be kind about it, solidarity argument[ii] – the idea that, despite massive Europe-North America trade links, myriad cultural and historical ties, as well as broadly shared political values, it is still only the few hundred Cold War nuclear relics that can successfully bridge the Atlantic. Another claim will be that the removal of nuclear weapons from Europe should not be done unilaterally but should be coordinated with substantial reductions in Russian tactical nuclear weapons – as if 200 less warheads in Europe will suddenly reverse the Russian strategic calculus.

Nuclear weapons in Europe are still obviously championed in some influential circles, but a more likely scenario is that this German move to remove US nuclear weapons from its territory will indeed be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons in Europe (outside of France and the UK).

Mr. Westerwelle, the leader of the German Free Democrats and Foreign Minister in the new German coalition led by the continuing Chancellor Angela Merkel, has long been an advocate of disarmament, and in this move he has the support of four of the six parties with members in the Bundestag.[iii]

There are similar pressures in the Dutch Parliament[iv] and the Belgian Senate is about to consider a proposal to ban nuclear weapons within its territory.[v] NATO strategic doctrine is now under review and, given that the alliance leader is now firmly and publicly committed to entering a path that leads to zero nuclear weapons, it should be expect, or demanded, that a new NATO Strategic Concept will no longer describe nuclear weapons as essential to its security or essential to transatlantic solidarity. And a NATO doctrine modified in that way will pave the way to the removal of nuclear weapons from the five non-nuclear weapon states that still host them (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey).

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Judy Dempsey, “Ridding German of US Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times, 29 October 2009.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world/europe/29iht-letter.html.

[ii] The current NATO Strategic Concept insists in paragraph 63 that “nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO provide an essential political and military link between the European and the North American members of the Alliance. The Alliance will therefore maintain adequate nuclear forces in Europe.” [NATO. 1999. The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, Approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. on 23rd and 24th April 1999.http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-065e.htm.]

[iii] “Germany opts for a farewell to NATO nuclear weapons,” Russia Today, 28 October 2009.http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-10-28/germany-nato-nuclear-weapon.html.

[iv] With the SP, for example, arguing for a non-nuclear NATO strategy. “Nuclear Disarmament: Steps must be taken which inspire confidence,” 27 October 2009. http://international.sp.nl/bericht/37934/091027-nuclear_disarmament_steps_must_be_taken_which_inspire_confidence.html.

[v] “Belgian Senate to Consider Nuclear-Weapon Ban,” Global Security Newswire, 16 October 2009.http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20091016_3998.php.

A new CIGI study, “From Nuclear Energy to the Bomb,” offers a clear and compelling review of one of the central challenges of disarmament diplomacy.

This study[i] comes out of the Nuclear Energy Futures project of CIGI and provides a clear account of the real and potential links between a state’s peaceful nuclear energy capacity and the capacity to acquire a nuclear weapon. Its conclusions?

The scientific knowledge acquired through a basic nuclear energy program – that is, one that does not involve uranium enrichment or reprocessing of spent fuel – provides the basic foundation of scientific knowledge  and, especially, the core personnel and infrastructure on which a nuclear weapons program can be pursued. But that doesn’t mean that the steps toward weaponization are thereafter simple. Hiding the pursuit of a bomb from inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is, fortunately, a major challenge, and increasingly so. And mastering the knowledge, technology, and manufacturing capacity to build a warhead is neither simple nor speedy.

But the sobering reality is that, given time and intention, more and more states will be able to do it. Acquiring uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing capacity for energy purposes represents a further and significant step toward bomb-making capacity. Author Justin Alger concludes that “a state’s capacity to make the leap from power production to assembling a nuclear device is typically considered a matter of time rather than ability.”

But before coming to that clear conclusion, the paper takes you through a careful review of the proliferation risks and challenges linked to nuclear energy production. Here is Mr. Alger’s own account of the main findings:
• “Nuclear energy and weapons are inextricably linked by the scientific principles that underscore both, but beyond this basic understanding the intricacies of the technical relationship between the two are complex.

• “A once-through nuclear program provides a basic foundation in nuclear science and reactor engineering for a nuclear weapons program, but does not provide knowledge of sensitive fuel cycle technology or bomb design and assembly.

• “A peaceful nuclear energy program does, however, provide a state with much of the expertise, personnel, infrastructure and camouflage it would need to begin work on a weapons program should it chose to do so.

• “Acquiring a peaceful nuclear energy infrastructure does enhance a state’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons, but capacity is only one consideration and of secondary importance to other factors that drive state motivations for the bomb.”

The paper’s final comment is particularly important: “Understanding the technical connection between peaceful nuclear energy and nuclear weapons is important, but it is only one consideration. The motivation of states to acquire nuclear weapons, rather than their technical capacity to do so, is the more important concern.”

In the end, preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons will not be achieved by denying states either the knowledge or the materials to build them. Any state with an emerging industrial capacity and a scientific community will in time be able to gain access to nuclear materials and technical capacity – after that it’s political. It becomes a political and security calculation.

In a recent discussion at George Washington University, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates made the same point with regard to Iran: “…[T]he question is, can we…in a limited period of time bring the Iranians to a conclusion that…Iran is better off without nuclear weapons than with them, and not just in the security sense, but economically and in terms of their isolation in the international community….[T]he only long-term solution to this problem…is the Iranians themselves deciding [that] having nuclear weapons is not in their interest….[M]y hope…has been that…we could, through…both carrots and sticks, persuade them of a smarter direction for Iran.”[ii]

And, of course, that political calculation is influenced by a myriad of considerations, not the least of which is the progress, or lack of it, made by the rest of the international community in pursuit of the now broadly declared objective of a world without any nuclear weapons.

Pursing that goal is, of course, not without its conundrums. A significant number of industrializing states, with even modest regional hegemonic ambitions, will become increasingly reluctant to permanently forswear nuclear weapons if they see other states indefinitely retaining nuclear arsenals and using them to wield added influence within the international community. On the other hand, states that already have nuclear weapons will remain reluctant to disavow and eliminate them if they are convinced that other states are bent on acquiring them.

On the plus side, diplomacy bent on eliminating nuclear weapons is currently on the ascendancy – and this study of the links between nuclear energy and the bomb is a timely contribution to those efforts.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Justin Alger, From Nuclear Energy to the Bomb: The Proliferation Potential of New Nuclear Energy Programs, Nuclear Energy Futures Paper No. 6, September 2009, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Available at: http://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/Nuclear_Energy_Futures%206.pdf.

[ii] Transcript, Conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Discuss American Power and Persuasion Oct. 5, 2009, at George Washington University with Frank Sesno and Christiane Amanpour. Available at:http://www.gwu.edu/staticfile/GW/News%20and%20Events/2.%20This%20Week%20at%20GW/Sidebar/clintongatestranscript.pdf.

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.