Posts Tagged ‘nuclear non-proliferation’

Warnings of the disaster that would come of an American attack on Iran are plentiful, increasingly urgent, and persuasive[i] – but it is not at all clear that they are working on the one vote that matters. The NewsHour on PBS television ran a short feature on the growing irrelevance of George Bush, but on security matters he’s still very much in charge, and when it comes to Iran he still likes to say that all options remain on the table.

Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding, Pentagon planners and presidential advisors seem to have an inexplicable capacity to infuse their attack scenarios with an irrepressible optimism. In their computerized simulations, otherwise intractable problems, like Iran’s nuclear programs, are swept aside like so much hi tech chaff once the missiles start flying. The Christian Science Monitor recently observed that “perhaps the most egregious error policy planners make is their assumption that once wars are started, their outcome is predictable.”[ii]

It is true that some outcomes are predictable enough. No one could have doubted that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would lead to the overthrow of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Nor could anyone doubt that if the United States attacked Iran it could manage to destroy, at least for a time, its nuclear programs, set its economic infrastructure back a generation, or overthrow its government. Regime destruction can be accomplished with dispatch – but after that all bets are off.

Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford has offered a careful and cautious account[iii] of the consequences of a concentrated air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and defence infrastructure. He rules out a ground offensive and a regime overthrow by the United states as unfeasible given American commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says “an air attack would involve the systematic destruction of research, development, support and training centres for nuclear and missile programmes and the killing of as many technically competent people as possible.” In addition, the attack would “involve comprehensive destruction of Iranian air defence capabilities and attacks designed to pre-empt Iranian retaliation. This would require destruction of Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities close to Iraq and of regular or irregular naval forces that could disrupt Gulf oil transit routes.”

Civilian and military casualties would be difficult to monitor, but would be in the many thousands, given that much of the technical infrastructure in support of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs is located in urban areas.

After the attack, he says, “Iran would have many methods of responding in the months and years that followed.” He includes disruption of Gulf oil supplies and support for insurgents and anti-Israel forces in the region. Rather than end Iranian nuclear programs, an attack would ignite Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions. Iran would emerge united and determined to build a bomb and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would presumably occasion further attacks and propel long-term and widening confrontation in the region.

After that come the unpredictable consequences, including the environmental impact of exploding nuclear facilities – at this point with limited quantities of nuclear materials present – and various political fallout possibilities. President Bush and his army of upbeat advisors and analysts obviously did not anticipate that their 2003 attack on Iraq would be a major boon to Iran. But, says the former Ambassador and current Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, Peter W. Galbraith, “of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran’s strategic victory is the most far-reaching.”[iv] Similar unintended consequences would also ensue from an attack on Iran.

Mr. Bush seems rather more aware of folly when the issue is the military action of others. It is almost touching to hear his kindly reprimand of Turkey for having the temerity to threaten attacks on northern Iraq in an effort to deny rebel Turkish Kurds sanctuary there. “There is a lot of dialogue going on,” he explained to reporters at the White House, “and that is positive.”[v]

To measure his own actions he uses a different calculus. There may, after all, be a lot of dialogue going on with Iran as well, but in this case he finds nothing positive in it. Talking to Iran, whether it is the Russians or the International Atomic Energy Agency, only emboldens it in its wicked ways.

Left to his own devices, and bolstered by the authors of triumphalist attack scenarios, President Bush is eminently capable of crowning his disastrous presidency with another military misadventure – this time in Iran. In other words, he shouldn’t be left to his own devices.

The Parliament of Canada would perform a worthy service in support of international stability through a unanimous and two-fold call: for the United States to unequivocally reject military action against Iran and for Iran to unambiguously resolve all outstanding issues with the IAEA and provide it ongoing and unencumbered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities and programs.

As an emergency statement onIranby a group of concerned Canadians puts it, “an aerial assault on Iran would be an environmental and human catastrophe that our already damaged world cannot afford.”[vi]

[i] Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East,” The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, September 2007 (http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf).

Barnett Rubin, “Thesis on Policy toward Iran,” Informed Comment: Global Affairs, September 5, 2007 (http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/theses-on-policy-toward-iran.html).

Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?” The New Yorker, April 17, 2007 (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact).

[ii] Walter Rodgers, “The folly of war with Iran,” The Christian Science Monitor,” October 16, 2007 ()

[iii] Paul Rogers, Iran: Consequences of a War, Briefing Paper, Oxford Research Group, February 2006 (http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers/pdf/IranConsequences.pdf), 16 pp.

[iv]Peter W. Galbraith, “The Victor?,” The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2007 Volume 54, Number 15 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20651).

[v]By Paula Wolfson, “Bush Urges Turkey to Refrain From Cross-Border Operations in Iraq,” Voice of America, October 17, 2007 (http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-10-17-voa49.cfm).

[vi] From an “emergency statement” of concerned Canadians. The statement remains open for signature through Jillian Skeet of Vancouver who can be reached at jillianskeet@telus.net.

Some 80 percent of Americans think that nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place. Only 10 percent think the world is safer because of nuclear weapons. But when the same Americans were asked how they felt about their own country’s nuclear weapons, 47 percent said they made them feel safer and 32 percent said they made them feel less safe.

That is just one of the revealing findings of an extraordinary survey of six states (five NATO states: Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and United States; plus Israel) conducted by Angus Reid Strategies on behalf of The Simons Foundation of Vancouver.[i]

Israel is where this nuclear ambivalence is most pronounced. There 87 percent say nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place, but at the same time 73 percent say they would feel safer knowing that Israel has nuclear weapons.[ii]

It is tempting to call these contradictory views, but of course it is logically possible to believe that nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous and that the world would be better off without them, but then still believe that as long as any state has them, one’s own state should too. That at least seems to be the logic followed by people in states with nuclear weapons, which in turn may go some way to explaining why it is so difficult to advance nuclear disarmament even though that is what the world overwhelmingly wants.

In Britain and France respondents also said that nukes make the world more dangerous (73 percent and 77 percent respectively), but in their own case they felt safer knowing their country had them (in Britain 46 percent felt safer compared to 37 percent who felt less safe; in France 48 percent felt safer while only 24 percent felt less safe).

In states that do not possess nuclear weapons of their own (German and Italy[iii]), respondents also felt overwhelmingly that nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous (92 percent and 90 percent respectively), but they also said they felt safer knowing that their own country does not possess nuclear weapons (60 percent and 45 percent respectively). In each case a smaller minority felt that the absence of nuclear weapons rendered them less safe (21 percent and 34 percent respectively).

In countries without nuclear weapons, people find all nuclear weapons threatening; in countries with nuclear weapons, people find all nuclear weapons threatening but their own.

But that only confirms the basic truth that the overwhelming majority of people, in states with nuclear weapons as well as in states without them, think the world is made more dangerous by nuclear weapons and that such weapons should be eliminated. When the survey respondents were asked whether they would favour “eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world through an enforceable agreement,” huge majorities in all the countries surveyed answered in the affirmative – Britain, 85 percent; France, 87; Italy, 95; Germany 95; United States, 84; and Israel, 78 percent.

It is interesting that this strong support for a treaty or agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons is maintained by respondents who at the same time have a rather dim view of the effectiveness of the current and central nuclear disarmament treaty, namely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which, by virtue of Article VI, requires all states to disarm (though without setting a timetable). Americans are least persuaded of the effectiveness of the NPT (only 16 percent thought it to be effective). In Germany, which registered the highest confidence in the effectiveness of the NPT (38 percent), more respondents still regard the NPT as ineffective (42 percent). In Israel 63 percent regard the NPT as ineffective while only 18 percent regard it as effective.

Even so, support for a new international agreement is strong across the board and reflected in the responses to a question regarding appropriate national policy goals. Here respondents showed strong combined preference for policies aimed at reducing and eliminating arsenals (Britain, 91 percent; France, 84; Italy, 93; Germany, 96; United States, 82; and Israel, 74 percent). In each case there was greater support for elimination than simply reductions, except in France and Israel where there is stronger support for reductions than elimination.

Dr. Jennifer Allen Simons, President of The Simons Foundation, said the survey results come at a critical point of mounting nuclear tensions and growing interest in nuclear technology. She notes that even though respondents in nuclear weapon states regarded nuclear weapons as a source of protection from aggression, the overwhelming weight of opinion in all the countries surveyed, including in the nuclear weapon states, supports nuclear disarmament.

It is a revealing survey that highlights both the challenges and possibilities for nuclear disarmament and touches on a range of additional issues, including nuclear testing, diversion to non-state groups, moral attitudes, and views on nuclear use.

[i] The full report is available at The Simons Foundation website (www.thesimonsfoundation.ca) or the Angus Reid Strategies website (www.angusreidstrategies.com/global).

[ii] While Israel is widely understood to have several dozen nuclear weapons, it maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” by which it refuses to publicly confirm that it has a nuclear arsenal.

[iii] German and Italy actually have US/NATO weapons on their soil, but are not themselves states in “possession” of nuclear weapons, nor do their governments have control over those weapons – the Simons/Angus Reid survey also surveyed public attitudes toward this practice.

While American news media and University Presidents were trying to decide whether Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be best characterized as the devil incarnate, a petty dictator, or just plain mad, he managed to deliver himself of at least one truth during his New York visit – “the nuclear bomb is of no use,” he said. Whether Iran will honor that truth is of course another matter.

When Ahmadinejad was asked on 60 minutes for a firm answer to the question of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb, his first response was to equivocate: “Well, you have to appreciate we don’t need a nuclear bomb What needs do we have for a bomb?” Then when pressed for a firm answer, he said: “It is a firm ‘No.’ I’m going to be much firmer now, in political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use; if it was useful it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union; if it was useful it would resolved the problem the Americans have in Iraq. The time of the bomb is passed.”[i]

Nuclear diehards, in places like Washington, Beijing, and Delhi, among others, may beg to differ, but world opinion and witnesses from Henry Kissinger[ii] to the Dalai Lama know that Ahmadinejad is right on that particular score – indeed, Ronald Reagan made the same point, describing nuclear weapons as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”[iii]

Ahmadinejad may have something else in common with Reagan – that is, a public disavowal of nuclear weapons is not necessarily what guides his country’s action. By now a reasonable interpretation of Iran’s nuclear programs is that it is intent on using the pursuit of civilian nuclear power to acquire a nuclear weapons capability or option, as distinct from an actual weapon. And there is little doubt that Iran will eventually attain that capability. But there is a genuine difference between “capability” and “possession” – Japan being the best example of a country with the capability together with a firm policy not to convert that capability into a weapon. It is at this line of distinction that the international community and the non-proliferation regime do and must make their stand.

One can understand the desire to prevent any regime linked to the kind of world view offered by Ahmadinejad in New York, even if the tone was somewhat muted, from getting near any kind of advanced nuclear technology. But non-proliferation is a rules based endeavor and it is to our collective benefit if Iran develops its nuclear fuel cycle technologies[iv] within the non-proliferation regime and under the watchful eye of IAEA safeguards (essentially the current situation, once the IAEA’s outstanding issues are all dealt with) rather than have it withdraw from the NPT and resume its clandestine activities.

The Bush Administration has been trying to draw the line before capability, and that would be a far superior approach were it not pursued as an Iran-specific strategy – or an enemies-only approach. Nuclear non-proliferation would be genuinely aided by universal restrictions on uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, but that will be possible only if the rules apply equally to all and reactor fuel production is brought under multilateral control that guarantees all states in good standing within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) equal access.

Furthermore, limiting Iran’s pursuit of nuclear fuel cycle technology, and the implicit weapons capability that goes along with it, will by definition have to be regional. Indeed, that has been the focus of multilateral nonproliferation efforts, especially since 1995 when NPT states defined the collective objective of establishing the Middle East as a nuclear weapon free zone in the context of a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction.

A nuclear armed Iran can and must be averted, but it will require the even-handed application of multilaterally agreed non-proliferation principles and won’t be achieved through narrowly-targeted, Iran-specific prohibitions.

[i]“Ahmadinejad: Iran Not Walking Toward War; Iranian Leader Tells Scott Pelley His Country Does Not Need Nuclear Weapons,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, September 23, 2007 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/20/60minutes/main3282230.shtml).

[ii]George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “A World Free Of Nuclear Weapons,” TheWall Street Journal, January 4, 2007 (http://psaonline.org/downloads/nuclear.pdf).

[iii] Quoted by Kissinger, et al above.

[iv] Technologies with immediate civilian but also potential weapons applications.

On August 3, 2007 the United States and India set out the details of their proposed Agreement for Cooperation on Peaceful uses of Nuclear Energy. This “123 agreement”[i] would bring significantly more of India’s civilian nuclear facilities under an international inspections regime, but it also in effect calls for the international community to embrace India as a de facto nuclear weapon state without requiring in return that India accept even the most basic disarmament obligations of nuclear weapon states. In the process, rather than bringing constraints to India’s nuclear weapons activities, the proposed deal would actually facilitate a significant expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal.

Despite the new agreement between the US Administration and India, it remains a proposed deal which will take effect only if it receives the unanimous approval of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG – of which Canada is a member)[ii] and after India negotiates appropriate safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). NSG approval would mean specifically that civilian nuclear cooperation with India would be exempted from the current provision that, with the exception of the five nuclear weapon state (NWS) signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),[iii] civilian nuclear cooperation is acceptable only with countries under full-scope safeguards. Full-scope safeguards in turn mean that all of a particular country’s nuclear facilities are subject to IAEA inspections.

In other words, India would then have the same access to nuclear materials for civilian systems as do NWS, but India is not a party to the NPT and thus is not directly bound by the Treaty’s Article VI disarmament provisions, nor is it bound by the significant additional obligations that the NWS agreed to in the context of the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences.[iv] Without requiring India to formally assume any of the disarmament obligations of the NWS, and without receiving any concrete undertakings from India regarding a permanent halt to nuclear testing and the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes, the US-India deal as it now stands imposes severe costs on the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and should not receive the approval of the NSG (because the NSG operates by consensus, a Canadian vote against the ccurrent deal would ensure that).

This is not an argument for the status quo. Under current arrangements nuclear cooperation with India is eschewed in favour of regular entreaties (including through UN Security Council Resolution 1172) for it to end all its nuclear weapons programs, place all its remaining nuclear programs under IAEA safeguards, and join the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state. Under these arrangements India has with impunity tested nuclear weapons, refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and thus ensures that it will not enter into force,[v] continues to produce fissile materials for weapons purposes, and gradually builds up its inventory of nuclear warheads.

Clearly, some change is needed. The prospects for Indian (or Pakistani or Israeli) disarmament outside of the context of general nuclear disarmament and significantly altered regional security conditions are not promising, to put it mildly, and without some internationally agreed changes, India will continue to expand its arsenal and there will be inevitable erosion from the current consensus against civilian nuclear cooperation. Already Russia has signaled a move toward large-scale nuclear cooperation,[vi] Australia has said it will sell uranium to India,[vii] and the French are in talks toward a deal similar to the US-India deal.[viii] If civilian nuclear cooperation with India (and ultimately with Pakistan and Israel) is inevitable, it should at a minimum be through a multilateral, coordinated policy that gains concrete disarmament commitments from these three de facto nuclear weapon states that are outside the NPT.

The outlines of a compromise policy have gradually emerged out of the debate over the US-India deal. In exchange for recognizing the reality of India’s situation as a de facto nuclear weapon state, including a nuclear arsenal in accord with India’s minimum deterrence doctrine, the international community would no longer demand immediate nuclear disarmament as a condition of civilian nuclear cooperation but would require, a) a moratorium on nuclear testing and ratification of the CTBT to facilitate its entry into force in accordance with the unanimous view expressed in 1995 and 2000 by all signatories to the NPT, including all the NWS, and b) it would require assurances that civilian nuclear cooperation will not facilitate expansion of its nuclear arsenal.

The 123 agreement fails to meet the terms of such a compromise.

In the first instance, civilian nuclear cooperation is not made contingent on a halt to testing. In the event of another Indian test, US legislation authorizing the deal currently would prohibit continued US nuclear cooperation (for example the supply of reactor fuel), but in a slightly bizarre move, in the 123 agreement the US promises that it would advocate on behalf of India to assure it of continuing nuclear supplies from other sources even while it bans such supplies from the US.[ix]

Secondly, the deal facilitates the expansion of India’s ongoing production of fissile materials for weapons purposes. Without an Indian moratorium on the production of such materials (all five NWS currently adhere to such a moratorium), its access to foreign uranium for its civilian programs would allow it to use all its domestic uranium for an expanded weapons program.

If, as seems inevitable, India is now to be treated as if it were a nuclear weapon state, India needs to be moved to accept that new status within the context of a series of clear and binding disarmament obligations by making civilian nuclear cooperation with India contingent on at least the following undertakings:

• A declaration by India that it regards Article VI of the NPT as the expression of a global norm requiring the elimination of nuclear weapons, and that it regards itself and other non-signatories to the NPT as legally bound by that norm;
• An immediate moratorium on nuclear testing along with an undertaking to work with Pakistanso that both sign and ratify the CTBT within a reasonable timeframe; and
• A moratorium on the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes and an undertaking to support the immediate commencement of negotiations toward a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

[i] Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act requires that any nuclear cooperation between the United States and any other country be defined through an agreement submitted to the President that sets out the “terms, conditions, duration, nature, and scope of cooperation.” Section 123 of the act also outlines some essential elements of those terms and conditions that must be included in the agreement. The text of the AEA is available at http://epw.senate.gov/atomic54.pdf.

[ii] The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a 45 nation group of suppliers that sets guidelines for trade in nuclear materials.

[iii] China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States.

[iv] India’s approach toward disarmament obligations agreed to by NWS is explored in a forthcoming Ploughshare Working Paper, “India and the disarmament obligations of nuclear weapon states.”

[v] CTBT requires ratification by all states with nuclear programs or capabilities before it can enter into force.

[vi] Vladimir Radyuhin, “Russia vows strong support in NSG,” The Hindu, August 15, 2007 (http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/15/stories/2007081561711600.htm).

[vii] “Australia will sell uranium to India,” The Times of Indiam August 16, 2007 (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Australia_will_sell_uranium_to_India/rssarticleshow/2283648.cms).

[viii] “France and India in nuclear deal,” BBC news, February 20, 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4731244.stm); “France and India hold nuclear cooperation talks,” Energy Daily, New Delhi, July 30, 2007 (http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/France_And_India_Hold_Nuclear_Cooperation_Talks_999.html).

[ix] The 123 agreement says (Article 5.6.b.iv: “If a disruption of fuel supplies [from the US] to India occurs [say, in the aftermath of an Indian test], the United States and India would jointly convene a group of friendly supplier countries to include countries such as Russia, France and the United Kingdom to pursue such measures as would restore fuel supply to India.” (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/aug/90050.htm

A central feature of the 50 ^th anniversary of the first Pugwash Conference, commemorated with an international experts’ workshop (July 5-7) on “revitalizing nuclear disarmament” at the site of the first conference in 1957, was a ceremony to present the medal for the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize to the Pugwash Peace Exchange.

The Pugwash Peace Exchange is a national Canadian initiative emerging out of the community of Pugwash, with Senator Romeo Dallaire as patron, to build an “interpretive, education and research facility, based on the history and work of the Pugwash Conferences,” and it is this centre that will house the medal. It had been at the London, England home of the late Joseph Rotblat, a participant in the first Pugwash conference organized by the Canadian industrialist Cyrus Eaton to bridge the Cold War divide through a meeting of world scientists and experts, especially from the Soviet Union and the United States. It was Rotblat’s wish that the medal go to the birthplace of the Pugwash movement.

The 22 participants of that first Pugwash meeting, which spawned the international and ongoing “Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs,” were responding to the manifesto issued two years earlier by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein. Troubled by the toxic mixture of the destructive power of nuclear weapons and escalating East-West suspicion and enmity, Russell and Einstein wrote:

“Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.

“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

At the 50 ^th Anniversary conference, we of course heard that the “risk of universal death” is in fact hugely expanded from what it was in 1957. While nuclear arsenals have been reduced from their peak in the 1980s, they are still much larger than they were when Russell and Einstein issued their warning in1955 and those weapons still have the capacity to effectively annihilate human society. As they did in 1957, the Pugwash experts set out an agenda for nuclear disarmament that is achievable and most certainly urgent:

“This sober, inescapable truth continues to haunt the international community,” the 2007 conference declared.” Every minute of every day, more than 26000 nuclear weapons – many thousands of then on hair-trigger alert – are poised to bring monumental destruction if they are ever used.”

So now two Nobel Peace Prizes reside in Canada – the first, is housed at the Department of Foreign Affairs in the building bearing the recipient’s name, Lester B. Pearson (he, of course, received it for his visionary work in proposing the United Nations Emergency Force which as able to keep the peace and allow the belligerents in the 1956 Suez crisis to withdraw).

These two Nobel Prizes don’t only honor past achievements; they point to future responsibility for both war prevention and nuclear disarmament. And Canadians should accept the medals on our soil as challenges to this country in particular. A country of extraordinary privilege and capacity, we have a particular obligation to advance policy and global consensus toward the objectives the Nobel Peace Prizes honor.

Foreign Minister Peter Mackay spoke at the anniversary event in Pugwash, recommitting Canada to the disarmament enterprise. In particular he explicitly supported the “13 practical steps” toward nuclear disarmament that were universally agreed in the 2000 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and which summarize the essential global nuclear disarmament agenda. The Bush Administration has since specifically repudiated the 13 steps, so to have the current Canadian government specifically hold them up as critically important is a welcome gesture (more on moving from gestures to concrete action to come in future postings).

The peacekeeping Nobel Prize is certainly a reminder of the need for renewed leadership in the pursuit of alternative means of settling disputes. In fact, while the Russell-Einstein manifesto is a profoundly moving and persuasive warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons, the challenge that Russel and Einstein and their nine co-signatories set before governments went well beyond nuclear disarmament:

“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

Two Nobel Peace Prizes and two extraordinary challenges.

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

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

The agreed disarmament agenda

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

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

1. Preventing use

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

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

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

2. Preventing and reversing vertical proliferation

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

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

c) Make all nuclear weapon reductions irreversible and verifiable.

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

3. Preventing and reversing horizontal proliferation

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

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

c) Maintain effective export controls over nuclear materials.

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

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

Priorities for Canada

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

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

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

1. The disarmament machinery: Nuclear disarmament depends first and foremost on the political will of states to simply do it, but the institutional mechanisms through which they pursue that fundamental and urgent agenda are critically important. The mechanisms can themselves become obstacles to effective progress, and it is clear that in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and the NPT Review Process there are institutional arrangements and practices that serve to impede the disarmament progress. These impediments require urgent attention and Canada , having developed significant proposals to address the “institutional deficit” within the disarmament system, is well placed to work with likeminded states to press for constructive change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-nuclear disarmament and the prevention of nuclear war,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Disarmament

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

2. CTBT

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

3. FMCT

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

4. NSA’s

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

5. Reduced operational status

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

6. Diminished role for nuclear weapons

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

7. NWFZs

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

8. Safeguarding surplus fissile materials

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

9. Trade and Assistance

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

10. Reporting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

bunn_2006_iran_standby.pdf .

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

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

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

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

iraq_iran_gulf/51_iran_is_there_a_way_out_of_the_nuclear_impasse.pdf .

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

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

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

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

emc=rss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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