Our nuclear future: hanging together or hanging separately?

Publication: Behind the Headlines

Publication Date: 22-JUN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Canadian Institute of International Affairs

INTRODUCTION

The one thing that President Bush and Senator Kerry could readily agree on during the 2004 presidential debates was that the nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction was the most important problem the United States, and the world, faced. Since then, political divisions in the US have widened and fissures between the US and much of the rest of the international community have deepened, in some cases into chasms. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine and Lebanon, the world has become more fractious and international consensus on security has become correspondingly scarcer. Not surprisingly, progress on the arms control and disarmament (ACD) agenda has foundered. Its prospects are worsened by the current American administration's disregard for multilateral cooperation it cannot control and its preference for a US-led strategy focusing on enforcement and compliance, suspect in the eyes of many. In addition, the nuclear weapons states are largely indifferent to their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the corner stone of the arms control and disarmament regime, except as an instrument for constraining others. The evident nuclear weapons ambitions of North Korea, the alleged aspirations of Iran and the still-to-be-ratified US-Indian agreement on nuclear cooperation raise major questions about the continuing viability of the ACD treaty regime. Meanwhile, rising oil prices and deepening climate change are renewing interest in nuclear energy on the part of some countries who had renounced the option and others who had never aspired to it, raising in the process all the old unanswered safety, security and environmental questions and some new ones as well. The entire regime is, thus, in jeopardy precisely when events suggest it needs innovation and reinforcement. It can be made to work but that will require greater recognition of common interest and shared fate in major world capitals, especially Washington, than has been evident so far.

SEVERAL STEPS FORWARD ...

To understand where the world is tending on nuclear cooperation, a recapitulation of major developments helps. The story is far from totally discouraging. In the past decade, there have been numerous heartening advances. In 1995, the signatories to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the most-ratified treaty in history, made the accord permanent, transforming its 25 year term into an open-ended commitment. To be sure, countries retained the right to secede but the bargains agreed to in the original NPT were preserved intact and an effective instrument to prevent the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons was reinforced. As part of those bargains, the non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS) had forsworn the development or acquisition of nuclear weapons (Articles II and III) in exchange for the "inalienable right" to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (Article IV) and the undertaking of the nuclear weapons states (NWS) to "pursue negotiations in good faith" to cease the arms race and to negotiate general and complete disarmament (Article VI). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors verified compliance by states parties.

It was an unequal bargain that most states were prepared to accept because they believed that, its inequity notwithstanding, the treaty made them safer. The larger the number of countries with nuclear weapons, the calculation went, the greater the chance that the weapons would one day be used. Against their better judgment, they also hoped that the nuclear weapons states would keep their ends of the bargain, if not immediately, then in some foreseeable future. In fact, as the Cold War receded, Russia and the United States first limited then began to reduce their strategic weapons systems significantly, although nuclear warhead destruction did not keep pace and there has been no international verification of these reductions. The UK and France have, also, reduced their comparatively smaller arsenals but China has augmented its weapons, albeit from a small base.

By 1995, 173 countries had ratified the NPT. Brazil came on board subsequently, as did Cuba, and ratifications now total 188. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine relinquished their nuclear weapons, as did South Africa. Ultimately, all but the three current outliers--India, Pakistan and Israel--gave up their nuclear weapons and programs. Meanwhile, following the discovery of the deception perpetrated by the Iraqi regime in the 1980's,the IAEA had begun to make progress on an "Additional Protocol" that allows IAEA inspectors to carry out substantially more intrusive inspections in participating countries; 70 countries have now signed on. At the same time, both safeguards agreements and additional protocols are focused on nuclear material, which means that the Agency's legal authority to investigate possible parallel weaponization activity is limited, unless there is some nexus linking the activity to nuclear material. In today's security environment, inspections that only verify what a country has declared are not likely to be judged "effective", in terms of the assurance they provide the international community.

In 2000, at the NPT Review Conference, the nuclear armed states gave an unequivocal undertaking "to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI", although none said when and few were certain how. Still, the NPT bargain remained intact. The nuclear weapons states also endorsed "Thirteen Steps", measures by which they would give some effect to this commitment, including the early, entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), conclusion within five years of a verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT), initially proposed by President Clinton, a reduction in the number of tactical nuclear weapons, a reduction in the operational status of nuclear weapons systems, the application of the principle of irreversibility to all nuclear arms reductions and a diminished role for nuclear weapons in security policy.

The extraordinary statesmanship of the US-initiated Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, launched in 1992, has been facilitating the dismantlement and securing of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and materials in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Several thousand warheads, material for several thousand additional warheads and thousands of missiles and missile launchers have been deactivated or destroyed since the inception of the program. Otherwise idle scientists have been gainfully employed in non-lethal activity. In time, this initiative was joined by others. At the 2002 Kananaskis summit in Canada, the G-8 launched a $20...

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