Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World
Executive Summary, April 1995
I. The case for a nuclear-weapon-free world (NWFW)
1. A NWFW: a necessary objective
A NWFW is no longer a fanciful idea. It is taken seriously by strategists, military experts, even former US Secretaries of State for Defense. This is because they now concede the point - which peace movements have been making for years - that nuclear weapons diminish, rather than enhance, the security of nuclear weapon states. This process, by which Cold War thinking is being eroded will help the non-declared weapon states as well to abandon their nuclear weapon options. Nuclear weapons appear not to be useful or necessary to deter possible threats by other nuclear weapon states or to prevent the risk of major war. On the contrary, if a smaller number of states continue to possess nuclear weapons and have plans to use them to enforce regional security interests, that will certainly increase the perceived `value' of these weapons and thus dangers of proliferation.
However, some of those who accept this general argument refuse at the last fence. They postpone the final elimination of nuclear weapons more or less indefinitely.
This will not do. There is no permanent stability at low numbers. There are only two options: one is a progression down to zero; in the absence of a move to zero, the other option is the spread of nuclear weapons to many nations. The first of these two options is to be preferred, because it is very much less dangerous than the second. In a `lower-salient' nuclear world, where the nuclear weapon powers claim to have adopted a policy of `minimum deterrence', it would probably be more difficult to prevent proliferation than it is now.
The decision to go for zero would help a great deal to change thinking about the use of military power - any kind of military power - in relations between states. It would strengthen the move towards the acceptance of international law and lead to wider acceptance of the principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes. Furthermore, it would comply with the commitment by the nuclear weapon states to complete nuclear disarmament, under Article VI of the NPT.
2. Transformation of the non-proliferation regime
The central criticism of the NPT is that it is de-jure discriminatory, because it legitimizes the division of the world into nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states; it imposes stringent control measures on the latter while the obligations of the former are not set out in a strict and enforceable way.
The non-proliferation regime, in practice, is even more discriminatory, because it implies the establishment of a three-class system of technology access. members. As long as industrial allies of the nuclear weapon states insist on an unrestrained use of all nuclear technologies, unilateral export control will be perceived as a discrimination by the supplier countries.
Another central defect of the NPT is that it ignores the insurmountable dual-use character of many nuclear technologies. As long as weapon-usable materials can be produced they may be diverted for making nuclear weapons. This concerns also the unfortunate double-role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as promoter and `controller' of nuclear energy. The promotion resulted in a wide spread of nuclear technology providing many states with the prerequisites for weapon programmes. Despite current proposals for strengthening the IAEA safeguards system the control on these technologies will remain imperfect - partly due to technical reasons.
The bargaining strategy of the NPT (access to nuclear technology in exchange for renunciation of nuclear weapons) has lost its strength. Furthermore, it is increasingly unrealistic that the non-proliferation regime, in its existing form, is the right remedy for stopping proliferation. However, it is true, that the vast majority of non-nuclear weapon states will not follow Iraq's example: most states do not break treaties they have signed simply because international control and enforcing techniques are weak.
At the NPT Review and Extension Conference it would be highly desirable for the nuclear weapon states to commit themselves unequivocally to the objective of zero. Their statements on this issue have been vague, ambiguous, and have consigned the objective to a very distant future. It would be even more useful if these states accepted a time-bound programme for achieving zero. In this respect indefinite extension of the NPT might be unfortunate effect since it would reduce the international pressure towards that end. Though it would not legitimize the permanent possession of nuclear weapons, an indefinite extension might in practice mean the indefinite postponement of complete nuclear disarmament.
As long as possession of nuclear weapons and weapon-usable materials by a handful of states are seen as legitimized, this will create `desire' in some other countries and the global nuclear threat will endure and ever increase. With the end of the Cold War it has become possible to start a stepwise transformation process of the old non-proliferation regime into a new much more effective nuclear-weapon-free world regime. This requires a time-fixed goal for the elimination of nuclear weapons. As things stand now, each year more weapon-usable material is being produced, and it is becoming easier to get access to it. This process must be reversed.
3. A Nuclear Weapon Convention (NWC)
In its final document the NPT Review and Extension Conference should, in its call for decisive steps towards a NWFW, include a mandate for the Conference on Disarmament to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapon Convention (NWC). The pattern has to be that which has already been set by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) - a total ban.
The NWC would have to ban not only the possession and production of nuclear weapons; it would also prohibit all kinds of acquisition (including research), transfer, deployment (or any preparations for re-deployment), use and threat of use. The convention would call for the elimination of the whole infrastructure serving the manufacture and possession of nuclear warheads and their means of delivery. It would provide a system of international control for guarding and accounting for all remaining weapon-usable fissile material. The convention would incorporate, and thus replace, other existing relevant treaties as bans on nuclear weapon tests, and on the production of weapon-grade fissile material - it would make these bans universal. The convention would replace the NPT itself.
Once approved by the required number of states, the NWC would have to be made binding on all states by a Security Council resolution; it would also have to be of unlimited duration - without allowing a withdrawal of its parties.
A NWFW could not come into existence unless it had the support of all declared nuclear weapon states, who not only judged it to be in their interest but also capable of being safeguarded against violation.
4. Stated objections
It is claimed that nuclear weapons have prevented the outbreak of conventional war. There is no reason to believe that nuclear weapons deterred war between NATO and WTO. If this claim had any validity, one would have expected non-nuclear weapon states to be deterred from engaging in war with nuclear weapon states. The examples of Korea, Vietnam and Argentina show that this was not the case.
It has been suggested that the threat of nuclear weapons can be deterred only by nuclear weapons. However, this need not be so; as soon as it becomes apparent that a nuclear weapon state has retained some warheads or as soon as a new nuclear weapons programme has been identified, the renegade state will be adequately dealt with by the international community without the need to resort to nuclear weapons.
It is said that nuclear weapons are needed to deter the possible use of biological and chemical weapons. The BWC already has 131 adherents, and the CWC should come into force soon. There is no reason to think that nuclear weapons are needed to prevent violations
It is argued that nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. However, this is not a reason to keep them. If the teams which developed and maintained these weapons were dispersed, the reinvention could take some time, thus introducing further barriers and escallation steps and allowing time for the international community to react. In addition, the deployment of the main delivery systems for nuclear weapons should be prohibited. In this way any military use of re-invented nuclear weapons would be further delayed.
5. Control and verification
Technical means for verifying the absence of nuclear weapons are in principle available.
There will of course have to be "any time any place" inspection without the need to seek permission from the state concerned. Moreover, in order to remove any suspicion of clandestine activities, all research and development should be open to the extent necessary for that purpose.
The Convention should include the requirement that all states make it a citizen's duty to report any suspected infraction to an international authority. There may be states where citizens will be afraid to do this, and the international processes of inspection in these states will have to be more intense. Scientists, engineers, and technical staff who work in civilian nuclear research activities and in nuclear power generation must understood that they have a special resposibility to ensure the integrity of the NWC.
6. Security in a NWFW and enforcement
Any illegal development, threat of use of nuclear weapons, or actual use, could adequately be dealt with a whole variety of measures ranging from diplomatic efforts, mediation, peace keeping, non-military intervention and economic sanctions to the threat of the use, or actual use, of conventional military force as a last resort.
The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons has played no significant part in the world security structure for 50 years and there is no reason why this should not continue; the disappearance of nuclear weapons will in no way damage the existing security structure. Indeed we have already given reasons for thinking it would be strengthened.
It is reasonable to assume that a world in which states have agreed to move towards a NWFW would be one in which the world security structure has already been improved in other ways - for instance, in agreeing that the use of military power is generally discouraged and its only legitimate use as a last resort should be under the auspices of the UN or a body recognized by the UN as a regional security organisation. The UN Security Council should be made more democratic; there should be no bias in favour of the current nuclear weapon states.
7. Agenda for moving towards a NWFW
The immediate part of the agenda towards a NWFW includes steps such as the agreed reductions in nuclear arsenals, a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), as well as the closure and dismantling of the military facilities for the production of nuclear material. A vital part of the programme is a No-First-Use Treaty, which should be concluded very soon.
The intermediate part of the agenda towards a NWFW includes further deep reductions in nuclear arsenals of the five recognized nuclear weapon states; constraints on the deployment of nuclear weapons on territories of other countries; and the removal of nuclear warheads from strategic and tactical missiles and storage in national repositories. The programme will, furthermore, see the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones(NWFZ), a global moratorium on further production and development of nuclear weapons and a production cut-off of weapon-grade fissile material. This will be supplemented by an international inventory of fissile material and enforcement of improved safeguards and monitoring systems on all remaining nuclear facilities. Additional steps include a ban on testing ballistic delivery systems, full implementation of the CWC with global adherence, development of a verification system for the BWC and a comprehensive UN register of conventional and nuclear arms as well as UN reports on military expenditure.
Once the terms of the Nuclear Weapon Convention have been agreed all nuclear arsenals should be reduced to zero, rather than held at a low level. The suggestion that the UN have a cache of nuclear weapons under its direct control is not a practical way to avoid the unstable situation caused by small numbers of nuclear weapons. The UN will never be able to maintain a nuclear deterrent in a convincing way. So long as any nuclear weapons remain, the nuclear weapon states will be most unwilling to give up control of them to UN personnel coming from non-nuclear weapon states. This means that there would be a danger that the former nuclear powers could easily regain control of their nuclear weapons.
The final part of the agenda towards a NWFW will transform all five recognized nuclear weapon states as well as the de-facto nuclear weapon states into non-nuclear weapon states, possibly via regional approaches. The remaining global nuclear arsenal will be dismantled under international inspection. The Nuclear Weapon Convention will come into force. All weapon-usable material will be transferred to an international authority for possible civilian use in the future. Nuclear technologies and activities like separation of plutonium and high enrichment of uranium for the production and refinement of weapon-usable material will be made illegal.
Some selected major steps are dealt at greater length in the second part of this document.
II. Major steps towards a NWFW
1. 'Disarmamaments race' between the nuclear weapon states
Further nuclear disarmament is not only necessary for strengthening international security and peace but also for reinforcing article VI of the NPT. The START II Treaty limits the US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 6.500 in the year 2003, but exceeds the arsenals of the medium nuclear weapon states by a factor of 5 to 8. Further reduction to 1.000 warheads each for the US and Russia in the framework of a START III treaty would be a solid basis for the inclusion of the smaller nuclear weapon states. Negotiated limits on the remaining tactical nuclear weapons should be envisioned. It is time now that the smaller nuclear powers should join the negotiations.
The reduction and dismantlement of nuclear warheads should be irreversible and requires a cutoff of the production of fissile material for weapon purposes. A US-Russian collaboration to establish a verifiable control regime for their weapon fissile material could pave the way for the inclusion of the medium nuclear weapon states. International safeguards for the retired fissile material is necessary to build up international confidence. Unsafeguarded fissile material production should be prohibited.
A first step in this direction would be the exchange of information about surplus stockpiles as well as the remaining arsenals. An international organization could carry out the monitoring of the fissile material. To improve crisis stability and to prevent accidental and unintentional use of nuclear weapons, the USA and Russia should separate the warheads from their delivery systems.
2. Cutoff of production and disposal of nuclear-weapon-usable materials
A large surplus of weapon-grade fissile materials and tritium exists already and will increase in the near future. Civilian stocks of weapon-usable plutonium will exceed military stocks shortly after the turn of the century. Any attempt to control the potential use of weapon-usable material for weapon purposes has to include both military and civilian production and handling of weapon-usable material.
There are formidable arguments - economic, ecological, security, and waste disposal arguments - against extraction (i.e. reprocessing of spent fuel) and use of plutonium. Today, research reactors are the only civilian users of highly enriched uranium but these can be converted to the use of low enriched uranium.
A sustainable solution for dealing with weapon-usable nuclear material within the framework of a NWFW (or an irreversible transformation process aiming at this goal) requires a total ban on its use and the most sensitive production technologies. In the long run, such a ban has to cover particularily highly enriched uranium, plutonium in all isotopic compositions and tritium, since it must be made as difficult as possible for any state to begin the production of nuclear weapons again. Therefore, negotiations should strive for a Comprehensive Cut-off Convention in a stepwise process. The first step should be a multilateral agreement on a production cut-off for weapon purposes.
The immediate steps should be to take nuclear weapons off deployment, put them into national repositories, count them and tag them under international monitoring. There, they should be dismantled, and the fissile material resulting from that should be stored, safeguarded and prepared for demilitarization at the earliest possible time.
For reasons of timing, non-proliferation and credibility, vitrification may appear the best method for disposing of the plutonium which results from nuclear weapon dismantlement. Though the overall costs of the MOX option and vitrification are about the same, costs should be secondary to security policy and environmental safety in choosing the best method. However, none of various proposed options to demilitarize plutonium is sufficiently safe and technically proven yet and more research efforts are necessary.
3. Beyond the MTCR: Non-proliferation and disarmament of nuclear capable delivery systems
A number of possible measures for limiting systems that could be used to deliver nuclear weapons, going beyond the current Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), could complement and facilitate the elimination of nuclear weapons: The ballistic missile threat could be removed most effectively by a Ballistic Missile Convention (BMC). A Flight Test Ban (FTB) for ballistic missiles would be an initial step in stopping the development of new missile types. An international control body could be set up to verify that space technology was not used for the development and production of ballistic missiles. Cruise missiles potentially pose a proliferation threat comparable to that of ballistic missiles and attack aircraft. Cruise missile non-proliferation efforts, such as the MTCR, should be continued and, if possible, expanded. However, it may be necessary to adopt arms control approaches that deal with the similarities between attack aircraft and cruise missiles, and between their underlying technology bases. Many countries have deployed aircraft for national defense which could be used to deliver weapons of mass destruction. To prevent military aircraft proliferation, states could include limits on the numbers and capabilities of military aircraft in their regional arms control regimes. A global ban on new types of combat aircraft would prevent both vertical and horizontal proliferation in a non-discriminatory way. To address the possibility that nuclear weapons could be deployed much more widely on submarines, a first step would be the creation of an international control regime, similar to the MTCR, focusing on technologies critical for advanced submarines. Joint naval task groups operated by the UN could monitor, and if necessary, control the operation of diesel submarines during crises.
The ABM Treaty, which restricts US and Russian strategic defense systems, still has a vital role to play in bringing about further reductions of nuclear weapons and in helping to stem nuclear proliferation. The attempt by the United States to modify the ABM Treaty, in order to be able to legally develop and deploy some of its planned theater missile defense systems, could damage the arms control and non-proliferation efforts of many nations.
International space cooperation and aerospace conversion efforts could both facilitate and benefit from a transition to a nuclear weapon free world. Long-term and irreversible conversion strategies need to include conversion of the large RD complexes and preventive arms control measures aimed at restricting destabilizing technical developments. A new regime ("Rockets for Peace"), established under a World Space Development Organization (Fund), would provide new nations with access to space using the capabilities of the established space powers. Space weapons should be outlawed.
4. Regional approaches towards a NWFW
In Latin America, a regional nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ), together with the Argentine-Brazilian agreement for joint accounting and control of nuclear materials, has proved to be a successful way for keeping a region nuclear-weapon-free. The process of negotiating such agreements naturally involves the introduction of confidence-building measures and mutual security arrangements. As in Latin America, such regional agreements can also include an additional safety system, with the participation of the IAEA.
Regional NWFZ negotiations including the five NPT nuclear weapons states is one way of looking at the process these states have to undertake to comply with their NPT Article VI obligation 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..." That is what they promised to do in the treaty and that is precisely what a NWFZ negotiation is aimed at. Despite significant progress in the START and INF negotiations in reducing the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, these negotiations do not have zero as their expilcit final target, and so are unlikely to reach that end.
NWFZs are an important way in which the non-nuclear weapon states can seize the initiative in the non-proliferation arena, by declaring their regions to be off-limits for nuclear weapon deployment, use, or threat of use. As such off-limits regions spread around the world, international pressure will build up on the nuclear weapons states to accept the idea of a NWFW and reciprocate fully.
(Colin Archer), Fernando Barros, (Praful Bidwai), Frank Blackaby, Mike Casper, (Anatoli Diakov), Martin Kalinowski, Wolfgang Liebert, Marco Martinez, Luis Masperi, Zia Mian, Abdul Nayyar, Gotz Neuneck, Joseph Rotblat, Jurgen Scheffran, Dingli Shen, Jinzaburo Takagi
