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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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The second session of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) closed in disarray in the early hours of 9 May, 1998. Within days, India shocked the world with a series of underground nuclear tests. A few weeks later, Pakistan responded with its own nuclear explosions. Three months later, India and Pakistan agreed to let the Geneva Conference on Disarmament (CD) start negotiations on a fissile materials treaty (FMT), which each had blocked (for different reasons). A month later, intensive negotiations with the United States and each other resulted in the two Prime Ministers announcing in New York that they would be prepared to sign and even ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) by September 1999. Ratification of the test ban treaty in the United States and Russia, however, will not come easy, as arms control continues to fall victim to domestic disarray and the manoeuvring of local hawks in the Duma and Congress. In the wake of 1998's developments, what are the prospects for arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation?
Failure of the NPT Review meeting
The second session of the NPT review process set up in 1995 took place in Geneva over two weeks, but failed to come to agreement on anything but a bare skeleton of procedural decisions to enable next year's meeting to take place. The main causes of failure were fundamental disagreements over implementing the 1995 Middle East Resolution, calling for a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in that region, and nuclear disarmament in compliance with the NPT's Article VI. Determined not to antagonise the Israeli government during attempts in Washington and London to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process, the United States blocked attempts by the Arab States, led by Egypt, to address Israel's nuclear weapon capabilities as part of the NPT review process. At the same time, all five nuclear weapon States (NWS) sought to ignore or sideline proposals by Canada, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand and others for addressing nuclear disarmament more systematically and effectively.
South Africa had put forward practical proposals for ways in which the NPT review process could establish more effective mechanisms to increase pressure and progress for nuclear disarmament, requiring the special allocation of time to this issue at future meetings and the establishment of more concrete discussions on the elimination of nuclear weapons in a `subsidiary body' of the NPT Review Conference. Canada had proposed that the (almost) yearly preparatory meetings, as well as the five-yearly Review Conferences, should be able to make statements on contemporary issues. Canada suggested short paragraphs calling for ratification and entry into force of the CTBT and ratification of START II and further bilateral progress in nuclear arms reductions, as well as statements about issues which the preparatory meetings had allocated special time to, such as the Middle East and the proposed ban on the production of fissile materials. The NWS were generally united in attempting to suppress all such proposals and put an alternative model forward, whereby the enhanced review process would be turned into a four year exercise in drafting text for adoption by the next Review Conference. Their concept, which played down the 1995 decisions and sought to reinstate `business as usual', was backed by many EU countries, but caused anger and frustration among the non-aligned States.
In refusing to address the implementation of the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East, the United States called into question whether that resolution was an integral part of the indefinite extension package. The Resolution had been proposed by the depositary States (Britain, Russia and the United States) and adopted without a vote at the same time as the three decisions on extending the NPT and strengthening its review process. In challenging the status of the Middle East Resolution, the United States raised questions not only about whether that particular resolution had lasting validity beyond the political context of the 1995 Conference, but also about the validity and role of all the decisions on strengthening the review process.
The second PrepCom was never going to be easy. It took place in a context of serious regional problems and mounting frustration over the CD's continued stalemate over its work programme following the conclusion of the CTBT. In order to gain consensus in 1995, the decisions on strengthening the review process were carefully phrased and ambiguous in places. The difficulties of the 1998 PrepCom were due in part to the contest between competing interpretations of the meaning and intent of the 1995 decisions and, perhaps, the NPT itself. The NWS want the Treaty to function as a lid on proliferation, preventing new countries from acquiring nuclear arms. The NNWS wanted non-proliferation, but they also wanted the Treaty to act as a lever for nuclear disarmament. The primary rationale for opposing indefinite extension was concern that it would remove their only leverage on the NWS for nuclear disarmament. Their acceptance of the extension decision (offering permanence) was therefore bought with the strengthened review process, which purported to be a different type of lever for accountability and implementation.
At the time of the second preparatory meeting, complacency appeared to be the biggest threat to the NPT regime. The NWS and a number of their allies seemed to have got what they wanted with indefinite extension and were thence-forward keen to suppress the aspirations prompted by the 1995 decisions on strengthening the review process. While China, Britain and France appeared genuinely worried by the collapse of the second PrepCom, some of the representatives of the United States and Russia were more sanguine, giving the impression that the failure of the new review process would not be lamented if it hastened a return to the less expensive and relatively manageable five-yearly Conferences — i.e. business as usual.
The South Asian nuclear crisis, with its implications for international non-proliferation and the Middle East may prompt a rethink. The United States has to tread a precarious tightrope between its Middle East strategy and non-proliferation objectives. If it operates double standards, as appeared to be the case at the meeting in May, the United States risks undermining the rationale and respect on which the non-proliferation regime relies.
The implications of the South Asian nuclear tests
Whether the tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May were of the actual number and type publicised by the governments of those countries is doubted by many, but is not central to the political debate. The tests shook the world in part because of their timing: less than two years after the signing of the CTBT. Despite India's public rejection of the final treaty in 1996, most analysts had considered that the CTBT created a norm which would carry force even if it never took full legal effect. By testing, India was perceived to be threatening the credibility of the test ban and of the NPT regime, of which the CTBT formed a part. India's tests, shortly followed by Pakistan, raised the spectre of a nuclear arms race in one of the more unstable regions of the world.
Although India, Pakistan and Israel have long been characterised as `nuclear capable' states or even de facto nuclear states, the nuclear tests in May did more than confirm this. By means of the tests and in international fora since, India has sought to declare itself a nuclear weapon state. What does this mean? If the term is merely descriptive of the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, then India was already a nuclear weapon state. The new danger is that of weaponising the `ambiguous' capabilities. But the tests also threaten the basis of the non-proliferation regime. Since 1968 `nuclear weapon State' has had a legal meaning, as defined in the NPT. Recognition in this context appears to be India's real objective. In India's view, the NPT conferred rights on the defined nuclear weapon States, which it considered that the 1995 decisions had made permanent. India has long castigated the impunity with which the NPT-nuclear powers carried on building up their arsenals through the 1970s and 1980s. Now, by declaring itself a NWS, India seems to want the prestige and technology-acceptance it associates with the NPT-nuclear powers. As a long time rhetorical advocate of nuclear disarmament, however, India sought to justify its tests as a challenge to the non-proliferation regime and those NWS which had treated the indefinite extension of the NPT as a permanently conferred acceptance of their privileged possession of nuclear weapons. In the legal sense, no amount of nuclear testing after 1 January 1967 can make India a nuclear weapon state under the NPT. Practically, however, it has become impossible for the non-proliferation regime to continue turning a blind eye to the capabilities and weapons of what used to be called `threshold states'. It is imperative therefore to find mechanisms to bring India, Israel and Pakistan into accepting obligations and constraints associated with arms control without in any way legitimising the acquisition of nuclear weapons. It is also necessary to underline that the definition of `nuclear weapon States' in the NPT was not intended to legitimise the possession of nuclear weapons by anyone, but to identify and impose differential obligations, including nuclear disarmament. This fact has, however, been largely ignored, since the actual policies of the NWS do not appear to have been affected by their undertaking of the NPT's rather vague commitments to nuclear disarmament: this is a problem for the regime, not a justification for accepting further NWS.
For both India and Pakistan, the decisions to test were driven mainly by domestic considerations, though for different reasons.1 Actual security considerations were either not high on the agenda or were not well analysed. Although both are keen to develop effective missile capabilities, neither country appears to have thought through how they would integrate nuclear weapons with their military force structures. By pushing Pakistan into accelerating its programme, however, India has nuclearised its regional relations, including the conflict over Kashmir, and challenged the credibility of international security based on nuclear non-proliferation.
Neither country can win the nuclear rivalry that has been set in motion; the question is rather, who will be the bigger loser? In India, public support for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government, as well as the nuclear tests, has substantially eroded, proving that the electoral effects of the post-test euphoria were very short lived. Pakistan's shaky economy is much more vulnerable to the effects of sanctions. Its weaker defence capabilities, combined with strong nationalist sentiment, are factors that could give rise to nuclear adventurism, even pre-emptive first strike. Paradoxically, the need to get the sanctions lifted has resulted in both countries lifting their objections to the start of fissban negotiations in the CD and pledging to accede to the CTBT by September 1999. Such moves should be encouraged but cannot be fully relied upon in the long term. It may also be necessary to reconsider some form of security guarantees, especially for Pakistan, even though they are almost certain to remain outside the NPT. India and Pakistan urgently need to put in place better measures to enhance bilateral confidence-building and transparency, while at the same time all states with nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon capabilities must be encouraged to de-weaponise or not to weaponise; to de-alert, preferably by separating warheads from delivery systems; to commit to no use of nuclear weapons; to freeze their fissile materials stocks and place all nuclear facilities under fullscope safeguards, with a view to entering into negotiations on reducing stocks and eliminating all nuclear weapons.
FMT negotiations started in the CD
After years of trying, the CD on 11 August 1998 finally agreed to convene an ad hoc committee to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile materials (plutonium and enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons or other explosive devices. The conflicting political interests which held up the committee's establishment were not resolved, but rather transferred to the context of negotiations. Three issues are likely to be most fiercely contested: the scope, and whether to include stocks; verification, especially the role of intrusive inspections at nuclear facilities; and the political purpose, namely how the measure relates to non-proliferation or nuclear disarmament objectives.
If stocks are ignored, the treaty runs the risk of appearing to legitimise the continued possession of weapon-usable plutonium and enriched uranium by both the NPT-nuclear powers and the three nuclear capable States which have rejected the NPT. As such, it would barely contribute to disarmament and could undermine the basis of the non-proliferation regime. Including stocks, however, carries another set of problems. Firstly, what is meant by stocks: material excess to requirements (who determines?); material not contained in weapons (how to count?); the sum total of past production (including what is in current warheads?) or some other categorisation? Secondly, what is to be done with the stocks: just accounting, with greater transparency; reduction (on what basis or time frame?); placing under safeguards? In view of the opposition by the NPT-nuclear weapon States, India and Israel to including stocks in the proposed treaty, the negotiations would not have got started if stocks had been definitely included. In their view, such a measure would be tantamount to nuclear disarmament by attrition — which is precisely the attraction of this approach for disarmament advocates.
There are good arguments for increasing the levels of transparency and accounting regarding stocks, as that would also enhance the fissban's verification. But even this will be resisted by (at least) China, India and Israel, whose nuclear policies rest to some degree on ambiguity. Following the post Cold War dismantlement of various nuclear weapons, the United States, Russia and Britain have each taken unilateral steps to place some of their excess weapons material under safeguards, so that it cannot be re-used in future weapons. Voluntary measures such as these could be widened and encouraged, but they do not address the underlying political concerns.
The stockpiles of India, Israel and Pakistan are much smaller than those of the NPT-nuclear powers. Globally their size may pose less of a threat, but they carry greater political burdens for two reasons: they breach the line drawn by the NPT, meant to limit nuclear possession to five; and they exacerbate regional rivalries in the Middle East and South Asia, complicating a context where conflict and distrust are already high. Not unsurprisingly, therefore, the principal advocates of including stocks in the fissban are Arab States. Pakistan, whose current stocks of highly enriched uranium are meagre in comparison with India's plutonium reserves, is at the forefront of pushing for stocks to be declared, controlled and reduced to equal levels; if greater transparency and controls were in fact instituted, however, Pakistan might be less enthusiastic. Widening the ban, as a few delegations would like, to include commercial reprocessing (already under safeguards, but presenting long-term proliferation problems) and tritium, a fusionable gas used to boost the yield of nuclear weapons, might be sensible from technical and disarmament viewpoints, but are nowhere near the horizon of political feasibility at present.
New Agenda for nuclear disarmament
On 9 June, eight foreign ministers, representing a cross section of political and geographical interests, issued a joint ministerial declaration for a nuclear weapons free world, identifying the need for a new agenda. The concept of this `New Agenda Coalition' originated as an Irish-Swedish initiative, reflecting a growing unease about the `complacency' of the nuclear weapon states and their squandering of the post Cold War opportunities, resulting in `meagre and disappointing' progress on nuclear disarmament. It predated the NPT impasse and South Asian tests, but these both injected a sharper sense of urgency.2
Conclusion
The lessons from the nuclear crisis in South Asia and the political and international impasse on nuclear disarmament must be assimilated. The alternatives will have to be spelled out uncompromisingly: nuclear free or nuclear-free-for-all. Non-proliferation based on the possession of nuclear weapons by a small elite group of `haves' is inherently unstable and cannot be sustained indefinitely. If the NPT review process is not taken seriously, the non-proliferation regime could get into deep trouble. Although it is possible to offer suggestions for working out some of the procedural difficulties3 that will not address the fundamental division of interests regarding the purpose, objectives and implementation of the review process and, indeed, the Treaty itself.
Frustration with the lack of progress on Article VI and concern about the Middle East and the South Asian nuclear tests are prompting some NGOs to explore the process for amending the NPT, with a view to converting Article VI into a commitment to a nuclear weapon convention.4 The arguments in favour rest on the stated position of India (and assumed of Pakistan) that they would respect only a non-proliferation regime based on nuclear disarmament for all. Furthermore, the example of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) is cited. A PTBT Amendment Conference was finally held in January 1991, at the request of one third of its signatories. Although no amendments were passed, because of opposition from the depositary NWS (Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States), the initiative is credited with having contributed to the mounting political pressure which finally gave the CD a mandate to negotiate the CTBT two years later. The principal argument advanced against this strategy for the NPT is that the Treaty could be fatally injured by attempts to amend it. There are two implicit assumptions here: that the NPT will remain robust despite threats of non-implementation to article VI and the further development of nuclear weapons by states outside the Treaty; and that the NWS would not commit themselves to actual nuclear disarmament, even to save the NPT.
The military postures of the NPT nuclear powers a decade after the end of the cold war suggest that the second assumption may be correct; in that case, the NPT rests (and has perhaps always rested) on false premises. Does this matter, if the Treaty functions as an effective proliferation inhibitor as it is? False ground is inherently unstable. The South Asian nuclear crisis and the conflicts of perception and purpose which stymied the second PrepCom (and which also contributed to the CD's long paralysis) are illustrations of the growing importance of resolving the relationship between non-proliferation, nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament. Papering over the cracks is no longer adequate.
Whether the NPT and further international obligations to nuclear disarmament are taken seriously is a fundamental question which is subject to rhetoric but seldom really examined. All pay lip service to Article VI, but as the recent NPT meeting and the debates at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva reveal, there is a deep divide between those who see the NPT as a vehicle to promote and achieve nuclear disarmament and those who see it as a way to keep the lid on the status quo.
From 1970, the Article VI obligations have never actually affected policy decisions in the nuclear weapon States. Article VI has a diplomatic but not operational function in their thinking. So what would be the implications for the non-proliferation regime if the NWS and many of their nuclear-umbrella allies were openly to acknowledge that they do not envisage real nuclear disarmament, but would actually prefer the maintenance of a very limited nuclear club with nuclear arsenals that are much less numerous than at present (but perhaps more advanced and flexible), combined with more efficient arms control and anti-proliferation mechanisms? Where does such a scenario leave the majority of countries without a nuclear `Big Brother' to scare off the bullies (including other States' nuclear brothers)? How would such a declaration be regarded by domestic populations, when more than 80 percent tell opinion polls that they want nuclear weapons to be totally eliminated? If it were possible to restrict the nuclear club to just a few holders, is this discrimination in favour of the `Big Five' morally or politically desirable — or feasible?
In the wake of the South Asian nuclear tests it is important to reconsider the options and risks of different scenarios. Is it possible to have a stable non-proliferation regime without nuclear disarmament? If nuclear disarmament is not the real objective of the NWS and their allies, is it still valid to use the multilateral fora to prevent further proliferation and to encourage nuclear arms control and reductions? How seriously should States such as Egypt and South Africa be taken, when they say that they might have to reconsider their NPT obligations if nuclear disarmament is not effectively pursued or if the nuclear club is widened to accept India, Pakistan or Israel? The morning after conclusion of the NPT Review and Extension Conference in May 1995, its President, Jayantha Dhanapala, warned of the „grave danger" of a mass exodus from the Treaty if the nuclear weapon states disregard the nuclear disarmament commitments. Are warnings such as these merely diplomatic ritual, or could this happen, and if so, what would be the consequences?
The prospects for nuclear disarmament are not encouraging, even though the CD has finally managed to begin negotiations on a Fissile Materials Treaty. The New Agenda Coalition has taken the lead in breaking the stale hegemony of the Cold War political groupings, but the United Nation First Committee votes will show whether they can draw in more countries from the middle ground, such as Japan, Canada, European Union and former Soviet States. They will need to beware of being co-opted by the non-NPT nuclear States (India has already announced its warm support), watered down by supporters of the NWS and nuclear alliances, or radicalised beyond the timid horizons of the all-important but frustratingly slow middle ground.
The role of non-governmental organisations can be two-fold: to identify and raise public support for the goals beyond the horizon and also the immediate steps that need to be undertaken; and to provide information and analysis to assist strategising and focus negotiations.
References
1. For a good summary of the motivations and regional implications, see Chris Smith, Nuclear Tests in South Asia, ISIS Briefing Paper No 69, June 1998.
2. See the Joint Ministerial Declaration by Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa and Sweden, entitled `A Nuclear-Weapons-Free World: the need for a new agenda'. See also the statement from David Andrews, foreign minister of the Republic of Ireland, 9 June 1998; statement from Swedish Foreign Minister.
3. See `Reviewing the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Problems and Processes', R. Johnson, ACRONYM 12, September 1998.
4. A model nuclear weapon convention was first introduced by scientists, lawyers and disarmament experts during the 1997 NPT PrepCom and has subsequently been published as UN doc. A/C.1/52/7.
Author's Address: Disarmament Intelligence Review, 24 Colvestone Crescent, London E82LH, England,
tel 44(0)1715038857, fax -9153,
email: acronym@gn.apc.org
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