The
nuclear-weapons states have been coming in for a beating at the Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in session at the UN headquarters in
New York. The Non-aligned Movement said these states had made no progress on
disarmament and urged them to stop modernising their arsenals. And a joint
statement by 159 states called for the elimination of nuclear arms, with strong
statements in support from Mexico, Kazakhstan and Brazil.
In response,
the UK opening statement openly criticised those who would “force the
speed” of disarmament—although article VI of the 1968 treaty committed it and
the other nuclear-weapons powers to negotiate in “good faith” to that end. The
NPT, cornerstone of global efforts to control nuclear proliferation, will not
retain the confidence of the international community indefinitely if those
states temporarily granted the largest privileges do not live up to their
responsibilities, and continue to use their nuclear arsenals to maintain status
in the international system.
A cynical
lack of commitment to multilateral nuclear disarmament (MND) may be too crude
an explanation. The fact that MND runs against historical experience—it has
never yet been essayed—is a clue that it is actually really difficult. Advocates
of MND as the only means to achieve
nuclear disarmament could be more unrealistically idealistic than those advocating
an international ban on such weapons.
Dangers
We all
believe in MND as a good thing—all except, that is, those diehards who genuinely think nuclear weapons make the
world safer. If we are to achieve a world free from nuclear dangers then all
states with nuclear weapons surely have to be involved and if that can be
achieved through managed negotiation, that can’t be bad.
The
expressed commitment to MND in New York is consistent with decades of such statements.
The clearest actual commitment was the creation by the UK in 2008 of the poorly-named ‘P5 process’, involving the five recognised nuclear-weapons
states taking baby steps (the first meeting was in 2009) towards a shared
understanding and something akin to transparency. The five have reported on this to the Review Conference.
As if this isn’t already complex enough, nuclear balances are deeply affected by non-nuclear capabilities.
MND has been
advanced by Labour and Conservative politicians during the UK general
election because they consider it the only
responsible approach (and because they believe they would be crucified in the
polls were they to hint at anything different). Yet the only disarmament the UK
has ever engaged in has been unilateral.
Advocates of
exclusive MND argue that if states
have built up their nuclear arsenals in a balance-of terror-situation, then the
only practical way to escape the trap will be patient and incremental steps in
the reverse, ensuring the balance is maintained. They argue that alternatives
involve unstable exposure by one side or a single collective leap into the
unknown, which could land us back in the world of great-power conflict or rapid
nuclear blackmail.
The US and
Russia engaged in bilateral talks in the past, credibly offering arms cuts which
benefited the security of the other directly, because they existed in a mutual
deterrent relationship largely unaffected by other states. But this bilateral
principle is already under pressure. One of the key reasons why the Russians
were not interested in follow-ons to the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction
Talks) agreement—even before the further deepening of
tensions over Ukraine—was because these did not take account of the other three
recognised nuclear-weapons states, all of which have an impact on Russian
calculations. Its tactical nuclear weapons are seen as a balance to the
numerically superior Chinese conventional forces to its south, while UK and
French nuclear weapons clearly add to NATO totals.
Stumbling blocks
Arms control
involving numbers, difficult enough in a bilateral context because systems are hard
to compare, becomes highly complex in any multilateral environment, in which
states very different in size, power and inter-relationships, and when each attach
a high military and political utility to nuclear weapons. No one quite knows
how to go about it, and attempts at building the regime in pieces—test bans,
fissile-material bans, controls on technology transfers, interdiction and the
like—dance around the edges and yet still come up against big stumbling blocks.
Should MND
negotiations be confined in the first instance to the five NPT-recognised states?
Can they be expected to disarm if that leaves others like them but not so
recognised with a comparative advantage? Can these latter states be expected to
join later if they have had no part in determining the agenda?—note Israel’s objections after the 2010 Review Conference decided to
hold a conference on a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Yet how can
the international community include them when this would implicitly recognise their
status and could confer privileges and weaken non-proliferation, when they do
not accept the basic rules of the game?
As if this
isn’t already complex enough, nuclear balances are deeply affected by
non-nuclear capabilities. The Russians have long criticised the notion of ballistic
missile defence (BMD), because they fear this could create an opportunity for
the US to neutralise their second-strike capability (after an initial American
attack) and so undermine deterrence. But their deeper concerns surround the
development of long-range, conventional strike capabilities, which could (in
sufficient numbers) overwhelm their nuclear arsenal without a nuclear weapon
being used. They are already concerned at the extraordinary rapid development
of US precision-strike capabilities, on show each time the Americans engage in
military power projection.
Put simply,
it is a stretch to imagine states being ready to engage seriously in successful
MND unless they radically change their attitudes towards nuclear weapons and
raise their sights to include other means to achieve reductions in parallel. History
shows that negotiated reductions are but one means to move downwards—much
progress has been achieved unilaterally. The Presidential Nuclear Initiatives declared by the US in 1991 and 1992 were perhaps the
most ground-breaking but there were many other instances. The dismantling of
warheads, systems and facilities by the UK and France have all been exclusively
unilateral.
Whether
negotiated or unilateral, none of these actions arose from an idealistic commitment
to the global non-proliferation and disarmament system. Instead, they were the
result of hard-nosed national-security assessments of the changing threat,
meaning that it was no longer deemed ‘necessary’ to maintain such sizeable
arsenals. To expect other states to follow by example or to be grateful for
these reductions, when nuclear arsenals deemed ‘necessary’ to national security
are retained, is unrealistic. To refer to such expectations, as diplomats from nuclear-weapons
states have done in New York, is naïve.
Core problems
These
changes in security assessment have led to significant reductions over the past
quarter of a century. But there are two core problems.
Even in the
extremely benign environment of the 1990s, after the cold war, there was no
serious suggestion by any nuclear-weapons state of achieving full disarmament,
and the NPT was extended indefinitely. Important progress was made in agreeing
a comprehensive test-ban treaty but that has not come into force and other
measures essential to the project have hit the buffers. The opportunity offered
by conducive conditions was squandered and relationships are now deteriorating.
This points
to the heart of the problem. Bilateral arms control is possible in situations of
extreme distrust and when a high value is attached to nuclear weapons. But MND
is not—and this is freely admitted. Advocates talk of developing the conditions essential for
global nuclear disarmament, by which they mean the absence of strategic
conflict over a long period. And that is distinctly idealistic and naïve.
Secondly, attachment
to MND perversely incentivises states to retain redundant nuclear-weapons
systems, so that these can be traded at the negotiating table. That is
certainly NATO’s attitude towards its forward-deployed B-61 nuclear bombs based in Europe. These have
little if any deterrent value—other systems are far more relevant—but are seen
as symbols of NATO’s resolve and unity. Russia does not
intend to trade its tactical nuclear weapons, deployed for completely different
reasons, for NATO weapons it fully realises have no military value.
There is a
growing sense in the majority world that the commitments made by the nuclear-weapons
states are little more than window-dressing, as the frustrations expressed at
the Review Conference demonstrate. But it is too cynical to construct a conspiracy
theory or blame devious duplicity. It would be more honest to reflect on the inevitable
challenges behind MND and to understand just how difficult it is, however
desirable it may be. But this is not to say that nuclear disarmament is simply
too difficult to attempt—simply that it is naïve to depend upon MND alone.
The fundamental
problem remains that deep-seated assumption that nuclear weapons bring
influence and security to states that possess them. And if that assumption
holds, it will not only indefinitely stymie disarmament—it will also inexorably
drive proliferation.
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