With the seventh Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) ending in abysmal failure late last week at the United Nations, the worst fears about a tiny number of influential states holding the rest of the world hostage to their narrow interests have materialized.
The conference, the second review since the NPT was indefinitely extended 10 years ago, could not even adopt a consensus document when it ended on Friday.
Said Rebecca Johnson, an independent expert and director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, a nongovernmental organization that closely monitored the meeting: “From start to finish, this conference did little more than go through the motions, and was one of the most shameful exhibitions of cynical time-wasting.”
During the four week-long deliberations, delegates from 153 countries wrangled over procedure and could not even agree to an agenda for 10 days. They lost precious opportunities to address major issues – for example, steps toward global elimination of nuclear weapons and preventing their use, acquisition, and spread.
Finally, they only agreed to a procedural declaration, which enumerated the participants and meetings and indicated how they would cover the financial costs. That ended the conference.
This dismal outcome betrays the hope – and the widespread popular aspiration – that the world’s nations would deliver on the solemn commitments they made 35 years ago by adopting the NPT: to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to abolish them.
The failure is all the more grave because it comes one-and-a-half decades after the Cold War’s end – which robs nuclear weapons of even the fig leaf of a rationale – and after disclosures about the transgressions by North Korea and Iran of existing nuclear control regimes.
The NPT was founded on a grand bargain. The bulk of the world’s states would forswear nuclear weapons and accept a regime of physical inspections to ensure that nuclear materials are not diverted to military programs. In return, the five nuclear weapons states (NWS) would earnestly initiate negotiations to eliminate them, and in the meantime, transfer no nuclear material/technology to non-NWS.
The vast majority of the world’s non-NWS have abided by the bargain. But the NWS have failed to move toward disarming their nuclear arsenals, and indulged in clandestine transfers of nuclear materials and know-how to allies such as Israel.
In the process, and by again refusing to commit themselves to disarmament at the latest conference, the NWS risk undermining that bargain – to the detriment of the entire world. Thus, at least three new nuclear powers have emerged (Israel, India, and Pakistan, none of them NPT signatories), and possibly a fourth (North Korea).
At the latest conference, the NWS refused critical scrutiny of their record since the 2000 review, in which they accepted disarmament as an obligation and made an “unambiguous” commitment to nuclear elimination. Instead, they paid lip service to disarmament as a “moral” and “political” goal.
However, the International Court of Justice clarified in a landmark judgment in 1996 that nuclear weapons are incompatible with international law, and the NWS are legally obliged to complete talks for their total elimination.
The United States was the worst offender here.
Argues Daryl Kimball of the Washington-based Arms Control Association: “The arrogant and clumsy U.S. strategy (which was the brainchild of former Undersecretary of State John Bolton) has most certainly reinforced the view of the majority of countries that the U.S. and (other NWS) do not intend to live up to their NPT-related disarmament commitments.”
Thus, the conference did not support U.S. proposals on strengthening the NPT’s nonproliferation elements. Worse, there has been a weakening of other states’ will to fulfill their treaty obligations.
The U.S. strategy is driven by several considerations: paranoid fears, especially after Sept. 11, about security and North America’s vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction (WMD); the profoundly mistaken Bush administration view that nuclear weapons are essential to contain WMD threats; pressure from the military-industrial complex for raising defense spending and creating new uses for nuclear weapons; and the United States’ aspiration to remain the world’s sole superpower with an unparalleled nuclear might.
Washington is planning to modify existing bomb designs to make “bunker-busters.” It has accelerated deployment-oriented research on space-based “Star Wars” weapons. And it accepts no constraint on its nuclear program, even as it advocates aggressive means to control the spread of WMD.
One example is the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), under which signatories cooperate to halt dangerous shipments, especially to “rogue states.” But this has two major limitations. The PSI has recruited just 21 active participants. And it leaves out of the net “friendly” or “cooperative” regimes like Pakistan, which are useful to Washington’s “war on terrorism” – despite damning evidence of proliferation by the A.Q. Khan network.
The U.S. has no coherent strategy to deal with the crises caused by disclosures about North Korea and Iran’s nuclear activities. It threatens military “action” against them and has reportedly drawn up plans for strikes. Yet it does not seem to have calculated the enormous costs of such action.
While Washington has hesitantly engaged North Korea in talks, it has not offered the right economic concessions to roll back its nuclear program As for Iran, it has left the negotiations to Britain, France, and Germany. President George W. Bush confesses the the U.S. sanctions strategy has not worked: “We’ve sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran.”
Yet Washington has proved blind to its own limitations. “U.S. policy is driven by a peculiar hubris,” says Achin Vanaik, professor of political science at Delhi University. “This views America as exceptional; it can do no wrong. American nuclear weapons are good nukes, they will be used to good ends; others’ nukes are bad. This exceptionalism is widely shared across the political spectrum.”
While the most culpable state, the U.S. alone cannot be blamed for the conference’s failure, as none of the other four NWS showed any leadership to end the impasse. They hid behind Washington’s skirts. India, Pakistan, and Israel adopted a cynically distant attitude to the conference, although they said they oppose proliferation.
Iran, too, adopted a devious strategy to keep its nuclear option open. This meant averting discussion of the nuclear fuel cycle question, and raising the issue of withdrawal from the NPT.
What happens when a country develops nuclear technology to the threshold of a weapons capability, then decides to withdraw from the treaty to become a nuclear power?
The NPT Review Conference failed to address these vital issues of global concern. It was equally silent on the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – one of the 13 steps agreed in 2000. It was plain, says Acronym Institute’s Johnson, that the participating “governments lacked the political will and backbone even to have an honest debate about these issues.”
The world could end up paying a very heavy price if the NPT consensus breaks down. Unless the NWS lead by example, they will fail to persuade the 30 to 40 states that can have the potential to acquire nuclear weapons (if they try hard enough) not to do so.
Meanwhile, the world remains insecure and vulnerable to mass destruction from the 27,000 nuclear weapons still in place, thousands of them on hair-trigger alert. It simply cannot afford a failure on the nuclear front.
