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Issue 27: September-October 2003

COMMENT

Anti-nuke regime crumbling

Speaking on the opening day of the U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee on Oct. 6, Ambassador Sergio Querioz Duarte of Brazil noted that "to attain a nuclear-weapon-free world, it is vital to prevent nuclear proliferation, and at the same time, it is imperative to promote nuclear disarmament." The chairman of the committee, Ambassador Jarmo Sareva of Finland, listed the following as the problems faced by the international community: the acquisition by additional states of nuclear weapons, allegations of still more trying to get them, the failure by those that already have them to eliminate their stocks, and the development of new weapons that do not fall under any existing international regime -- space-based weapons, for example.

On the following day, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker accused the committee of being stuck in obsolete Cold War-era thinking that had produced "years of disappointing drift and growing irrelevance." What it should address, he said, are noncompliance with treaty obligations and efforts to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Thus the subject of nuclear proliferation, arms control and disarmament is back on the international agenda with a vengeance. The lengthening list of proliferation-sensitive concerns includes the embarrassing failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, strident bellicosity from Pyongyang proclaiming a weaponized nuclear capability that outsiders are skeptical of but dare not discount totally, concerns expressed by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran's nuclear program, and reports that Saudi Arabia may be contemplating an off-the-shelf purchase of nuclear weapons.

The goal of containing the genie of nuclear weapons was unexpectedly successful for three decades from 1968 to 1998, but has suffered serious setbacks since then. The success rested on three pillars, each of which has been crumbling in the last two to five years: norms, treaties and coercion.

Norms are efficient mechanisms for regulating social behavior from the family and village to the global setting. They enable us to pursue goals, challenge assertions and justify actions. One of the most powerful norms since 1945 has been the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. Even the United States and the former Soviet Union accepted defeat on the battlefield by nonnuclear rivals rather than break the antinuclear taboo.

In May 1998, India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests. In doing so, they broke no treaty, for neither had the Nonnuclear Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. But they violated the global antinuclear norm, and were roundly criticized for doing so. By now they are increasingly being accepted back into the fold as de facto nuclear powers, which weakens the antinuclear norm still further.

A norm cannot control the behavior of those who reject its legitimacy. India had argued for decades that the most serious breaches of the antinuclear norm were being committed by the five nuclear powers, who simply disregarded their disarmament obligations under the NPT. The imbalance of reporting, monitoring and compliance mechanisms between the nonproliferation and disarmament clauses of the NPT, India insisted, had in effect created nuclear apartheid.

Of late Washington has retreated from a series of arms control and disarmament agreements, including the antiballistic missile, nuclear nonproliferation, and comprehensive test-ban treaties. In doing so, Washington contributes to a worsening of the proliferation challenge. It is difficult to convince others of the futility of nuclear weapons when some demonstrate their utility by the very fact of hanging on to them and developing new doctrines for their use.

It would be wrong to single out just the U.S. It defies history, common sense and logic to believe that a group of five countries can keep a permanent monopoly on any class of weaponry. The non-fulfillment of treaty obligations by the nuclear powers weakens the efficacy of the antinuclear norm in controlling the threat of proliferation. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- who are the five nuclear powers -- then have to resort to measures of coercion ranging from diplomatic and economic to military. But relying solely on coercion with little basis any longer on norms (morality) and treaties (legality) in turn gives rise to fresh problems.

First, it is simply not credible to threaten friends and allies who neither accept the validity of the norm nor can be accused of breaching treaties they have not signed. Thus U.S. policy has shifted de facto from universal nonproliferation based on the NPT to differentiated proliferation based on relations of the regimes in question with Washington. U.S.-friendly countries like Israel will be ignored, U.S.-hostile "rogue regimes" like North Korea will be threatened and punished.

Second, however, such a dramatic deterioration of the security environment hardens the determination of the "rogues" to acquire the most lethal weapons in order to check armed attacks they fear will be launched by the U.S. Just as Iraq as a hotbed of terrorism became a consequence more than a cause of war, so proliferation of nuclear weapons may result from the war. Some countries, not the least North Korea, have concluded that only nuclear weapons can deter Washington from unilateral wars of choice. Thus as Washington throws off the fetters on the unilateral use of force and the universal taboo on nuclear weapons, it strengthens the attraction of nuclear weapons for others while weakening the restraining force of global norms and treaties.

Third, the reality of contemporary threats -- a virtual nuclear-weapons capability that can exist inside nonproliferation regimes and be crossed at too short a notice for international organizations to be able to react defensively in time, and non-state actors who are outside the jurisdiction and control of multilateral agreements whose signatories are limited to states -- means that significant gaps exist in the legal and institutional framework to combat them. Recognizing this, a group of like-minded countries has launched a Proliferation Security Initiative or PSI, which recently involved the military and special forces of 11 nations taking part in joint interdiction and intercept exercises in international waters near Australia.

The goal is to be able to interdict air, sea and land cargo linked to weapons of mass destruction on the basis of a set of agreed principles. Its premise is that the proliferation of such weapons deserves to be criminalized by the civilized community of nations. It signifies a broad partnership of countries that, using their own national laws and resources, will coordinate actions to halt shipments of dangerous technologies and materiel.

Questions remain about the legal basis for searching and interdicting ships in international waters. It runs the risk of being seen as a vigilante approach to nonproliferation by an 11-strong posse led by a self-appointed world sheriff. Yet the very fact that the PSI has been launched, and combined exercises have been held, signals a new determination to overcome an unsatisfactory state of affairs, and may therefore act as a deterrent. Moreover, the involvement of Australia and Japan alongside the U.S. in the Pacific, plus another eight European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Britain), signals a welcome return to multilateralism in trying to deal with the problem. But there is a long way to go before the PSI develops into a robust counterproliferation strategy in which there is general confidence.

In sum, there was great merit in relying on an integrated strategy of norms, treaties and coercion to keep the nuclear threat in check. The three pillars are mutually reinforcing in holding up the structure of arms control. The edifice began falling apart in 1998 because ultimately, the logic of nuclear nonproliferation is inseparable from the logic of nuclear disarmament. Hence the axiom of nonproliferation: as long as any one country has them, others, including terrorist groups, will try their damnedest to get them.

Ramesh Thakur is UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme. This commentary first appeared in the October 24 edition of the The Japan Times. These are his personal views.

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