Towards Zero: A US perspective
Mark Fitzpatrick, IISS
Conference held at RUSI, co-sponsored by UNA-UK and BASIC
Towards Zero: Britain’s role in furthering nuclear non-proliferation
and multilateral approaches to disarmament
London, 3 November 2009
(Remarks as prepared)
I am honoured to be invited to address this conference, and I wish to extend both appreciation and congratulations to the organizers. It is somewhat daunting to share the stage and this topic with Ambassador Bosworth, whom I have admired from afar for many years. In the expectation that he would focus his remarks on the North Korean question, the organizers asked me to speak a bit more broadly about an American perspective. It is not illogical that a conference entitled ‘Britain’s role’ should have a session on American perspectives. After all, America’s leadership is crucial in addressing almost any global issue -- and none more so than the problem of proliferation and the goal of disarmament. But America’s role is sometimes overstated, as though all problems lie at Washington’s feet, and all solutions begin and end there. Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament are global problems and as the title of this conference indicates, multilateral approaches are indispensible.
That said, I place no little hope and pride in the attention, energy and intellectual leadership that my country has been devoting to the goal of zero nuclear weapons this past year. The special high-level UN Security Council meeting that President Obama chaired in September was the first time an American president had led a Security Council meeting, and it was highly significant that he did so on this topic. He continued that leadership in calling a nuclear security summit in March, furthering an agenda on fissile material security and nuclear counter-terrorism that was given prominence by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Britain’s ‘Road to 2010’ paper this past July. The synergy produced through joint leadership and cooperation between the United Kingdom and the United States has saved the world before at some of its darkest hours. Let us hope they can do so again in leading the way to resolving the nuclear conundrum.
The presentation in Oslo next week of the Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Obama will underscore international support for his arms control efforts and should further the momentum toward disarmament. The award may have been premature, and it has been criticized by right-wing critics, but it should resonate well with ordinary Americans who are proud to see their nation respected and their president appreciated. I hope the symbolism of the prize will also help Obama harness international support for efforts to address all aspects of the problems and potential spurred by the splitting of the atom.
In addition to focusing the spotlight on the goal of a nuclear-weapons free world, Obama has emphasized the need to strengthen the non-proliferation regime, both by addressing the immediate proliferation challenges posed by certain states and by strengthening the regime in the longer term, starting by reaching a positive outcome at the NPT Review Conference next May.
To revitalize the NPT, the review should strengthen the verification instruments of the IAEA, enhance the enforcement measures of the non-proliferation regime, and tighten the withdrawal provisions of the treaty so that that it cannot be abused by states that are found in noncompliance such as North Korea.
Finding agreement on any of these themes will not be easy, because of the rules of procedure that require consensus for any outcome to be adopted. Agreement may also be impaired by the tension that has developed the past decade between proponents of non-proliferation and advocates of nuclear disarmament. These should not be incompatible goals, but what was often seen as the West’s exclusive emphasis the past decade on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons technologies created a backlash.
In pledging in his April 5th speech in Prague to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, President Obama restored an American recognition of the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation. The linkage is not always obvious. Recent history does not support the contention that disarmament steps by the nuclear-armed states help stop proliferation by others.
In important ways, the opposite has been the case. During the 1980s and 1990s, Washington and Moscow cut back their nuclear arsenals and began a series of other arms control steps. Meanwhile, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya all newly embarked on nuclear weapons programmes while Israel, India and Pakistan further developed their own nuclear weapons. North Korea acts as though the US decision in 1991 to remove all nuclear weapons from South Korea and from all surface ships never happened.
But notwithstanding the outlier states that violated non-proliferation obligations, the 1990s were a period of non-proliferation gain, with significant new undertakings by the vast majority of non-nuclear weapons states. In 1995, states parties to the NPT agreed on an indefinite extension of the treaty. In 1997, the IAEA Board of Governors agreed on a significant expansion of state reporting responsibilities and inspector access rights, through adoption of the model Additional Protocol to safeguards agreements. Meanwhile, countries in several regions joined the earlier action by Latin America and the Caribbean by reinforcing the NPT through the declaration of nuclear-weapons free zones.
It was in recognition of the linkage between disarmament and non-proliferation that the Obama Administration embarked on a vigorous policy agenda in furtherance of both goals. The 2010 NPT Review Conference can serve as an action-forcing deadline to re-establishing a global consensus on this connection.
In his Prague speech, Obama outlined several disarmament steps he would pursue: the negotiation of a follow-on agreement to START, which apparently will be concluded, although apparently not by the Saturday deadline, US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty with ensuing diplomacy to bring about entry-into-force, and a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons purposes. He also pledged to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in America’s national security strategy. This promise should see realization in the upcoming US Nuclear Posture Review.
President Obama’s decision to change the missile shield plans in Europe has turned rhetoric of a ‘re-set’ in US-Russian relations to reality. This cannot help but facilitate US-Russian arms control talks. I believe the US Senatewill then ratify the START follow-on Treaty, which will then set the stage for the more difficult task of rounding up 67 Senate votes necessary for CTBT ratification.
Clearly, CTBT ratification cannot happen before the NPT Review Conference, though it is likely to happen later in the Obama Administration. Meanwhile, the range of other steps taken by Washington should leave no doubt about America’s commitment to disarmament. In the UN First Committee this autumn, the US completely changed its position on the annual disarmament resolution sponsored by Japan, entitled “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” Whereas the US in the past several years had voted no on the resolution, this year it was a co-sponsor.
Similarly, the U.S. voted “yes” on the resolution entitled, “Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty”. Because the Obama administration is now in the process of a comprehensive review of space policy, the U.S. changed its vote from a “no” last year to an abstention on the resolution, “Prevention of an arms race in outer space”. The US did the same on a resolution on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which it had opposed in the past.
Each of the arms control steps that Obama laid out in Prague is meaningful in its own right. They also serve a non-proliferation agenda. By addressing disarmament head-on, he hopes to focus global attention on the proliferation problem. In pledging to take the disarmament goal seriously and in taking concrete steps in that direction, he removes the charge of double standards from the non-proliferation debate.
The question is, even if the nuclear weapons states do follow through with accepting additional limitations on their arsenals, will the non-nuclear weapons states be willing to accept additional constraints on their security options and potential nuclear industry structure in order to strengthen the non-proliferation regime? The answer so far is not clear, and some of the early signals are not promising.
Most of the issues are not getting any easier. The IAEA has reached a stalemate regarding both Iran and Syria. North Korea insists on being recognized as nuclear-armed. Pakistan blocks a work program at the Conference on Disarmament. In the Middle East, prospects for a nuclear weapons-free zone are stuck, and the trend has been in the opposite direction, with four states in the region having violated their IAEA safeguards agreement in the past two decades. This undermines the trust and confidence that will be required if Israel is to relax its nuclear guard -- not that Israel couldn’t take some steps that would not degrade its security, such as CTBT ratification. In Southeast Asia, there are increasing rumours of clandestine nuclear development projects in Myanmar and of undisclosed cooperation with North Korea.
Notwithstanding these proliferation problems, there are several promising signs. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia pledged to ratify the CTBT as soon as the US does, and China has hinted at a similar position – though one wonders why they need to wait for others. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is pursuing nuclear energy in a manner that is totally transparent and proliferation risk-free. The African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone entered into force in July. The land masses and national waterways of the entire southern hemisphere are now declared nuclear-weapons free.
With regard to the greatest proliferation challenges of North Korea and Iran, the major players are largely in sync about the nature of the problem and the need for a collective response. The deal tentatively agreed to with Iran in Geneva on 1 October on the exchange of uranium for research reactor fuel was the result of close US-Russia-French coordination. The deal, and the mutual confidence it would have built, prompted the first rays of hope in several years that the Iranian issue might be solved peacefully.
The deal was not a solution in itself, but it pointed to a way to meet what Iran professes to be its bottom line – recognition of a right to uranium enrichment – while meeting the fundamental concern of other countries that this technology could not be transferable to weapons use in a short period of time. In my view, a satisfactory solution would require both full verification and limits on the enrichment and the stockpile, including by shipping the low-enriched uranium gas out of the country for further processing. The October 1 deal would have set a precedent for that.
It is distressing that Iran not only has rejected the deal, but has now signaled that it will accept no limitations in its effort to build as large a stockpile of enriched uranium as soon as possible. It is clearer than ever that, while Iran’s nuclear program certainly has a civil nuclear energy purpose, the enrichment is also intended to give it a nuclear weapons capability.
Because of the reactor-specific fuel specifications and safety requirements, there is no way Iran today can make use of the enriched uranium gas for its reactors unless it is fabricated into fuel overseas. But it would not be difficult for Iran to further enrich the uranium to weapons grade, perhaps at one of the additional facilities that continue to be revealed, and to fashion it into weapons, given the design work Iran apparently has already accomplished.
In conclusion
This morning, as I expected would be the case, several suggestions were made at this conference about how Britain could positively affect decision-making in the United States. I wondered, when I was invited, whether the purpose of inviting two Americans to speak was for us to offer our advice to decision-making in the United Kingdom. In my case, it would have been a short presentation, because I see little that I would suggest be changed in UK policy on non-proliferation and disarmament. My advice, rather, is to the audience, to give credit where credit is due and not to have exaggerated expectations o to place sole emphasis on the US role. For the CTBT, for example, doubting Senators will be easier to persuade if they had reason to believe that US ratification would lead to entry-into-force of the treaty, by bringing along the others whose ratification is required. Diplomacy directed at China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Egypt could potentially bring double gain, in persuading both them and the US Senate to ratify the treaty. That may leave the issue of ratification by North Korea, a problem I will leave to Ambassador Bosworth to solve.
