NPT RevCon: challenges of disarmament

he upcoming NPT review conference will feature contentious disputes about violations of the treaty by nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states. The underlying causes for these include the lack of adequate progress in nuclear disarmament and the close connections between nuclear energy and weapons programmes.

In May the parties to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be meeting in New York to review the treaty. The last such review conference was in the year 2000 when the parties agreed on a 13-point programme for nuclear disarmament. As of now, it seems that this year’s conference will not only be not so successful, but might well roll back some of the gains for disarmament achieved at the 2000 conference.

What is clear is that there are major challenges to the continued legitimacy of the treaty. As the name suggests, the NPT aims to stop nuclear proliferation – both “vertical” (quantitative and qualitative increases in the arsenals of the nuclear-weapons states) and “horizontal” (the acquisition of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear weapons states). The last few years have seen proscribed activities of both kinds. What makes them particularly difficult to tackle is that they feed into each other, one kind of activity is often claimed to justify the other.

Among the challenges posed by the activities of the non-nuclear weapons states, the two most important ones are from North Korea and Iran. In January 2003, North Korea withdrew from the NPT, later announcing that it possessed nuclear weapons and is strengthening its arsenal. North Korea’s professed justification for doing so is that it faces a security threat from the United States. Iran’s challenge comes from its surreptitious uranium enrichment programme, which it justifies as needed for its future nuclear energy programme. (Iran generates no electricity from nuclear reactors currently.)

The ability to enrich uranium (i.e., increase the content of the fissionable uranium-235 isotope) covertly leaves Iran in a situation wherein developing nuclear weapons becomes a matter of inclination and interest rather than capability. The US has maintained that Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium and that these activities are intended to develop a nuclear-weapons capability.

Other non-nuclear weapons states that pursued activities in violation of their NPT commitments include South Korea, which recently admitted to carrying out covert experiments on enriching uranium and extracting plutonium, and Libya, which acquired nuclear materials and weapons designs in a clandestine fashion. Both Iran and Libya have also revealed that they acquired technology and designs from the network linked to A Q Khan. The network has also reportedly contributed to North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme. While Pakistan is not a signatory to the NPT, the network operated from different countries which are all members of the NPT. The existence of such a network and the likelihood that other such activities could well be continuing undetected is going to be a focus of discussion at the review conference.

A different kind of challenge to the NPT comes from the United States. As described earlier, the US is a key player in both the cases of North Korea and Iran. Its description of North Korea as a member of the axis of evil and its veiled threats to invade Iran constitute provocations that propel some in those countries to advocate the acquisition of nuclear weapons. What makes the US concern about these countries hypocritical is that it is engaged in activities, including pursuing new nuclear weapons designs, that violate the spirit if not the letter of Article VI of the NPT. (Article VI calls on the nuclear-weapons states to pursue nuclear disarmament and is what the nuclear-weapons states agreed to in exchange for the non-nuclear-weapons states agreeing not to acquire nuclear weapons.)

The problem with Article VI is that it does not prescribe either a timeline or a set of indicators about what constitutes progress towards disarmament. It is here that the 2000 review conference scored a breakthrough in coming up with a practical set of 13 steps that were agreed to by all parties. The bad news is that the Bush administration has explicitly rejected these steps. In other words, the US cannot be trusted to live by what it promises publicly. Joining it in this back-tracking is France, which has also refused to honour the 2000 Review Conference commitments.

Amidst this complicated tangle, two conclusions stand out. First, as long as some countries continue to possess nuclear weapons, there will be other contenders for the same (dubious) status. This does not mean that they are justified; acquiring weapons of mass murder is never justified. But for the NPT to retain its legitimacy and effectiveness there has to be clear and unambiguous progress towards disarmament by the nuclear-weapons states. This can be best done by using the NPT review conference to lay out a set of markers – either the 13 points agreed to in 2000, or some equivalent set – and requiring parties to the NPT to deliver periodic progress reports on all these.

Second, there are deep connections between nuclear-energy programmes and nuclear-weapons capabilities. In all non-nuclear-weapons countries listed above, it was mostly the people who were trained to work in the nuclear-energy programme who went into designing or constructing or acquiring technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons. At this moment, it is they who have the greatest vested interest in starting a nuclear-weapons programme in these countries because such a programme would bring with it a nearly unending source of funds. This is something familiar to us from the cases of India and Pakistan. In both countries, nuclear-weapons programmes were hatched under the cover of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

The case of Iran is of particular importance because the US insists that to be convinced that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, the country should abandon its nuclear energy programme. There is some validity to that contention – only that it should be applied universally, including to the US. If the world were to be truly and verifiably nuclear-weapons-free, then it would seem almost inevitable that nuclear energy be abandoned globally.

M V Ramana, a physicist by training, is Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream.

April 22-28, 2005 - Vol. XVII, No. 9