NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE K. KOSTER

Transcription

1 NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE K. KOSTER 1. Introductory In the American Senate, a few months ago, when it was debating the potential war against Iraq, Senator Byrd said the following : «The great Roman historian, Titius Livius, said, ` All things will be clear and distinct to the man who does not hurry. Haste is blind and improvident. Blind and improvident, Mr. President, blind and improvident. Congress would be wise to need those words today, for, as sure as the sun rises in the East, we are embarking on a course of action with regard to Iraq that, in its haste, is both blind and improvident. We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert conflict». Clearly, this quote referred to a particular sub-case of the problem I m going to present, but nevertheless I m of the opinion that it is a clear illustration of the disadvantages of seeing this problem of nuclear proliferation as a purely military/ technical problem, which can be solved with purely military means, as opposed to seeing its political context and looking for ways of solving it with political arguments and diplomacy. Let us be clear about this : I m not talking about a pacifist position here. The thread that more or less runs through my presentation is the proposition (hypothesis) that the present policies for working against the nuclear risk that we are facing perhaps it also applies to the WMD problem in general do not address the risks properly. They have, in fact, an escalatory function and are in grave danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. My basic concept in this is that I m going to work against the background of the international political framework, which, up to 1990, was more or less a bilateral one, with two poles - the US vs. the Soviet Union - opposing each other and, after the end of the Cold War, the transformation of this framework into something which is becoming more and more rapidly a basically unipolar one. That background is extremely important for understanding how arms control issues have been dealt with these last years. 1

2 This has also led me to my set-up for this little presentation : I will start with the Cold War heritage, a little bit of Cold War history up to 1990 ; after that, I will be looking at the post-cold-war period. And, because it is somewhat complicated to mix everything up I m afraid it also has a somewhat simplifying effect I m going to run you through that period twice : in one time series, I will show you the development in arms control and diplomacy and politics developments, which have given some of us hope that we are moving towards a world that, although perhaps not free of nuclear weapons, is at least moving in that direction ; then I will run through that period again and indicate other concurrent developments that, in fact, have been working in the opposite direction and that contain a grave danger of having us pursue the road to escalation and a resumed arms race, in a sense. 2. The Cold War heritage 2.1. The nuclear arms race is surely well-known to all of us, but perhaps it is wise to remind you of the grave danger we were all in on at least three fairly well-known occasions : - The 1962 Cuba crisis is well documented and well-known. It was a response by the two super-powers to build-ups of nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles on their borders and, after a hair-raising excursion to the edge of the precipice, ended in a sort of stand-off which developed into a nuclear arms race , less well-known, was a crisis where the Soviet-Union, as we are told now, was convinced that the Americans were about to launch a surprise attack on them, and they actually prepared their strategic missiles for launch and began making a number of preparations, among them getting the Spetsnatz units in the West out and alarming them and getting them ready for special operations in the West against command and control structures there. We only knew of this afterwards - at least, we didn t know it at the time, when we had this massive anti-nuclear movement. But, in a way, I suppose all those people who were demonstrating against nuclear weapons were very right psychologically : the atmosphere was very threatening and we now know that that was not anyone s imagination could be seen as a sort of trailer of the Cold War and that was the test launch from the North Sea of what turned out to be a meteorological missile. The Russians, unfortunately, thought it was a particular subscenario for a nuclear attack on Moscow, the so-called decapitation scenario, which involves launching missiles from a trident sub across Norway into Moscow and then hoping there will be no leadership in Moscow to respond. They were afraid that this particular scenario was being put into operation and put their own strategic forces on alarm, a process that stopped only 15 minutes before launch. Some people will say that that proves how well the warning systems work. As a consequence, there were some very serious efforts made by an American lobby of my colleagues to de-alert nuclear strategic missile systems on both sides, i.e. to 2

3 make it impossible to launch the missiles with more than a couple of hours warning and to take away the possibility of them being launched within a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, this has still come to naught : the strategic missiles forces on both sides are still ready to launch within a number of minutes and that is something which, in the present political constellation, where there is purportedly no threatening situation between the Russian Federation and the USA, is entirely unacceptable During that Cold War period, the fact that many people were very worried about the way things were going the nuclear arms race involving the build-up of huge strategic nuclear forces sufficient to destroy the world many of times over led to a fair amount of negotiation; some treaties were developed which, at the very least, made it possible to control the nuclear arms race, though not to disarm or to stop it.. That would be to give too much credit, but certainly it was in the common interest of both the USA and the Soviet Union to control it. A number of key treaties in that process were of course the START and the SALT treaties, which controlled the number of strategic weapon systems on both sides. Another treaty, which came out of that process and of that realization that one of the most dangerous things that could happen would be the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, was,, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which most of the world says it is extremely important to adhere to. That Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was negotiated, however, during a period when there was also some pressure for the NATO Allies of the United States to be able to deploy their own nuclear forces. The way this worked out ultimately was that a process was set in motion which we, in our NGO community generally describe as «nuclear sharing», which involves six NATO countries being involved in storing American nuclear weapons on their soil and being prepared to use them. These nuclear weapons are still there right up till day. In Belgium, you have, of course, the tactical nuclear weapons in Kleine Brogel and in Holland, in Volkel. This basically means, in political terms, an involvement of the Atlantic Allies with American nuclear policy. We have had many, many debates in the diplomatic community with officials, with parliamentarians about whether this contravenes the NPT and, of course, this is denied; in this we have some fairly refined word games on whether a NATO ally is actually a nuclear state if it is does not own the nuclear weapons, because Art. 1 and 2 of the NPT forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to another state and if the nuclear weapons are still in the hands of the Americans, there is therefore no problem. So, that is the reasoning which is being followed there. But then it gets a little bit more subtle and nuanced, because our side counters with the argument that, in times of war, there would be a different situation and the weapons would be transferred. The debate then switches to whether the NPT applies in time of war, etc. These nuances have been very important to us in our efforts to convince the NATO Allies that they should give up these weapons, because, in our eyes, they are at the very least against the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; the judicial aspects we can, of course, argue about. This is important with regard to the spread of proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states. It gives a political message that the 3

4 NATO Alliance - which, as made clear two weeks ago - will expand to encompass a huge area of the Northern hemisphere is, in fact, expanding the number of countries that adhere to nuclear policies and, in principle, support the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. From the rest of the world, this looks rather peculiar (cf. infra). 3. The post-cold War era 3.1. In the post-cold War era, we have had a number of positive developments no doubt about it. We were hugely encouraged by these developments and we thought that there were at least some serious moves made towards denuclearization or even «nuclear abolition», i.e. the dismantling of nuclear weapons and their launching systems In , of course, under the immediate effect of the falling of the wall, there was the uniteral withdrawal of tactical nukes In 1993, the START II Treaty, which was signed, but unfortunately not ratified And then in 1995, the NPT, which prior to that was not a permanent treaty it had to be reviewed regularly and renewed at 5-year intervals became the subject of a huge debate at the UN, the argument being about its indefinite extension and whether all the signatories, which, by the way, means most of the world at present, only Israel, India and Pakistan are not signatories to the NPT agreed that this would be a good thing. However, the Treaty recognizes that there are five permanent nuclear weapons states; we were not talking at the time about the non-official nuclear weapons states. The rest of the world reasoned fairly logically that, if you want a treaty to be put into place that will last forever, then something should be also be done about getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether. This is where the Art. 6 debate comes in. Art. 6 mentions a commitment to nuclear disarmament in our eyes and I m afraid that this is yet another subject of the diplomatic games that have been played around it : some interpretations by some diplomats of nuclear weapons states posit that this nuclear disarmament process must be connected to general disarmament, because that is mentioned in the same paragraph. In that case, of course, we don t have to get on with nuclear disarmament. Nevertheless, certain commitments were made by the nuclear weapon states - not aspart of the treaty, but through Security Council resolutions - in the form of negative security assurances, i.e. the guarantee by the nuclear weapon states that they would not use nuclear weapons against signatories of the treaty. Unfortunately, that particular commitment has been undermined during the last few years, in general, by certain political statements made by American spokesmen, among others, but by others as well, and during the last few months, this year in fact, the statements have become even more rigid. 4

5 In 1996, we had the ICJ (International Court of Justice) Advisory Opinion. Of course, when we go to the diplomats and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, they say it is an advisory opinion ; we don t have to adhere to it. I m not an expert on legal matters and I suppose they are probably right, but the intention of this particular opinion was completely clear : it stated, recalling the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality or the threat of nuclear weapons, There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control. That was at least something that is important politically and I m sure it contributed to a number of further developments in that year : we had the Canberra commission of experts, which included general Butler, the former commander of the American strategic nuclear forces, and which pleaded for faster steps towards nuclear disarmament. The CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) was signed, having been taken out, you might say, of a blocking position in the diplomacy of Geneva, where an attempt was made to get it accepted in a multilateral formula. The testing of nuclear weapons was thus prohibited, except for a clause allowing for sub-strategic nuclear explosions which is of some importance for the further development of certain types of nuclear weapons. Again, this was probably put in under pressure from the nuclear weapons laboratories in the United States, which wanted guarantees that they could continue their nuclear test programmes and, in fact, a huge amount of money was invested in the Stockpile Stewardship Management Programme, which purportedly, is supposed to maintain nuclear weapons, but, as a matter of fact - as has been made clear by documents released through Freedom of Information Act procedures - is also a cover for developing new types of nuclear weapons, another thing that has recently come to the fore In 1997, further statements were made by generals, politicians, all arguing against nuclear weapons and for abolishing them, recognizing their danger In 1998, there was a new development : the New Agenda coalition, an alliance of neutral states (Ireland, Sweden, South Africa, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico and New Zealand), which tabled a resolution at the United Nations calling for nuclear disarmament. This was an attempt to hasten this process. This had the great advantage of being attractive to at least a number of NATO countries. At that moment, we we regard the New Agenda countries as our natural allies in our arguments for nuclear disarmament - did not get the smaller NATO countries to vote for that NATO resolution, though we did at a later juncture. 5

6 After that, we had a remarkable development, because in 2000, when there was again an NPT review conference meant to judge how the developments towards nonproliferation and disarmament were going at the United Nations, we had a final document accepted that actually stated that there should be an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states, parties, are committed under Art. 6. Later that year, the North Atlantic Council of NATO accepted a document that was based on 32 of the Summit Communiqué of 1999, which actually referred to measures in accordance with the final document of the NPT conference (a number of steps towards nuclear disarmament, etc). This was quite amazing in a way, but unfortunately in that very same document there was still a commitment to maintain the nuclear deterrent. So, in our eyes, a clear contradiction, and it has always been interesting to hear from NATO officials how they explain that contradiction : on the one hand, supporting a clear manoeuvre towards nuclear disarmament through the processes involved in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a recognition of the importance of that process and, on the other hand, adhering to nuclear deterrence through, among other things., the nuclear sharing process involving a number of European NATO member states. So, unfortunately, we are still involved in a form of nuclear arms race because of this contradiction The positive measures mentioned in this overview of arms control development in the Nineties, in a way, continued right through to this autumn, as another New Agenda Coalition resolution was tabled at the UN. Unfortunately, the NATO countries abstained, probably under American pressure, except for one country though, for which it is to be complimented : Canada actually voted for this New Agenda resolution, arguing for more rapid nuclear disarmament Unfortunately, at the same time, we have the reality of what, in a way, are two worlds : on the one hand, the abstract, ethereal quality, almost, of the resolutions and the diplomacy, which is perhaps far away from the practical military world, and, on the other hand, actual practice Iraq s weapons of mass destruction have been mentioned. It is known that the Western countries actually armed Iraq with the dual-use technology it needed to develop its programmes for weapons of mass destruction in the late eighties. The documentation for this can be found in a 1994 report by Senator D Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban affairs with respect to Export Administration. German sources started throwing mud at American companies that delivered dual-use technology to Iraq and American sources started throwing mud at the Germans who had been doing it. So, we had a very interesting game which we still regard as a fairly convincing proof that, throughout the first Gulf War ( ), there were actual deliveries of dual-use technology to Iraq. In a way, the basis was laid for the programmes that the Iraqis set up in the eighties and that the UN inspectors have been going after with such thoroughness in the nineties. 6

7 There were other negative developments in the Nineties. - We had the Russian policy of re-iterating its dependence on tactical nukes because of the weakness of its conventional forces. - We had the near-nuclear war incident (cf. supra), that you can simply describe as a throw-back to the Cold War. - And then we had, of course, in 1997, the American presidential directive PD60, which actually identified rogue states as possible targets for a nuclear attack, which means that, with such a document, the negative security assurances, i.e. the promise not to attack states that are signatories of the NPT, was actually put into question. - In 1998, India and Pakistan, purportedly because the nuclear states were not disarming but I think that was a nonsensical excuse, a matter of convenience conducted their nuclear tests, as is well-known. The confrontations that followed from that have continued right up to today. So, there is a conventional confrontation based on the conflict over Kashmir and terrorist incursions into Kashmir. Around it is the framework of nuclear weapons on both sides ready to launch with a flying time of perhaps 2 or 3 minutes and a shaky command and control system, to say the least. There are some rumours that the Americans have been applying huge pressure behind the scenes to keep this potential nuclear war from actually breaking out. - In 1999, there was another blow to the arms control community : the US Senate refused to ratify the CTBT and they have continued in that position right up till today. This, despite the unique event of a protest letter sent to the New York Times and signed by the Heads of State of the UK, Germany and France. - In respect of 11 September 2001, the first question that, of course, arises in a number of people s heads is whether the people who were prepared to do this were also prepared to use weapons of mass destruction. This is the connection made between the event and the huge political follow-up that came through from that. It gave a context for the developments that were actually already in train, i.e. the attempt to create a legitimacy for maintaining nuclear weapons by making this connection, which is partially perhaps a spurious one : terrorists have weapons of mass destruction; they are based in a particular country; therefore it is all right to attack that country with your own nuclear weapons. This is basically what the Nuclear Posture Review, a document addressed to the US Congress, at the beginning of this year, was arguing for. It described the possibility of actually attacking countries that are suspected to be a threat and under certain conditions, but the conditions under which they would do this are very broadly drawn. The Americans now have a declared policy stating their preparedness to attack first with nuclear weapons.. The fact, however, that such a document is floating around, combined with the pre-emptive strategy that was put into place in September, should arouse huge worries among people who are following these things. NATO still has its nuclear policy firmly in place, even though I base this on only one sentence in the recent NATO Summit document, where it says examine options for addressing the increasing missile threat to Alliance territory, forces and population centres in an effective and efficient way through an appropriate mix of political and defence ways along with deterrence. So, deterrence stays in place and passive defence clearly is not the problem. The problem is deterrence and maintenance of the nuclear policy, as against adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other commitments to moving towards nuclear disarmament, which I regard as contradictory. 7

8 4. Conclusion With regard to the question of weapons of mass destruction, all this leads to very simplistic conclusions. The simplism is the reasoning just mentioned : you hold on to nuclear weapons because you reason that it is a fail-safe instrument in case somebody out there has weapons of mass destruction. In doing so, you start, whether you want or not, to wreck the arms control structures and treaties put in place to control the nuclear arms race and other races in respect of weapons of mass destruction. However, there is a contradiction there. Certain parts of the American political community don t give a damn about that. In Europe, we should care a bit more about it, because there is a very practical reason - and I m not just arguing in terms of being legalistic or just or whatever you want to call it; I m talking about the practical matter, which is that, if all those countries out there that are potential rogue states or in the vicinity of rogue states or are threatened by rogue states, see, - looking at one particular country, i.e. the United States, apparently still supported in its stance by the NATO allies that arming oneself with nuclear weapons is all right in flagrant disregard of the movement towards nuclear disarmament, then why should they not also ignore those treaties, which most of them have signed. They can also follow this course and say, What is good enough for you, is good enough for us. India and Pakistan, of course, have already done that : Israel is now the fifth nuclear weapon state and indeed has more nuclear weapons available than the UK has. This is an extremely dangerous development. My response is that if you want to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction both to states and to terrorists, you should take realise that fighting terrorism is a political and intelligence services question, but that it must be done within a framework of international legality. So, I am arguing that the arms control treaty structures should be adhered to. We mustn t fall into the trap Senator Byrd warned us about so very eloquently. 8