Challenges to collective security Ray Acheson | Reaching Critical Will of WILPF
Front page article from the NPT News in
Review, the daily NGO newsletter from the third session
of the
Preparatory Committee for the 2010 nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Review Conference Friday, 8 May 2009
On Thursday, statements on Cluster One and the specific issue
of nuclear disarmament and security assurances concluded and
Cluster Two statements (relating to non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons, safeguards, and nuclear-weapon-free zones) began.
Some of the most interesting remarks, however, were unprepared.
For the first time this year, a delegation delivered interactive
remarks in response to statements that had been made thus
far and to nuclear weapon policies more broadly.
Quoting from the United Kingdom’s paper, Lifting
the Nuclear Shadow: Creating the Conditions for Abolishing
Nuclear Weapons, an Egyptian representative noted that
the UK justifies its possession of nuclear weapons by emphasizing
their “continuing value in deterring war as well as
new threats to national security which may emerge in the future.”
He went on to point out that the paper says, “Including
states which come under a ‘nuclear umbrella’,
such as NATO allies, well over half of the world’s population
is covered by a nuclear deterrent. The impression that only
a small minority benefit from nuclear weapons is misleading.”
The Egyptian delegate noted that this contradicts other states’
concerns with “ensuring collective security”.
He argued, it is quite difficult to perceive of the NPT in
its current status as a preserver of collective security if
over half the world’s population is “protected”
by nuclear weapons while the minority is threatened by them.
The NGO presentation on deterrence, delivered Tuesday afternoon
to the PrepCom, argued, “Nuclear weapons are not weapons
of deterrence, they are weapons of domination.” Writing
in the first edition of the NPT News in Review, Andrew
Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation noted that
deterrence is “intended to emphasize through terror
that transcends all reason that the victim—or potential
victim—is utterly vulnerable, and that the hand that
wields the power of ultimate violence is not, is invulnerable,
all powerful. The intention—and the effect—is
to sustain a world in which most are powerless but some hold
great power, most are poor but a few hold great wealth, most
are vulnerable but a few can at least convince themselves
that for the duration of their time here on earth they are
not.”
Despite its position of power, the United States spoke as
if endangered. In its Cluster Two statement during the afternoon
meeting, US representative Rose Gottemoeller argued, “Today’s
nuclear weapon states will not eliminate their nuclear weapons
without the assurance that additional states will not obtain
such weapons tomorrow.” This position, that nuclear
weapon states will not disarm until they are given absolute
guarantees about the future, makes the possibility of nuclear
abolition virtually nill.
Similarly, the UK delegation spoke about the “real”
and “imminent” threat of “a dangerous era
of new nuclear-armed states and even of nuclear-armed non-state
actors.” This assertion also suggests that proliferation
is a generalized phenomenon when in fact it very specific,
limited to much fewer states than initially predicted at the
inception of the NPT, and not necessarily attributable to
the broader “security environment”. As the Brazilian
delegation noted in its Cluster Two statement, “The
difficulties and challenges facing the international community
in the implementation of the NPT do not derive ... of a supposed
inadequacy of the Treaty to today’s global environment.
It derives from the unbalance in the implementation of all
its obligations by the different actors.”
Regarding this type of “non-nuclear imperialism,”
wherein current weapon possessors strive to prevent new possession
as a precursor to eliminating their own weapons—an excuse
to delay disarmament—the Egyptian delegate argued that
the world cannot accept the reduction of the NPT vision to
one that features a world no longer threatened by the spread
of nuclear weapons. He argued, the objective of the Treaty
is that the world will be free of nuclear weapons.
To this end, he emphasized the need of a timebound framework
for the elimination of nuclear weapons, arguing that even
a guarantee of no first-use of nuclear weapons does not substitute
the basic promise of the NPT: a prohibition of nuclear weapons.
During the same meeting, the Indonesian delegation called
for the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapon Convention (NWC),
which it argued would build upon the NPT and provide the opportunity
for non-NPT states to join relevant negotiations. In the NGO
presentation on a NWC, the drafters noted, “The Nuclear
Weapons Convention provides a nondiscriminatory approach and
opens the door for immediate engagement by the non-NPT nuclear
weapon states. The expectation that India, Pakistan, and the
DPRK could be persuaded to join (or rejoin) the NPT unconditionally
as non-nuclear weapon states is clearly unrealistic. The expectation
that they would join negotiations on an NWC is not.”
They also explained, “Adopting a more comprehensive
framework does not mean abandoning the step-by-step approach....
The Model NWC has been designed to overcome the divide between
incremental and comprehensive approaches” to reaching
a nuclear weapon free world.
The text of the model Convention can be found at www.icanw.org
and the NGO presentations can be found at www.reachingcriticalwill.org.
