The Future of Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Regimes

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

6. The Future of Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Regimes

The Traditional WMD Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation Architecture

Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START I)
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and 1995 Principles & Objectives
Limited Test Ban Treaty
Outer Space Treaty
Threshold Test Ban Treaty
Antarctic Treaty (demilitarizing the continent)
Treaty of Tlatelolco (prohibition of nuclear weapons in Latin America)
Geneva Protocol (prohibiting first use of BCW in war)
Chemical Weapons Convention
Biological Weapons Convention

Abandoned Treaties (Past and Proposed)

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and protocols
START II & START III

In Immediate Jeopardy

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Compliance protocol to the BWC
U.S.- DPRK Agreed Framework

Unfinished Elements

Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty
Fissile Materials Production Cut-Off Treaty
South Pacific & African Nuclear Free Zone Treaties
Measures to remove n-weapons from hair-trigger
Strengthened NPT Safeguards (93+2)
Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials Convention
Missile Technology Control Regime (and Code of Conduct)

Daryl Kimball, Ottawa, January 10-11, 2002

Future Challenges to Multilateral Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Daryl Kimball*

Introduction

As President George W. Bush and congressional leaders have correctly suggested, the response to the devastating attacks on New York and the Pentagon requires unprecedented international cooperation to prevent future outbreaks of terrorism and the threats posed by the spread and possible use of weapons of mass destruction. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged the importance of "seeing that...weapons of vastly greater power...are not used by the kinds of people that attacked the United States." Nevertheless, the Bush administration has so far failed to present an effective and comprehensive approach to these new threats, nor an adequate set of policies to deal with existing ones.

The first line of defense is, and must continue to be, preventing the spread of these dangerous weapons and related technologies. The current framework of global arms control treaties and agreements, which has been painstakingly constructed over the last four decades, was designed to make the acquisition and delivery of these weapons technically challenging and universally unacceptable. This framework must not only be preserved, but also strengthened and expanded. Doing so will require sustained and coordinated international effort, as well as U.S. leadership.

Unfortunately, arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament strategies are under assault. Since taking office, President George W. Bush and his top foreign policy advisors, along with resolute foes of arms control in Congress and outside government, have launched an all-out attack on the bilateral and multilateral framework of nuclear, biological and conventional arms control agreements. This framework has been supported by American leaders for decades and has succeeded in reducing military tensions, the risks posed by weapons of mass destruction, and the risk of nuclear war.

Over the past year, the Bush administration has defied much of the Congress, the U.S. public, America’s allies, and its erstwhile adversaries by dismissing and discarding key arms control and non-proliferation treaty commitments and strategies, including: the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty process; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention; restrictions on the trade of small arms; and restrictions on land-mines.

Bush’s "New Strategic Framework"

Military consultations with allies and friends – including counter-terrorism – buttressed by economic incentives
Enhanced non-proliferation and counter-proliferation in areas of concern
Cooperation with allies and friends on active missile defense and missile technology
Unilateral nuclear force reductions
Measures to support confidence and transparency

The immediate future for arms control and international security is bleak. Renewed and coordinated international leadership is needed to repair and strengthen the regime.

1. The New Anti-Arms Control Ideology

Underlying the Bush administration’s declared distaste for arms control is a belief that the United States is best able to guarantee U.S. security through unilateral actions, U.S. military strength, and, when required, joining with like-minded governments in select coalitions of the willing for specific causes. These options, in the Bush administration’s view, are much more preferable than working cooperatively with other countries through bilateral and multilateral agreements that impose restraints on or hamper U.S. freedom of action or military strength.

Administration officials believe that U.S. security can be enhanced by adopting a "new framework" for U.S.-Russian relations and for addressing weapons of mass destruction threat that would replace formal arms control agreements with informal or political understandings. Administration officials have provided the following outline for the new framework, but few details:

Military consultations with allies and friends – including counter-terrorism – buttressed by economic incentives
Cooperation on active missile defense and missile technology controls
Substantial unilateral nuclear force reductions
Enhanced non-proliferation and counter-proliferation in areas of concern
Measures to support confidence and transparency
The initial focus of this approach is being directed at Russia with respect to the decade-long impasse on strategic nuclear weapons and missile defenses.

U.S. officials, led by Secretary of State Rumsfeld, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, NSC Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and from time to time President Bush, have offered a number of reasons for the pursuit of this approach.

a) "Arms control is from a different time": Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, argues, "The arms control treaties of the 1970s and 1980s came out of a peculiar, abnormal relationship between the United States and Russia…. [Today] Russia is not a strategic adversary of the United States. We are not enemies. So the process can look different."

I would point out that the bulk of the traditional arms control ideas have come out of the Cold War era, they address a problem – weapons of mass destruction – that has not automatically vanished with the Cold War and they still have an important role to play in controlling and reducing the post-Cold War dangers posed by these weapons.

b) "Arms control is not for friends": Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explains, "You negotiate a treaty to try to control hostility between two parties…. We don’t have negotiations like that for treaties to not be hostile with Mexico or Canada or France or England."

I would suggest that Russia and China, while not our enemies, are states with which we have had a history of adversarial relations. Both are wary of U.S. military power and the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons creates the need for predictability, verifiability, transparency, accountability, and irreversibility. Furthermore, under these conditions, military planners continue to act based on worst case assessments of capabilities and not intentions.

c) "Arms control is not for enemies": the administration has argued that many arms control and non-proliferation agreements are really aimed at "rogue" states that are, by definition, outside the bounds of the international community and that those nations will not abide by the compliance and verification mechanisms of arms control agreements such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention. The United States and our allies are law-abiding nations and thus, most arms control arrangements only work against us and do not limit capabilities of others.

d) "Formal Arms Control Is Tedious and Time Consuming": Bush argues that changes to our forces should not require years and years of detailed arms control negotiations. He cites the 1991 United States invitation to the Soviet Union to join it in removing tactical nuclear weapons from the arsenal. Huge reductions were achieved in a matter of months, making the world much safer, more quickly.

However, it is important to point out that the lack of progress on strategic reduction has not been the result of the treaties, but the political differences between the U.S. and Russia over the parameters of missile defenses and the pace of offensive reductions pending a resolution of the missile defense issue.

e) "Treaties Limit Flexibility": The Bush administration further maintains that negotiated reductions are no longer needed because in the coming decades Russia will rapidly decrease its number of strategic offensive weapons for its own strategic and financial reasons. Current projections estimate that the Russian deployed strategic arsenal will consist of fewer than 1,100 warheads by 2010. U.S. officials have even signaled that they would not object to Russia maintaining multiple warheads on its land-based intercontinental missiles as assurance that the Russian force could overwhelm any U.S. defensive systems.

In keeping with these themes, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which is to be delivered to Capitol Hill in a classified form this week will likely endorse the reduction of "operationally-deployed" U.S. strategic nuclear forces to 2,200 or below. But the NPR will likely also require that the "reduced" warheads remain as part of a "reserve" stockpile to hedge against a rapid Russian or Chinese buildup and require that reserve nuclear weapons can be quickly redeployed on the launchers and platforms affected by the "reductions." As a consequence, the available U.S. nuclear force will be as large as it is today, it will not necessarily be subject to verification, it will include a significant number of tactical nuclear weapons, and it will remain in a quick-launch mode, capable of first-strike or quick-response to a real or perceived attack.

This approach, say some key Bush administration officials such as Steve Hadley and Robert Joseph at the NSC, will allow the U.S. to adjust its nuclear forces upward, should the need arise, without accusations of breaking treaties. Moreover, this flexibility to go up as well as down should deter others, particularly China, from challenging U.S. dominance or seeking strategic parity.

f) The Result is "à la carte-ism:" According to Bush’s "new strategic framework," cumbersome treaties, like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would be discarded and only vital treaties, such as the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), would remain intact. Voluntary, supplier agreements, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group, and country specific trade restrictions on sensitive dual use technologies become the backbone of the administration’s effort to control proliferation among states of concern.

2. A Summary of the Attack on Arms Control

Using the White House and Pentagon podiums, the Bush administration has sought – and to some degree is succeeding – to change the terms of the media and public debate from how arms control can better U.S. security to how arms control weakens America’s ability to protect itself. Rather than seeing arms control as a mechanism to enhance or preserve U.S. security by stemming weapons proliferation and capping and reducing global arms holdings, the Bush administration charges that arms control imperils U.S. security because it has been unsuccessful in preventing other countries from pursuing and acquiring weapons of mass destruction while giving the United States a false sense of security and, in the case of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, kept the United States from building needed defenses.

a) Missile Defense and the ABM Treaty

Until the tragic September 11 terrorist attack, the Bush administration’s top foreign policy objective was to get rid of the ABM Treaty to enable the United States to research, test, and deploy without any constraints a strategic missile defense system. Though the war on terrorism is now the top priority, Bush did not forget about his administration’s previous ranking objective and announced December 13 that the United States would withdraw from the treaty in six months. The move marked the first U.S. withdrawal from an arms control agreement and threatens to unravel the entire structure of arms control built up over the past 40 years. Prior to the U.S. announcement, Russia warned that a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty could lead to a Russian withdrawal from up to 30 other agreements, including ones capping Russian nuclear and conventional force levels.

While the likely U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty will not produce immediate and dire consequences, it is clear that it will create new risks and will not hasten the development or deployment of effective national missile defenses, which are years if not decades away. Hours after Bush’s repudiation of the ABM Treaty, there was yet another test failure of a key missile defense system component and the next day the Navy announced it was canceling one of its sea-based missile defense systems due to cost and technical problems. Testing of this system was part of the reason offered for needing to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

Nevertheless, because military planners focus on worst-case scenarios, U.S. strategic missile defense development and deployment, possibly even including space-based elements, will likely inhibit Russia’s willingness to implement deeper reductions of Cold War nuclear stockpiles and encourage China to accelerate its strategic nuclear weapons modernization program from two-dozen to over two-hundred nuclear-armed, long-range missiles to help them overcome any missile defense. China and Russia might also be less cooperative in preventing others from acquiring weapons of mass destruction or even possibly assist such efforts actively, believing that the spread of such capabilities would be the only possible way of containing perceived U.S. hegemonic ambitions.

b) Agreements on Strategic Nuclear Reductions

Voiding the ABM Treaty has not been the sole testament of the Bush administration’s opposition to arms control. While pledging in November to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 deployed strategic warheads over ten years, Bush said he preferred to do so outside of a verifiable treaty arrangement. Russia has said it wants to reduce to 1,500 warheads but through a bilateral, verifiable treaty. Without a legally-binding treaty to verify the reduction and elimination of the bombs and their means of delivery, such reductions, even if fully implemented, are potentially reversible.

At this time, it appears, however, that Russian insistence that mutual U.S. and Russian strategic reductions be made transparent and verifiable by using provisions from earlier arms control treaties may prevail and result in some type of formal agreement. But it remains unclear whether the actual level of the reductions will be codified, and whether it would allow either side to store warheads that could be quickly redeployed. Without being codified, arms reductions lose their predictability, lessening the stability and security that can be afforded by enabling a country to know more about their potential adversary’s capabilities. Lacking such information, countries may erroneously make worst-case assumptions about another countries’ capabilities or intentions that could trigger an unnecessary, unwanted, and costly arms race. Moreover, without a legal obligation to pursue future cuts, a Bush successor could simply choose to ignore the pledge or, instead, buildup the U.S. arsenal. The same option, obviously, would be available to Russia as well.

c) Controlling Loose Nukes in Russia

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the news that al Queda and other terrorist groups are seeking nuclear weapons, little has been done to the address the most urgent nuclear proliferation threat: the possible theft, sale, or diversion of the tons of nuclear material and the thousands of unaccounted nuclear weapons in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union. Despite proclaiming his strong support for U.S. programs to safeguard and destroy Russian weapons of mass destruction and fissile materials during his presidential campaign, Bush initially proposed a reduction in funding for such activities and Congress is reluctant to increase funding and mandate an improvement in coordination of the U.S. government’s multi-agency efforts in this arena. In late-December, President Bush announced that an internal administration review of threat reduction programs had been completed and that he would propose increases in funding in some programs for fiscal 2003.

d) Regional Proliferation Hot Spots

The administration has also stalled on solving one of the thorniest nuclear and missile proliferation cases: North Korea. The Bush team has thus far spurned an opportunity left over from the Clinton administration to negotiate an agreement with North Korea to give up its long-range ballistic missile program. In doing so, the administration undercut South Korea’s efforts to seek better relations with its northern counterpart and put off indefinitely the possibility of holding U.S. talks with North Korea to stop its development and export of ballistic missiles and related technology. The Bush Administration and North Korea also need to work together to continue timely implementation of the 1994 Agreed Framework.

In its fight against terrorism, the Bush administration rushed to embrace India and Pakistan, waiving sanctions on U.S. military and economic assistance put in place after the two South Asian rivals conducted May 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests. This apparent acceptance of the two countries’ nuclear weapons program constituted a swift reversal of U.S. policy over the past three years, which essentially called for India and Pakistan to rollback their programs and give up their weapons. The move could eventually undermine the U.S. position as a leader in non-proliferation efforts, particularly if some states – such as those in the Middle East concerned about Israel’s nuclear weapons – perceive the U.S. commitment to non-proliferation as only a matter of convenience or reflective of a country’s relationship with Washington.

e) Biological Weapons Convention

Washington also upset U.S. allies earlier this year when it voiced its opposition to a draft proposal designed to make cheating more difficult under a treaty banning biological weapons. The move was motivated in part by the administration’s interest in preventing international oversight of U.S. bio-defense programs, which, ironically, are now believed to be the source of the anthrax sent to through the mail to Congressional members and news organizations. The U.S. offered some useful, but difficult to implement voluntary measures to restrict access to dangerous pathogens. Subsequently, the United States shocked the international community November 7 by insisting that the process used to negotiate global restrictions on germ weapons and accompanying inspections be abandoned, causing an international conference to end in disarray.

Although improvements to our public health and emergency preparedness systems can help mitigate the effects of future bio-terrorist attacks, prevention is the best cure. Without a better international compliance mechanism to detect and deter state-sponsored biological weapons programs, these weapons of mass destruction will likely become a greater threat in the future. It will be necessary to reverse the United States’ current position not to enter into any kind of international negotiation that might lead to a legally-binding treaty on BW compliance and enforcement.

f) Nuclear Testing and the CTBT

Shortly after the 1999 Senate vote on the CTBT, Secretary of State Albright made it clear that "the United States will continue to act in accordance with its obligations as a signatory [of the CTBT] under international law ..." and that it "...will seek reconsideration of the treaty at a later date when conditions are better suited for ratification."

Since taking office, senior Bush administration officials have said that they will not ask the Senate to reconsider approval of the CTBT, but they urge all states to maintain their existing testing moratoria. At present, the treaty remains on the Senate calendar. The CTBT cannot win Senate approval for ratification without presidential support, but the State Department has determined that the president cannot unilaterally withdraw the treaty from the Senate’s consideration. The CTBT is trapped in U.S. political limbo.

However, the current Bush policy will likely take a turn for the worse without additional pressure from the international community and CTBT supporters in Congress.

Last year the Bush administration submitted the Clinton administration’s original request for $20m for CTBTO activities for FY 2002 but announced in August that it would not fund CTBTO activities related to preparations for on-site inspections. This was a concession to DoD opponents of the CTBT who argued that the on-site inspections are useless and will only come into play with CTBT entry into force. Opponents of the CTBTO at the DoD argue that the U.S. does not need the IMS to meet is nuclear test monitoring and verification requirements and can get by with bilateral agreements to complete the Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS). As Gen. Shalikashvili’s 2001 report on the CTBT states, completing the enhanced AEDS network depends on completion of the IMS, which will provide access and coverage of some key areas more easily and cheaply than without. Congress approved the full $20m for FY 2002.

In addition, Senate hardliners like Jesse Helms have urged President Bush to repudiate the U.S. signature to the CTBT. In early 2001, Undersecretary of State John Bolton sought to find ways by which President Bush could remove the CTBT from the Senate’s calendar. In November 2001, the DoD and NSC successfully persuaded the President not to send a representative to the November meeting on CTBT entry into force at the United Nations.

In the coming days and weeks, we should expect that opponents of the CTBT in the administration will again try to limit, cut or eliminate U.S. funding for the CTBTO. We should also expect that administration officials opposed to the CTBT will try to further weaken U.S. test ban policy, perhaps even trying to repudiate the U.S. signature to the CTBT. This could be accomplished by notifying the depository for the CTBT (the UN Secretary General) by means of a letter from Bush stating that the US has no intention to ratify the treaty.

g) The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The CTBT, which has the support of all U.S. allies as well as Russia, is one of the key disarmament commitments made by the United States and the other declared nuclear weapon states which helped secure the indefinite extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995. But, in keeping with what the State Department’s director of policy and planning Richard Haas has called "à la carte" multilateralism, the administration supports only those NPT provisions that constrain the capabilities of others, while it chooses to ignore U.S. non-proliferation and disarmament commitments outlined in Article VI of that Treaty and in last year’s NPT Review Conference Final Conference Document.

To work, this treaty, like so many others, must continue to serve the interests of all treaty partners, not just a few. In addition, the administration’s ad hoc approach and neglect for certain approaches leaves enormous gaps in what is essentially the United States’ and the international community’s first line of defense against weapons of mass destruction. U.S. unilateral rejection of arms control and disarmament strategies would also set a dangerous precedent that could, unfortunately, lead other countries to seek security by going-it-alone and building weapon systems rather than joining agreements with others to forgo or limit arms buildups.

3. Restoring Support for Arms Control

Alone, each of the challenges and setbacks constitutes a setback to arms control. Taken together, the Bush administration’s first-year activities threaten to undo more than 40 years of past accomplishments and significantly lessen the likelihood of future successes in controlling or reducing the threats posed by the development and spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and destabilizing accumulations of conventional arms, including small arms and light weapons.

The Bush administration has painted arms control as a failed and outdated policy of a bygone era and treaties as simply pieces of paper or historical relics that have no tangible worth. Such an assessment rejects the notion that arm control, non-proliferation and disarmament measures can and have reduced the risk of war and, if that fails, to limit the destructiveness of war. Arms control aids countries in their search for security by ending arms races that have no finish lines. These are not transitory objectives, but ones that remain as real today as they were during the height of the Cold War.

The challenges ahead are numerous and complex. I offer the following preliminary suggestions:

a) The first goal of supporters of arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament is to limit the damage to the existing regime over the near term.

b) A second goal must be to better articulate the ongoing value and role of arms control/disarmament measures in building international security and not take for granted that the value is understood and shared by others. For instance, the fundamental success of the NPT – that today, no more than eight countries are believed to currently possess such destructive weapons when thirty years ago it many predicted there would be dozens – is a fact that is too often overlooked.

c) Rally Western and non-aligned support around a comprehensive approach to WMD that emphasizes preventative measures and the reinforcement of effective arms control strategies as an alternative to the Bush administration’s anti-arms control, unilateralist "new strategic framework." The New Agenda Coalition framework and the 2000 NPT Review Conference list of disarmament objectives are a useful starting point. Key components should be:

negotiated and codified strategic nuclear reductions, which provide irreversibility, verifiability, predictability, and transparency, as unilateral reductions are pursued;
Encouraging support for action to rapidly "de-alert" forces scheduled for withdrawal from operational deployment. ACA staff will work with Congressional supporters to encourage this approach;
Extension of reduction process to include reserve strategic warheads and tactical nuclear weapons;
Limiting future deployment of missile defense, particularly space-based weapons, so as to minimize the possible destabilization of relations between major military powers;
Maintaining full U.S. financial support for the activities of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) and it efforts to put in place nuclear test monitoring, verification and on-site inspection tools;
Preventing Bush administration repudiation of U.S. signature of CTBT or the resumption of nuclear testing by any state;
Renewing international negotiations to improve compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and tracking bio-terror and bio-defense developments. Continued implementation of the U.S./North Korean Agreed Framework to eliminate the North Korean nuclear weapons program and initiation of talks on an agreement banning North Korean ballistic missile tests and exports;
Renewal of international efforts through the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to assure that Iraq does not resume its programs to produce nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction;
Maintenance of support for nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime and prevention of a roll back of commitments made by states parties at the 2000 Review Conference;
Maintaining support for and a bilateral dialogue on Indian and Pakistani agreements not to conduct future nuclear tests and not to deploy nuclear weapons;
Implementation of improved IAEA safeguards and export control procedures.

Daryl Kimball

Arms Control Association

Strengthening the Existing Arms Control Framework

Seek a treaty agreement on verifiable irreversible reductions of strategic warheads – deployed and tactical
De-alert maximum number of deployed strategic weapons
Prevent missile defense deployment in areas where it will lead to an arms race, and prevent weaponization of space
Encourage talks to freeze of North Korea’s Missile Program; Fulfill the 1994 Agreed Framework
Avoid U.S. repudiation of CTBT
Re-Affirm the Importance of the NPT and U.S. Article VI Commitments
Renew talks on strengthening BWC verification and compliance