19 June 2001

Successful Nuclear Disarmament Requires Progress on Non-Proliferation

By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Security Affairs Writer

Washington -- The process of nuclear disarmament "cannot succeed if nuclear non-proliferation fails," says a U.S. arms control official who headed the American delegation to the 2000 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

U.S. Ambassador Norman Wulf, who is the State Department's special representative for nuclear nonproliferation, offered his personal views during a recent panel discussion in Washington on the viability of the NPT regime and the efficacy of past and future review conferences. The panel was part of a two-day conference on non-proliferation sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although the Bush administration has not yet articulated its position with respect to the 2005 NPT review process, Wulf said it does support multilateral approaches to non-proliferation.

"Multilateral regimes are important," Wulf said, and no activity requires multilateral cooperation more than thwarting non-proliferation. "Global non-proliferation and arms control regimes will continue to be an important and valuable part of U.S. strategy against non-proliferation," he said.

Wulf pointed out that the administration's message "often gets lost in the noisy debate over missile defense," but missile defense is only one element of a greater non-proliferation strategy. Pursuit of missile defense does not mean the administration is abandoning non-proliferation, he said.

Participating in a panel entitled: "Do NPT Review Conferences Really Matter?" Wulf answered the question posed by the panel's title affirmatively by asserting that past conferences have made a difference. Now that the Treaty is approaching universality with 187 nations subscribing to it, he predicted that the subject of compliance will become more of an issue. The next Review Conference in four years will have to deal with the subject of Treaty violators, he said.

The continued viability of the NPT "depends very much on strong compliance and enforcement," Wulf said. The arms control official suggested that the upcoming review process may need to consider what steps NPT signatories should take if the United Nations Security Council or the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors deliver findings of non-compliance.

Camille Grand, an adviser to the French Ministry of Defense on non-proliferation issues and another panel member, warned that if the review process fails to address the real issue associated with the NPT, and the Treaty turns into another disarmament debate forum, it will spawn frustration and what he called "NPT fatigue."

Harald Muller director of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) said the issue of Treaty compliance is most crucial. Past discussions, he said, failed to address in any concise way alleged non-compliant actions pursued by Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

Wulf said the expectations for what the NPT can accomplish are sometimes too great. "It cannot solve all the world's problems," he said. "It cannot bring peace to the Middle East."

These arms control experts were only three of well over 500 government officials, non-proliferation specialists, and journalists who attended the two day June 18-19 Carnegie conference from countries including Russia, India, New Zealand, South Korea, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Australia, China, Norway, Argentina, Japan and Vietnam.

Marshall Igor Sergeyev, adviser on strategic stability to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the gathering in his keynote address that nuclear stability may be more precarious than ever following nuclear explosions in South Asia by India and Pakistan in 1998.

"The world may enter a phase where the use of nuclear weapons will be more likely than ever before," Sergeyev warned. Strengthening existing international non-proliferation regimes, he said, should be tackled through a set of additional measures to be developed based on threat and risk analysis. Countering nuclear proliferation is a major point for cooperation between Russia, the United States, and other countries, the former Russian Defense Minister said, and where mutual interests coincide there are unprecedented venues for international cooperation to tamp down destabilizing forces.

Asked about Russian progress toward destroying its large stockpile of chemical weapons, Sergeyev acknowledged that there are problems. Destroying such a large accumulation of chemical weapons under the terms of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention will require investments, he said, and, perhaps, "a little longer time than we thought."

Uta Zapf, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in the German Bundestag, delivered plenary remarks to the conference. She was privy to a recent presentation on missile defense delivered in Europe by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy National Security Affairs Adviser Stephen Hadley. She said the welcome consultations raised a lot of questions that could not yet be answered.

In the wake of President Bush's June to trip to Europe and his signaling of a new comprehensive strategy combining missile defenses and nuclear reductions, Zapf said his policy sounds good, but she noted that some Europeans are still asking what it really means. She also said Europeans are largely eager to maintain multilateral arms control treaties. Verifiable treaties are needed as a hedge against proliferation, Zapf added.

Europeans are interested in the viability of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the German official said, even though they are not party to it. Zapf also spoke in favor of the Geneva-based Fissile Material Cut-off Talks, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, efforts to broaden the Missile Technology Control Regime, and completing the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol.

Another key speaker, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, sought to make the case that U.S. sanctions against Pakistan should be lifted. He said his government has taken steps "to reduce the dangers implicit in possession of strategic weapons." In an effort to put the nuclear genie "under chains," the Pakistani official said his government has reinforced nuclear custodial controls in the past year.

Former U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Charles Curtis spoke at length about efforts being made by the new Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an organization he now heads, to reduce the global threat from weapons of mass destruction. He reminded the audience that diplomacy and cooperation should be the "first line of defense against the spread of weapons of mass destruction" and missile defense should be the last one "if all else fails." He said he hopes to focus NTI not just on the threats posed to the United States and countries of the former Soviet Union, but on those in regions of greatest proliferation concern such as the Middle East and Asia.

Changing the nuclear force posture in the direction that President Bush has outlined "should be a matter that the entire non-proliferation community can get behind," Curtis said. While change won't come easily, he said, presidential leadership and new thinking are required on "how to speed the pace of force structure change in the U.S. and Russia without losing the transparency, verifiability and stability that are the benefits of traditional arms control."

On the subject of threat analysis and response, Curtis said he believes the greatest threat is not posed by "nuclear warheads loaded on missiles and launched from a rogue state," but, harking back to the attack on the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salam, "from warheads in the belly of a ship or the back of a truck delivered with no return address."

The conference was also the venue for the release of a new edition of a book published by the Monterey Institute of International Studies Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and Carnegie's Non-Proliferation Project entitled: "Nuclear Status Report." It states that while a decade of effort by the United States and other countries has resulted in significant progress in Russia and the other newly independent states (NIS), serious proliferation challenges from weapons of mass destruction continue. "These challenges pertain both to the enormous amount of nuclear weapons, material, and expertise present in the NIS nuclear archipelago and to the policies pursued by the post-Soviet states with respect to nuclear exports and non-proliferation," writes Carnegie's Non-Proliferation Project Director Joe Cirincione and Monterey's CNS Director William Potter.

The 200-page book features unclassified data collected on Russia's current nuclear arsenal and projected developments of its future force, an updated map of NIS nuclear facilities, and site descriptions of Russian naval facilities where nuclear material may be at risk.

Additional information about presentations made at the conference may be viewed at http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/nppconf2001.htm