ADVANCING THE GOALS OF NPT ARTICLE VI

Abstract

International technical cooperation on issues relevant to the challenges of nuclear disarmament can demonstrate commitment to obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, strengthen the security of fissile materials and weapons, and develop technical approaches to support more ambitious disarmament activities in the future. Including non-nuclear weapon states would ensure that their views are taken into account and would invest them in developing solutions to key challenges. This article discusses three areas for technical cooperation that would build on past activities and that could produce such benefits as improved protection, control, and accounting of nuclear weapons and fissile material; enhanced transparency for nuclear weapon complexes; and mechanisms for international management of sensitive civilian nuclear facilities. International cooperation in each of these areas could provide a technical basis for pursuing possible future disarmament negotiations and substantively demonstrate commitment to Article VI.

Keywords:

• Nonproliferation
• disarmament
• Article VI
• NPT
• technical cooperation

Notes

1. Examples of recent literature include: George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, p. A15; George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. A15; Harold Brown and John Deutch, “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy,” Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007, p. A15; George Bunn and John B. Rhinelander, “Reykjavik Revisited: Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Policy Brief, World Security Institute, September 2007; Michael Quinlan, “Abolishing Nuclear Armouries: Policy or Pipedream?” Survival 49 (Winter 2007–08), pp 7–16; and Margaret Beckett, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, June 25, 2007.

2. These include South Africa and Egypt and other members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Some of these countries are also very concerned with establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East and with the implications of the U.S.-India nuclear agreement; examples of their concerns can be found in their submissions to the 2010 U.N. NPT PrepCom official website, <www.un.org/NPT2010/documents.html>.

3. On improving communications, see for example Christopher Ford, “Debating Disarmament: Interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Nonproliferation Review 14 (November 2007), pp. 401–428; on ratifying and negotiating new treaties, see for example Shultz et al., “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons”; and on rigorous discussion, see George Perkovich, in “Taking Disarmament Seriously,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, June 25, 2007, <www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nuclear_dis.pdf>.

4. The need for improved standards has been acknowledged recently in the United States. In response to security lapses that resulted in the accidental transport of live nuclear weapons and (in a separate incident) the inadvertent shipment of nuclear weapon technology to Taiwan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called for an overhaul of U.S. accounting standards. See Josh White, ”Gates Orders Nuclear Inventory,” Washington Post, March 28, 2008, p. A3.

5. See Department of Energy, “Plutonium: The First 50 Years: United States Plutonium Production, Acquisition, and Utilization from 1944 through 1994,” especially Figure 1, “U.S. Plutonium: Where It Came From and Current Balance Statement,” <www.osti.gov/opennet/forms.jsp?formurl=document/pu50yrs/pu50y.html>.

6. See the Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005), pp. 56–60 and 92–94.

7. For example, see Geoff Brumfiel, “Nuclear War: The Safety Paradox,” Nature 451 (2008), pp. 230–231.

8. Tom Sellers, director emeritus, Sandia National Laboratories, correspondence with the author, May 2008, including review of the unpublished final report of the workshop.

9. Associated Press, “Bush Orders ‘Significant Reduction’ in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile,” International Herald Tribune, December 18, 2007.

10. Molly Moore, “Sarkozy Announces Cuts in Nuclear Arsenal,” Washington Post, March 22, 2008, p. A8.

11. See Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials, pp. 97–106.

12. Jim Doyle and Oleg Bukharin, “Transparency and Predictability Measures for U.S. and Russian Strategic Arms Reductions,” Nonproliferation Review 9 (Summer 2002), pp. 82–100.

13. See reference to this work in Beckett, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?”

14. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Offers New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD,” speech at the National Defense University, February 11, 2004.

15. Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Expert Group Report submitted to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, INFCIRC/640, February 22, 2005; MIT, The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (Cambridge: MIT, 2003), pp. 44, 86.

16. Geoffrey Forden and John Thomson, “Iran as a Pioneer Case for Multilateral Nuclear Arrangements,” MIT, Science, Technology, and Global Security Workshop, September 5, 2006 (revised May 24, 2007).

17. Tabletop exercises have been used for a diverse set of arms control–related issues, including managed access for inspecting facilities under the Chemical Weapons Convention. They are much less costly than an exercise at an existing facility, and they also encourage dialogue and better understanding of divergent opinions.

18. Des Browne, “Laying the Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament,” Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, February 5, 2008.

19. Jonas Gahr St⊘re, “Minister's Summary and Preliminary Recommendations,” Conference on a Global Effort to Achieve a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, Oslo, February 27, 2008, <www.regjeringen.no/upload/UD/Vedlegg/Sikkerhetspol/Chairs_sum_final.pdf>.

20. A good summary of the activities of the Group of Scientific Experts can be found in Eva Johannisson, Astrid Persson, and Marie-Louise Schyberg, Seismology 1989–1992, Nuclear Test-Ban Verification (DIANE Publishing, 1994), pp. 3–4.

21. For more on the International Panel on Fissile Materials, see <www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/pages_us_en/about/about/about.php>. Des Browne proposed a P5 technical working group on nuclear disarmament in his speech to the 2008 Conference on Disarmament. See Browne, “Laying the Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament.”

22. Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials.

23. Beckett, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?”

24. V.C. Fields, “Portal and Perimeter Monitoring Systems (PPMS) for Use in Verifying Arms Control Treaty Compliance,” Nuclear Material Management Annual Meeting Proceedings 20 (July 1991), p. 803.

25. See Cooperative Monitoring Center, Technology Training and Demonstration Area, Sandia National Laboratories, <www.cmc.sandia.gov/ttd-demo-area.htm>.