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ABSTRACT
The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons presents complex challenges, including issues of verification and security. Verifying the transformation to a nuclear-weapon-free world (NWFW) is an adaptive, multi-stage process, involving various mechanisms and tasks for nuclear and non-nuclear weapon States, and monitoring a wide range of items and activities for increasing or decreasing nuclear weapons capability. Whether States find the Treaty verifiable depends on the available capabilities, but also on political assumptions and requirements. Verification plays an important role in the transformation towards a NWFW to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in a hostile environment where uncertainties are seen as threatening. Verification also helps to establish a viable international security landscape based on cooperation and trust that is able to address the complex implementation issues of nuclear weapons prohibition and elimination.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Jürgen Scheffran is professor at the Institute of Geography of Universität Hamburg and head of the Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC) in the Excellence Initiative ‘Integrated Climate Systems Analysis and Prediction’ (CliSAP) and at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN). He is Associate Member of the Center for Science and Peace Research (ZNF) and Faculty Affiliate of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security (ACDIS) at the University of Illinois.
Notes
1 Open-ended Working Group (OEWG), Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations (2016). https://www.unog.ch/oewg-ndn (accessed January 10, 2018).
2 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 7 July 2017, https://www.un.org/disarmament/ptnw (accessed January 10, 2018). The Treaty enters into force 90 days after ratification by 50 States. In this article, short names will be Prohibition Treaty, Ban Treaty, Treaty or the acronym TPNW.
3 ICAN, http://www.icanw.org (2017).
4 For a legal interpretation see: Daniel Rietiker, ‘New Hope for Nuclear Disarmament or “Much Ado About Nothing?”’, Harvard International Law Journal (Online) 59 (Fall 2017).
5 Since the 1990s a number of publications have studied the verification of nuclear weapons abolition, for instance: Chris B. Paine, Tom B. Cochran, and Robert S. Norris, Techniques and Procedures for Verifying Nuclear Weapons Elimination (Canberra Commission Background Papers, August 1996), 167–78; Richard Guthrie, The Transition to a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World: A New Model for the Verification Framework (Verification Matters, Briefing Paper 97/1, April 1997); Jonathan B. Tucker, ‘Verifying a Multilateral Ban on Nuclear Weapons’, INESAP Information Bulletin no. 14 (November 1997): 16–20; David Fischer, ‘Safeguards for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons’, INESAP Information Bulletin no.14 (November 1997): 30–2; Annette Schaper, ‘Verifying Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament’, in Verification Yearbook, ed. Trevor Findlay (London: VERTIC, 2000).
6 Merav Datan et al., Securing Our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (Cambridge, MA: IPPNW, IALANA, INESAP, 2007).
7 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, 158.
8 Toby Dalton et al., Toward a Nuclear Firewall: Bridging the NPT’s Three Pillars (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2017) 1, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CP_301_Dalton_et_al_Firewall_Final_Web.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
9 Dalton et al., Toward a Nuclear Firewall, 1.
10 Ibid., 13–14.
11 For a discussion of verification tasks in the context of a Nuclear Weapons Convention see: Merav Datan, Jürgen Scheffran,‘Principles and Means for Verification of a Nuclear Weapons Convention’, INESAP Information Bulletin no. 14 (November 1997), 21–5; Martin B. Kalinowski, ‘Beyond Technical Verification’ INESAP Information Bulletin no. 14 (November 1997): 25–7; Jürgen Scheffran, ‘Content and Verification of a Nuclear Weapons Convention’, in Remember Your Humanity, ed. Joseph Rotblat (Singapore: World Scientific, 1999), 318–34; Martin B. Kalinowski, Wolfgang Liebert, and Jürgen Scheffran, ‘Beyond Technical Verification. Transparency, Verification, and Preventive Control for the Nuclear Weapons Convention’, in Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, ed. Martin B. Kalinowski (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), 61–8.
12 The specific capabilities and limits of the different verification approaches will not be further discussed here. Some aspects will be addressed in the following sections in the context of TPNW verification. For an overview of verification means see Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, Chapter 4; and INESAP Information Bulletin no. 27, December 2006.
13 Oliver Meier, Sira Cordes, and Elisabeth Suh, ‘What Participants in a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (Do Not) Want’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 9, 2017). https://thebulletin.org/what-participants-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-do-not-want10829.
14 Zia Mian, Tamara Patton, and Alexander Glaser, ‘Addressing Verification in the Nuclear Ban Treaty’, Arms Control Today (June 2017), 14.
15 Meier et al., ‘What Participants in a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (Do Not) Want’.
16 Draft Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (United Nations, A/CONF.229/2017/CRP.1, 22 May 2017), http://fissilematerials.org/library/un17.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
17 172 non-nuclear-weapon States have comprehensive safeguards agreements with the IAEA, and 124 States have in place additional protocols with more extensive reporting and increased rights of IAEA access. See IAEA, Status List: Conclusion of Safeguards Agreements, Additional Protocols, and Small Quantities Protocols (October 7, 2016), https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/16/10/sg_agreements_comprehensive_status_list.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
18 Tom Sauer, ‘Crossroads: Why the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Could Become Obsolete’, The National Interest (December 8, 2017); Jorge Morales Pedraza, ‘Are Nuclear-Weapon States Not Parties to the Nonproliferation Treaty Ready to Renounce to the Possession of Nuclear Weapons?’, Public Organization Review 17 (2017): 335–52.
19 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Statute of the IAEA (Art. 3.B(1)), https://www.iaea.org/about/statute (accessed January 10, 2018).
20 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, 165.
21 Suzanna van Moyland, ‘Programme 93+2: Evolution in IAEA Safeguards’, in Verification 1997: The Vertic Yearbook, ed. Richard Guthrie (Perseus, 1997).
22 Department of Energy, Plutonium – The first 50 years (Washington, DC, February 1996).
23 Trevor Findley, ‘Verification and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, INESAP Information Bulletin no. 27 (December 2006): 67–70; IAEA, Strengthened Safeguards System: Status of Additional Protocols (2004); Thomas E. Shea, ‘Potential Roles for the IAEA in a Warhead Dismantlement and Fissile Materials Transparency Regime’, in Transparency in Nuclear Warheads and Materials, ed. N. Zarimpas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 229–49; George Perkovich et al., Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, 2005).
24 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, 166.
25 IAEA, Safeguards Statement for 2005 (2005), https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/es2005.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
26 Justin Stephanie Young-Stewart, How effective Are IAEA Safeguards? The Case of Iran 2003–2006. Major Research Paper (University of Ottawa, 2017), http://hdl.handle.net/10393/37128 (accessed April 24, 2018).
27 IAEA, Additional Protocol (2017), https://www.iaea.org/topics/additional-protocol. See further Ibaraki Tokaimura, Handbook of International Nuclear Safeguards (Japan Atomic Energy Agency, October 2016).
28 Sven Nussbaum et al., International Safeguards and Satellite Imagery (Berlin: Springer, 2009).
29 Nicole Jawerth, Enhancing Effective Nuclear Verification: Upgrading IAEA Safeguards Capabilities. IAEA (Vienna, 2015). https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/enhancing-effective-nuclear-verification-upgrading-iaea-safeguards-capabilities (accessed April 24, 2018); James Doyle, Nuclear Safeguards, Security and Nonproliferation (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008).
30 See report by the independent Group of Scientific Experts (iGSE), documented in the special issue: ‘Detection of Clandestine Production of Nuclear-Weapons-Usable Materials’, INESAP Information Bulletin no. 27 (December 2006).
31 Datan, Securing Our Survival, Chapter 4.
32 Dalton, Toward a Nuclear Firewall, 14.
33 Steve Fetter, Verifying Nuclear Disarmament, Occasional Paper No. 29 (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, October 1996).
34 Trevor Findlay, ‘Verification of a Nuclear Weapon-Free World’, VERTIC Briefs (May 2003).
35 Mian, ‘Addressing Verification in the Nuclear Ban Treaty’, 18.
36 Conference on Disarmament, Shannon Report (CD/1299, March 24, 1995); https://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/6353020.07198334.html (accessed January 10, 2018).
37 Victor Bragin, John Carlson, and John Hill, ‘Verifying a Fissile-Material Production Cut-Off Treaty’, The Nonproliferation Review (Fall 1998): 97–107; Tatsujiro Suzuki, ‘Ending Fissile Materials Production: A Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and Beyond’, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Policy Brief no. 49 (December 2017).
38 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, Chapter 4.
39 Harold Feiveson et al., Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).
40 Frank von Hippel, Banning the Production of Highly Enriched Uranium (International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2016).
41 African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Pelindaba), http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/pelindaba/text (accessed January 10, 2018).
42 Dalton et al., Toward a Nuclear Firewall, 17.
43 IAEA Director General, Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme (IAEA GOV/2015/68, December 2, 2015): 2. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov-2015-68.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
44 Jonathan Schell, The Abolition (1984), reprinted in: The Fate of the Earth and the Abolition (Stanford University Press, 2000): 118; Sukeyuki Ichimasa, ‘The Concept of Virtual Nuclear Arsenals and “a World without Nuclear Weapons”’, NIDS Journal of Defense and Security, 13 (December 2012): 23–37.
45 Mian et al., ‘Addressing Verification in the Nuclear Ban Treaty’, 19. Also Datan et al, Securing Our Survival.
46 Dalton et al., Toward the Firewall, 19–20.
47 Jürgen Scheffran, ‘Elimination of Ballistic Missiles’, in Towards a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World, ed. Joseph Rotblat and Michiji Konuma (World Scientific, 1997), 310–26.
48 UN General Assembly, Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations (UNGA, A/RES/71/258, January 11, 2017).
49 See the discussion in Meier et al., ‘What Participants in a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (Do Not) Want’. For a summary of positions in the first round of ban treaty talks, see Allison Pytlak, ‘News in Brief’, Nuclear Ban Daily (March 30, 2017): 10–13, http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/nuclear-weapon-ban/reports/NBD1.4.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
50 NPT, 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document (NPT/CONF.2000/28, Parts I and II, 2000), 4.
51 See for instance: Chris Paine, Tom Cochran, and Robert Norris, Practical Interim Steps Toward Nuclear Weapons Elimination and a Fissile Material Control Regime for Nuclear Weapon States, Canberra Commission Issue Paper (New York: NRDC, January 4, 1996).
52 Edward M. Ifft, Verification Lessons Learnt from Strategic Arms Reductions (Deep Cuts Working Paper #2, January 2014); Greg Thielmann and Andrei Zagorski, INF Treaty Compliance: A Challenge and an Opportunity (Deep Cuts Working Paper #9, February 2017). See the reports of the Deep Cuts Commission at http://www.deepcuts.org.
53 Patricia M. Lewis, Laying the Foundations for Getting to Zero: Verifying the Transition to Low Levels of Nuclear Weapons (Vertic Research Report No. 1, September 1998); Patricia Lewis, ‘Verification, Compliance, and Enforcement’, in Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, ed. George Perkovich and James M. Acton, Adelphi Papers 396 (2009): 233–49.
54 Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/CWC/CWC_en.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
55 The 2007 Model NWC is published in Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, and was submitted by Costa Rica as a Working Paper to the UN: https://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/5818312.16812134.html (accessed January 10, 2018).
56 Jürgen Scheffran, The Nuclear Weapons Convention as a Process – Umbrella Negotiations as a Framework for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World (Paper presented at Middle Powers Initiative, Atlanta, January 20–22, 2010). http://www.baselpeaceoffice.org/sites/default/files/imce/oewg/scheffran_the_nwc_as_a_process.pdf (accessed January 10, 2018).
57 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival. The Model NWC outlines five phases over three decades beginning with short-term stability measures and ending with long-term elimination of all nuclear weapon capabilities.
58 Mian et al., ‘Addressing Verification in the Nuclear Ban Treaty’, 16.
59 Similar to the umbrella negotiation framework outlined in Scheffran, The Nuclear Weapons Convention as a Process.
60 Data based on Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, Status of World Nuclear Forces (updated December 2017), https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces (accessed January 10, 2018).
61 Mian et al., ‘Addressing Verification in the Nuclear Ban Treaty’, 17. See further International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), Global Fissile Material Report 2013: Increasing Transparency of Nuclear Warhead and Fissile Material Stocks as a Step Toward Disarmament (October 2013), http://ipfmlibrary.org/gfmr13.pdf.
62 Elin Enger, The Challenge of Verification: The UK-Norway Initiative on Non-Nuclear-Weapon States’ Participation in the Verification of Nuclear Disarmament, Working Paper (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 2013).
63 Aaron Arnold, ‘Blockchain: A New Aid to Nuclear Export Controls?’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (October 19, 2017), https://thebulletin.org/blockchain-new-aid-nuclear-export-controls11204 (accessed January 10, 2018).
64 Datan et al., Securing Our Survival, Chapter 4.
65 Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials, National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC, 2005), 13.
66 Olli Heinonen, ‘Verifying the Dismantlement of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program’, in Nuclear Weapons Materials Gone Missing: What Does History Teach?, ed. Henry D. Sokolski (Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College Press, November 2014), 174.
67 Jürgen Scheffran, ‘Verification and Security in a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World: Elements and Framework of a Nuclear Weapons Convention’, Disarmament Forum 3 (2010): 51–64.
68 Alan Robock, ‘Nuclear Winter’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1, no. 3 (May/June 2010): 418–27.
69 Findlay, ‘Verification of a Nuclear Weapon-Free World’.
70 Inis L. Claude Jr., ‘Collective Security as an Approach to Peace’, in Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, ed. Donald M. Goldstein, Phil Williams, and Jay M. Shafritz (Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), 289–302.
71 Ashton B. Carter, William J. Perry, and John D. Steinbruner. A New Concept of Cooperative Security (Brookings Institution, 1992). Cooperative Security: NATO’s Partnership Policy in a Changing World, DIIS Report (Danish Institute for International Studies, 2014).
72 Bilal Y. Saab and Milsu Goren, Atomic Bonds in an Age of Entropy: The Pursuit of a Nuclear Security Framework in the Middle East (February 28, 2018), https://tcf.org/content/report/atomic-bonds-age-entropy (accessed April 24, 2018). Bernd W. Kubbig and Sven-Eric Fikenscher, eds., Arms Control and Missile Proliferation in the Middle East (Routledge, 2012).
73 CISAC, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy (National Academies Press, 1997), 9.
74 Ibid., 97.
75 Findlay, ‘Verification of a Nuclear Weapon-Free World’, 9.
76 Ibid.