Chapter Seven: Building Cooperation for Non-proliferation and Disarmament

Abstract

Rarely in the atomic age have hopes for genuine progress towards disarmament been raised as high as they are now. Governments, prompted by the renewed momentum of non-proliferation and disarmament initiatives, have put nuclear policy at the top of the international agenda.

But how can countries move from warm words to meaningful action? By what means could the world be weaned from its addiction to nuclear weapons and who should undertake the task of supervising this process? This Adelphi examines practical steps for achieving progress toward disarmament, assessing the challenges and opportunities associated with achieving a world without nuclear weapons. It places the current debate over abolition in the context of urgent non-proliferation priorities, such as the need to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of extremist regimes and terrorists. It distils lessons from states that have already given up nuclear programmes and from the end of the Cold War to suggest ways of countering the efforts of Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. For the longer term, it offers policy recommendations for moving towards a reduced global reliance on nuclear weapons.

Notes

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity: The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond’, p. 21, http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/PDF/2020report0508.pdf.

Goldschmidt, ‘Exposing Nuclear Noncompliance’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 1, 2009, pp. 143–64. The author served previously as Deputy Director General of the IAEA.

Ibid., pp. 9–10. See also Goldblat, ‘Amending the Non-Proliferation Regime’, Disarmament Forum, no. 1–2, 2009, pp. 37–9 and Paul Meyer, ‘Saving the NPT: Time to Renew Treaty Commitments’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 16, no. 3, 2009, pp. 467–8.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity’, p. 18.

James M. Acton, ‘The Problem with Nuclear Mind Reading’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 1, February–March 2009, pp. 119–42.

For a detailed analysis of the role of the Security Council in disarmament issues, see United Nations Security Council, ‘The Security Council's Role in Disarmament and Arms Control: Nuclear Weapons, Non- Proliferation and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction’, no. 2, New York, 1 September 2009.

Müller, ‘Was wäre, wenn? Wie kann sich die internationale Gemeinschaft in einer kernwaffenfreie Welt gegen Regelbrecher durchsetzen?’, Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung Report, 4/2009, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 10–13.

United Nations Security Council, Note by the President of the Security Council, S/23500, 31 January 1992.

Goldschmidt, ‘Safeguards Noncompliance: A Challenge for the IAEA and the UN Security Council’, Arms Control Today, vol. 40, no. 1, January–February 2010, 25–6.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity’, pp. vii–viii, pp. 28–9.

‘IAEA Budget Gets Modest Boost’, Arms Control Today, vol. 39, no. 7, September 2009, p. 34.

Ollie Heinonen, remarks at the conference, ‘The NPT and a World Without Nuclear Weapons’, organised by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Helsinki, 22–24 October 2009.

Perkovich and James M. Acton, ‘Abolishing Nuclear Weapons’, Adelphi Paper 396 (London: Routledge for the IISS, 2008), pp. 73–8.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 4.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity’, p. 16.

Sagan, ‘Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 160.

‘Uranium Enrichment’, Q&A, BBC News, 1 September 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5278806.stm.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity’, p. 10.

UNSC, UN Security Council Resolution 1887 (2009), S/RES/1887, 24 September 2009, par. 14.

Mohamed ElBaradei, ‘Towards a Safer World’, The Economist, 16 October 2003, http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2003/ebTE20031016.html.

Javier Solana, ‘Strengthening Disarmament and the Non- Proliferation Regime’, in Hannes Swaboda and Jan Marinus Wiersma (eds), Peace and Disarmament: A World Without Nuclear Weapons? (Brussels: The Socialist Group in the European Parliament, 2009), pp. 29–33.

‘Opening Remarks of Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project’, report on Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations, Part III: Foreign Policy, Public Diplomacy and Non-Proliferation, 14 November 2005, Washington, DC, p. 3, http://www.9-11pdp.org/press/2005-11-14_remarks.pdf.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency, ‘Cooperative Threat Reduction Annual Report to Congress Fiscal Year 2010’, 31 December 2008, p. 2, available at http://www.dtra.mil.

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National Nuclear Security Administration, ‘NNSA Announces Equivalent of More than 15,000 Nuclear Weapons of Russian HEU Eliminated’, press release, 23 September 2009, http://nnsa.energy.gov/news/2592.htm.

Cirincione, Bomb Scare, pp. 141–2.

National Nuclear Security Administration, ‘GTRI: Reducing Nuclear Threats’, fact sheet, January 2009, http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/news/2330.htm.

Center for Defense Information, ‘The Global Threat Reduction Initiative's First Two Years’, 6 September 2006, http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=3650; see also ‘Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Tables for the National Nuclear Security Administration’, US Department of Energy, p. 27, http://nnsa.energy.gov/news/documents/NNSA_Budget_Tables_FY2010(2).pdf.

‘Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Tables for the National Nuclear Security Administration’, US Department of Energy, p. 28.

Proliferation Security Initiative Participants website, US Department of State, http://www.state.gov/t/isn/c27732.htm.

Condoleezza Rice, ‘Remarks on the Second Anniversary of the Proliferation Security Initiative’, US Department of State, Washington, DC, 31 May 2005, http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/wmd/State/46951.pdf.

Tony Foley, ‘Opening Remarks, PSI Operational Experts Group Meeting’, Proliferation Security Initiative Meeting, Sopot, Poland, 22 June 2009, pp. 6–7, http://dtirp.dtra.mil/TIC/treatyinfo/psi/psi_remarks.pdf.

US Department of State, Proliferation Security Initiative Ship Boarding Agreements website, http://www.state.gov/t/isn/c27733.htm. These states include Bahamas, Belize, Croatia, Cyprus, Liberia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mongolia and Panama; see also Joel A. Doolin, ‘The Proliferation Security Initiative: Cornerstone of a New International Norm’, Naval War College Review, vol. 59, no. 2, spring 2006, pp. 29–57.

United Nations Security Council, UN Security Council Resolution 1874 (2009) [Non-proliferation/Democratic People's Republic of Korea], S/RES/1874, 12 June 2009, p. 3, paras 11–12.

Simeon Kerr and Harvey Morris, ‘N Korean Arms for Iran Seized by UAE’, Financial Times, 28 August 2009, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1cc52dcc-93f6-11de-9c57-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1; see also Richard Lloyd Perry, ‘Thai Police Seize North Korean Aircraft Carrying 40 Tons of Heavy Weapons’, The Times, 13 December 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6954868.ece.

Amitai Etzioni, ‘Tomorrow's Institution Today: The Promise of the Proliferation Security Initiative’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 3, May/June 2009, pp. 7–11.

Kaegan McGratth, ‘Verifiability, Reliability, and National Security: The Case for U.S. Ratification of the CTBT’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 16, no. 3, 2009, pp. 407–27.

See David Albright and Corey Gay, ‘A flash from the past’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 53, no. 6 (1997), p. 16. For a comprehensive review of the decades-long controversy over whether a nuclear test occurred, see National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190 at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm.

Daryl G. Kimball, ‘For a Safer America: The Case for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’, fact sheet, Arms Control Association, Washington, DC, October 2009, http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/CaseStatement.

Sam Nunn, ‘The Mountaintop: A World Without Nuclear Weapons’, remarks at the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, Oslo, Norway, 27 February 2008, http://www.nti.org/c_press/speech_Nunn_Oslo022708.pdf.