Chapter Five: Assuring Security

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

United Nations Security Council (UNSC), UN Security Council Resolution 1887 (2009), S/RES/1887, 24 September 2009, par. 9.

Jozef Goldblat, Twenty Years of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Implementation and Prospects (Oslo: PRIO, 1990), pp. 37–40.

UNSC, UN Security Council Resolution 984 (1995), S/RES/984, 11 April 1995, par. 1.

Michael Rühle, ’NATO and Extended Deterrence in a Multinuclear World’, Comparative Strategy, vol. 28, no. 1, 2009, pp. 10–16.

Masa Takubo, ‘The Role of Nuclear Weapons: Japan, the U.S., and ”Sole Purpose”’, Arms Control Today, vol. 39, no. 9, November 2009, pp. 14–18.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity: The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond’, prepared at the request of the Agency's director general, 2008, p. 16, http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/PDF/2020report0508.pdf.

Sagan, ‘The Case for No First Use’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 3, 2009, pps.168–69.

John A. Vasquez, ‘The Deterrence Myth: Nuclear Weapons and the Prevention of Nuclear War’, in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The Long Postwar Peace: Contending Explanations and Projections (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 205–21.

John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University press, 1987), p. 230.

Ward Wilson, ‘The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 15, no. 3, November 2008, p. 422.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 7.

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity’, p. 17.

Sagan, ‘Shared responsibilities for nuclear disarmament’, p. 163.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Arms (Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, June 2006), pp. 72–3, http://www.wmdcommission.org/files/Weapons_of_Terror.pdf; Goldblat, Twenty Years of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Implementation and Prospects, pp. 37–40.

Sagan, ‘The Case for No First Use’, pp. 163–82. This is not the first such debate. In the early 1980s, four leading statesmen issued a call for the United States to refrain from the first use of nuclear weapons, but Washington did not alter the official doctrine. See McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara and Gerard Smith, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 60, no. 4, Spring 1982, pp. 753–68.

The subsequent debate on Sagan's article conducted by Morton Halperin, Bruno Tertrais, Keith Payne and K. Subrahmanyam shows the ‘no first use’ pledge of nuclear weapons continues to divide national decision-makers and policy analysts. The key issues appear to be whether a no first use commitment would add anything significant to the existing restraints on the use of nuclear weapons felt by major powers and whether such pledges would be perceived as credible by the threshold countries. See Halperin, Tertrais, Payne and Subrahmanyam, ‘No First Use: An Exchange’, pp. 17–46.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 7.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 9.

Pavel Podvig, ‘Assessing START follow-on’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/pavel-podvig/assessingstart-follow.

Oliver Meier, ‘German Nuclear Stance Stirs Debate’, Arms Control Today, vol. 39, no. 10, December 2009, pp. 30–2.

Ibid.,

Müller, ‘Challenges Faced by the NPT’, p. 20.

Andrew Scobell, ‘Is There a Civil-Military Gap in China's Peaceful Rise?’, Parameters, vol. 39, no. 2, July 2009, pp. 4–5.

European Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Centre, ‘China Analysis: Is China A Reliable Partner in Non-Proliferation?’, China Analysis no. 19, Sciences Po., August 2008,pp. 1–4, http://ecfr.3cdn.net/a77be9e83ad45d47d5_s0m6i2e4p.pdf.

See Bates Gill, Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007).

‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, US National Security Council brief (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, September 2002), p. 29; Patrick E. Tyler, ‘U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop A One- Superpower World’, New York Times, 8 March 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/us-strategyplan-calls-for-insuring-no-rivalsdevelop.html?pagewanted=1.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 10.

Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, vol. VI: 1935–1942 (London, Chelsea House, 1974), p.8625.