Farewell to nuclear arms?

As we survey the contemporary international strategic landscape, the mushroom clouds on the horizon appear to be the darkest they have been in six years. The most recent disturbing news has been revelations of a series of "rogue" nuclear experiments by South Korean scientists. In September 2004, Seoul admitted to some of its research scientists extracting a tiny amount of plutonium in an experiment in 1982 and conducting three enrichment experiments in 2000 to produce 0.2 grams of enriched uranium. Plutonium and uranium are two key ingredients of nuclear weapons.

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The United States is asserting the right to develop new generations of earth-penetrating, bunker-busting nuclear weapons and battlefield "mini-nukes", as well as refining the doctrines underpinning the deployment and possible use of nuclear weapons. At the April 2004 session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in New York, some of the nuclear-weapon States (NWSs) opposed calls for subsidiary bodies to look at nuclear disarmament, resisted demands for "negative security assurances" not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear States, and tried to exclude reference to previous review conferences, in particular the consensus 1995 Final Document, which included thirteen practical steps to nuclear disarmament. Washington no longer accepts the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the "unequivocal undertaking" of the NWSs to the total elimination of nuclear arsenals, and the maintenance of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

China continues to modernize its nuclear arsenal and is the only NWS to have it expanded since the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. However, it is still a long way behind the United States and the Russian Federation, and has no intention to catch up with them. While Israel crawled quietly under the nuclear barrier some time ago, India and Pakistan crashed through them noisily in 1998 and came close to war in 2002. Concerns remain about North Korea's capacity and intention to acquire nuclear weapons (if it doesn't already have some), the proliferation-sensitive activities of Iran, the off-the-shelf purchase of nuclear weapons by Saudi Arabia, and the potential leakage of "loose nukes" from Russia.

Worst-case scenarios see terrorists using nuclear or radiological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of people. We cannot be confident that an attack combining the sophistication and ruthlessness of "9/11" with the use of nuclear weapons will not happen. As far as we know, no terrorist group has the competence to build nuclear weapons, nor is there any evidence so far to suggest that such weapons have been transferred to terrorist organizations. The only other reassuring nuclear certainties are that Libya has walked away from that path and Iraq does not have them. But the dark lining to this particular silver cloud is that many other regimes may have concluded that Saddam Hussein would not have been attacked if he had possessed deliverable nuclear weapons.

As the world prepares for the 2005 NPT Review Conference, we face four nuclear options: the status quo, proliferation, nuclear rearmament, or abolition. The choices could not be starker.

A restoration of the 1995 status quo would require a rollback of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan-and only them. Trying to denuclearize South Asia is as realistic as demanding nuclear abolition immediately. It cannot be achieved by finger-wagging at their nuclear naughtiness. Just as weapons that have been invented cannot be disinvented, so too all those that have been tested may be detested, but cannot be de-tested.

There is another serious and intractable problem. The nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan and Israel are NPT-illicit. For India and Pakistan, the question is no longer if they are going to be nuclear powers, but what kind will they be. The challenge for the world is how to reconcile the two countries' de facto nuclear status with the NPT regime. The definition of a nuclear-weapon State is chronological, a function of countries having been nuclear powers when the NPT was signed, rather than analytical or existential. India and Pakistan could test, deploy or even use nuclear weapons, but they cannot be described as NWSs. In principle, the United Kingdom and France could dismantle their nuclear edifice and destroy their nuclear arsenals, but would still count as NWSs. This is an Alice-in-Wonderland approach to strategic affairs of deadly seriousness.

For how long after they have acquired nuclear weapons should countries be approached conceptually within the framework of non-proliferation? Alternatively, if India, Pakistan and Israel are to be disarmed of nuclear weapons, then why shouldn't the other five NWSs? The belief that a self-selected group of countries can forever retain a nuclear monopoly defies common sense, logic and history.

An under-appreciated effect of 11 September was to change dramatically the focus of United States concern from universal to differentiated nuclear proliferation. Previously, the NPT was the centrepiece and embodiment of the non-proliferation norm. Today, its concern seems to be not in relation to the NPT, but the relation of nuclear countries with Washington. India and Pakistan have been removed from the list of countries of concern (indeed Pakistan has now been designated a major non-NATO--North Atlantic Treaty Organization--ally). Instead, Washington has concentrated its attention on the axis-of-evil countries that are hostile to the United States, and the concern is no longer limited to State proliferators, but extends much more broadly to non-state groups and individuals, especially those who might some day contemplate acts of nuclear terrorism. This is the true meaning of the promise that the United States will not allow the most destructive weapons to fall into the world's most dangerous hands. There lies the logic of pre-emption, if necessary, well before the threat actually materializes. This also explains why some of today's most potent threats come not from conquering States within the Westphalian paradigm but from failing States outside it.

Other States may also be changing opinions and policies. Previously, most had sought security from nuclear weapons, believing them to be uniquely evil and of no possible use; now they may edge back to seeking security in nuclear weapons. Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 sent chills of apprehension down the spines of many countries that have their own secessionists. Who will be the next target of intervention by tomorrow's international moral majority? The two wars have caused grave disquiet and unease, and made many countries more determined to upgrade their national defence capability. They might become interested in nuclear warheads and missiles as leveraging weapons in order to affect the calculus of United States decision-making on wars.

In the case of advanced countries, the flow of enabling technologies, material and expertise in the nuclear-power industry can be used, through strategic pre-positioning of materials and personnel, to build a "virtual" nuclear-weapons portfolio capable of rapid weaponization. Within the constraints of the NPT, a non-nuclear industrialized country can build the necessary infrastructure to provide it with the requisite "surge" capacity to upgrade quickly to nuclear weapons; this is why the news of the experiments conducted by South Korean scientists is worrying.

Some commentators fear that arms control is at an impasse and disarmament could be reversed. Treaties already negotiated and signed could unravel through nonratification or breakouts. The testing of nuclear weapons could be resumed by any one of the five legal or three de facto nuclear powers. Iran's confrontation with the International Atomic Energy Agency could lead it to pull out of the NPT altogether. If the NPT status quo is already history, and the risks of arms control reverses and proliferation are real, then we must either accept a world of more nuclear weapons and more NWSs, or move to a nuclear-weapon-free world. There is no third way.

It is difficult to convince some of the futility of nuclear weapons when those that have such weapons prove their continuing utility with the insistence on keeping them. The preaching of exhortations and the coercion of sanctions need to be buttressed with the force of example. Ultimately, the logic of nuclear non-proliferation is inseparable from the logic of nuclear disarmament. Hence the axiom of non-proliferation: as long as any one country has them, others, including terrorist groups, will try their best (or worst) to get them.

The NPT is tied to a frozen international power structure that is decades out of date. It has become dangerously fragile. The road towards a nuclear-free destination includes deep reductions in nuclear arsenals, further constraints on the extraterritorial deployment of nuclear weapons, the entry into force of the CTBT, a ban on missile test flights and production of fissile materials, a pre-emptive ban on nuclear militarization of outer space, and the de-alerting and de-mating of nuclear forces, warheads and missiles.

Such scenarios provoke dismissive comments from so-called "realists". Realistically speaking, is there another option beyond those identified here? If not, which is the most preferred option of the remaining three? Rollback to pre-1998 status quo, in the name of realism? Unchecked proliferation? Rearmament? As with Winston Churchill's famous aphorism on democracy, the abolitionist option may well be unrealistic; all other conceivable options are even less realistic as strategies for our common security and survival.

Confronted with a world that cannot be changed, reasonable people adapt and accommodate. The turning points of history and progress in human civilization have come from those who set out to change the world instead. The only guarantee against the threat of nuclear war is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. In most contexts, a step-by-step approach is the best policy. Such caution can be fatal if the need is to cross a chasm. In the case of nuclear weapons, the chasm over which we must leap is the belief that world security can rest on weapons of total insecurity.

Ramesh Thakur is Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan. These are his personal views.