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Rescue nuclear disarmament from backburner

R. Rajaraman

The United States and Russia have to show the way by speeding up their disarmament plans.

THE PAST couple of years have seen the further dwindling of what little serious interest there was in nuclear disarmament. It is vital for human survival to understand the reasons behind this slide and reverse it.

Arms control has taken the backseat to more recent "flavours of the day" in the consciousness of security analysts and politicians. This is true both within India and in the world at large. In our country, the India-U.S. Nuclear Deal has saturated the nuclear agenda. The Deal is a good development from the point of view of India's energy needs but it has smothered all thoughts of nuclear disarmament in the region. Interest has become focussed instead on how much the Deal will affect India's ability to make more nuclear weapons. While hawks fret that it curtails our bomb-making capacity, arms control activists read into the same Deal an enhancement of India's weapon-making capability. Therefore the debate is only about how fast the Indian arsenal will grow (and Pakistan's, in response to that). Hardly anyone is talking about how to stop the sub-continental arms build-up.

In the international arena too, the push toward arms reduction, which had gained some momentum with the deep cuts negotiated between the U.S. and the Russia in START I and START II, has sputtered to a near halt. There are still about 10,000 operational warheads each remaining in Russia and the U.S. The Bush-Putin Agreement of 2003 calls for them to cut down their deployed arsenals to about 1,700-2,200 weapons by 2012, but it is estimated that even then those countries may have about 6000 weapons each left in their stockpiles. The U.K. has commendably dispensed with air and land based weapons, but that still leaves behind about 200 submarine-based warheads. There seem to be no reductions envisaged in the near future in the arsenals of France or China. Meanwhile Israel is sitting on a keg of a hundred-odd nuclear weapons in what is a truly very explosive region. India and Pakistan are continuing to produce more and more weapons in what was designated by the West only a few years back as the "most dangerous place on earth." None of this seems to matter so much any more to the international community.

Instead, most of the attention has been diverted to horizontal non-proliferation; i.e. to restrict the spread of nuclear material and technology to newer states and non-state actors. Efforts to enforce such restrictions had been around for decades as a natural corollary to nuclear arms control. But they became a major guiding force in U.S. foreign policy only after the devastating 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center followed by the equally tragic, even if smaller, terrorist attacks in England and Europe. Since then the West, particularly the U.S., has been haunted by visions of the next big terrorist attack employing a "dirty bomb," such as a suitcase full of radioactive material exploded with conventional explosives, if not a fully assembled nuclear fission weapon.

Such fears led, in turn, to a major shift in perception of nuclear weapon countries on where their biggest threat lay. It no longer came from one another, but from non-state actors and "rogue states." So the overriding concern has become the prevention of nuclear technology and nuclear materials reaching the hands of "wannabe" nuclear countries and terrorist groups. The current preoccupation with North Korea, Iran, and Al-Qaeda illustrates this shift. As does the increasingly aggressive role as policeman that the International Atomic Energy Agency finds itself playing.

This is not to question the importance of controlling the proliferation of fissile materials (FM) or nuclear weapon technology. For instance, the proposed Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) would indeed be a very desirable goal provided it is designed, unlike the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in an equitable manner. The FMCT is also an essential pre-requisite for the stability of any future nuclear weapon free regime. Clearly one cannot sustain total nuclear disarmament, whenever that day comes, if unsecured production of fissile materials still continues. Hence the FMCT and all initiatives in a similar spirit are very welcome.

But it would be unwise to let preoccupation with horizontal non-proliferation become obsessive and relegate nuclear disarmament to the backburner. This is not just because total disarmament is the ultimate goal of all peace loving people. It is also essential for preventing horizontal proliferation. Any move towards universal control of FM and nuclear technology cannot succeed without simultaneously reducing the arsenals of all nuclear powers. If FMCT is essential for disarmament, the converse is equally true. Let us explain this.

Attitudes of different countries towards the FMCT and similar restraint regimes will clearly vary, depending on where they stand with respect to their nuclear ambitions. Those countries that consider their nuclear arsenals as saturated will be more receptive to some form of control than those that see themselves as still being in "growth mode." Thus, the U.S., Russia, the U.K., and France have all stopped growing their nuclear arsenals and have plenty of back-up stocks of FM. Accordingly they have all placed a voluntary moratorium on the production of FM. China is reported to have done the same informally.

By contrast new nuclear weapon states like India and Pakistan feel that their arsenals are still in the growing stage. They don't want to cap their FM production as yet. While they support the evolution of some form of a worldwide FMCT regime, in the meantime they are continuing to protect and improve their capability for making FM. This is best illustrated by the vigour with which India has defended the placement of the Fast Breeder and eight other power reactors outside IAEA safeguards, on grounds of national security.

Finally there are the more recent aspirants to nuclear status. North Korea, which exploded its first nuclear test a month ago, has just started its build-up of fissile materials. Regardless of whether the true aim of Iran's programme is nuclear energy or weapons, it has clearly expressed its intent to enrich uranium. Neither country will support an FMCT till it has enough stock of FM.

Similarly, if some more countries attain a threshold level of technology, and are bent on going nuclear, they will eventually find some way of building at least a few weapons. However tightly the cupboard of nuclear goodies may be locked through strenuous safeguarding efforts, something will eventually leak out from under the door, as happened in Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.

Therefore, to prevent further proliferation it is not enough to just control the supply side of nuclear technology. You must also control the demand side by removing the thirst for nuclear arsenals.

The value of nuclear weapons

Already realisation is dawning that as military weapons, nuclear warheads are quite useless. No one seriously envisages using them in war. Even a modest nuclear exchange will cause such devastation that whatever military or territorial gains might have been envisaged will be overwhelmed by the damage done.

As for their utility as deterrents, a couple of dozen surviving nuclear weapons are more than sufficient to serve as deterrents. Even some hardheaded analysts in the U.S. are advocating bringing their deployed warhead strength down to 500. A far smaller number will do.

If countries still seek nuclear weapons it will be for their value, apart from deterrence, as status symbols and tools of diplomacy. North Korea made its weapons not in order to actually drop them on Japan or Alaska but to gain a place on the high table of international diplomacy and bring the U.S. into direct negotiations.

Hence it is essential to deflate the status of nuclear weapons. That is where re-activating the disarmament agenda comes in. The U.S. and Russia have to show the way by speeding up their disarmament plans to bring their arsenals down to a few hundred weapons — in the same ballpark as that of other nuclear powers. After that a coordinated effort at further disarmament can be attempted by all of them together. Then, and only then, would there be some possibility of persuading others that nuclear weapons are no longer symbols of status and power.

It may sound totally naïve to keep pressing for universal disarmament, particularly in the present context of nuclear cynicism. But is even more unrealistic to expect, after having boosted nuclear weapons to become a currency of power, that some countries can continue to have large arsenals while others are prevented through sanctions and military force from seeking the same currency.

Difficult as disarmament is to achieve, there is no other way out of the predicament of proliferation and nuclear terrorism. If the U.S. truly considers nuclear terrorism as its biggest threat, it has to rise to the occasion by helping get rid of nuclear weapons everywhere, including from its own cupboard.

(The writer is Emeritus Professor of Physics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

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