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Towards a zero-nuclear weapon world

Nearly two years have passed since American statesmen George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn proposed a programme to free the world of all nuclear weapons. It received fairly wide support in the U.S., the U.K. and Western Europe, and interest in it has been kept alive through a series of conferences on it around the world. But it is yet to result in any concrete action or commitment on the part of any country towards faster arms reduction. Nor has it ge nerated any groundswell of world opinion demanding swift action towards that end.

In fairness it must be said that the chances of any nuclear disarmament initiative succeeding are very slim. The vision of a nuclear weapon free world is far from new. Peace activists have been urging it since the dawn of the nuclear age. Bertrand Russell called for it in the 1950s. The Pugwash movement has advocated it. And thousands of peace groups around the world have campaigned for it. All these have had some impact but could not prevent the massive arms build-up during the Cold War.

Therefore, no one expects this latest initiative to bear fruit just in a couple of years. If at all it succeeds, it will take decades. Besides, things could pick up pace if the new Obama administration begins to take some positive steps towards arms reduction. But even as we give the Shultz et al proposal more time to take effect, it is worth examining whether it does have the necessary ingredients to succeed where all previous attempts have failed, and whether its sponsors are going about it in quite the best way.

Firstly, one major factor going in favour of this initiative is that it has been taken not by peace activists, “idealists” or people from non-nuclear nations, but by hard realists from the biggest nuclear power in the world. All four authors in their heyday were top U.S. policy-makers presiding over a massive launch-ready nuclear arsenal and an “all options are open” nuclear policy. Dr. Kissinger, with all respects, is generally viewed as the epitome of the shrewd geo-political strategist, not known for any idealistic excesses. Such people would not have put their combined prestige behind universal disarmament had they not sensed a shift in perception developing in Western strategic circles about the utility of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, nuclear weapons are no longer viewed as war-fighting instruments. At best they have political and strategic value. Even in those roles their usefulness may be diminishing for countries like the U.S. For them the strategic advantage of possessing a large nuclear arsenal may increasingly be outweighed by the danger of terrorists (or nations they distrust) getting hold of even a few of the weapons. It is fairly clear that the former cannot deter the latter. So a world with no weapons at all may start looking safer for the West than in the present situation.

It does not matter if this disenchantment with nuclear weapons stems from purely pragmatic rather than pacifist considerations. That is all the more reason it might lead to eventual disarmament.

However, the factors contributing to this nascent disenchantment with nuclear weapons in the West do not necessarily apply to many developing nations. For them, the possession of even a few nuclear weapons can appear to have a huge deterrence value against attack or harassment by a neighbour or a major power. For instance, there are many in Asia who believe, rightly or wrongly, that if only Afghanistan and Iraq had possessed nuclear weapons they would have been spared the U.S.-led invasion. In this line of thinking, a nuke-free world will only further benefit countries with conventional military superiority.

For a developing nation a nuclear weapon can also serve as a status symbol, a sign of technological achievement, and a place at the high table. For many of them the counterbalancing fear of nuclear terrorism does not weigh quite so heavily, nor is non-proliferation a major goal. While no non-nuclear nation will openly express a desire for nuclear capability, there are quite a few who are held back only by the fear of international sanctions, and the absence of sufficient technical or financial prowess to achieve it.

It is therefore not surprising that the Shultz et al proposal has not been met with the same enthusiasm in non-Western countries, as it has in the U.S. and in Europe. In much of the developing world, it has been received with indifference and scepticism. Some see it as old wine in a new bottle. Others are wary of hidden motives — an attempt by the U.S. to maintain its dominance through its massive conventional arsenal, whose effects are being eroded by proliferating nuclear capabilities elsewhere.

Russia’s official response to the proposal has been total silence (though supporters of the proposal claim Russian support behind the scenes). China and India did politely welcome the idea but did not offer any concrete commitments. In India’s case, much of its response was by way of asserting its own proprietary rights over the idea of disarmament — Rajiv Gandhi’s proposal, the nation’s stand in the United Nations for decades, and so on.

Given this situation, a world free of nuclear weapons cannot be achieved by the U.S. and Europe alone, or even all the five nuclear weapon states that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty acting together. It must necessarily be a joint enterprise involving all countries — the nuclear haves and the have-nots. If even a handful of nations, big or small, choose not to cooperate, it will introduce possibilities for explicit or clandestine violations and jeopardise the delicate process of approaching and maintaining a zero-weapon world.

All countries will have to be brought on board to achieve universal disarmament. That is clearly not possible if some of them continue to associate power, prestige, and deterrence value with nuclear weapons. Opinion must be generated worldwide to counter this perception and devalue these weapons.

At present, neither the U.S. nor Russia can credibly preach such devaluation, since they themselves retain several thousand weapons each, even 15 years after the Cold War ended. True, they had already cut their nuclear forces a great deal, but much more is needed to be done. Otherwise the march towards zero will simply not proceed to the next stage. Nor will forward movement on other subsidiary agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) proceed beyond the “business as usual” pace.

Some commentators have urged the two Cold War powers to reduce their arsenals to about a thousand weapons each. In fact, as a marketing strategy, a target of 999 weapons each for the U.S. and Russia will have an even better impact, especially if it is pre-announced by them jointly as a step en route to global disarmament. By coming down to the same three-figure range as the other nuclear powers, they will then have the credibility and moral right to ask the latter to reduce their own arsenals further, as part of a more equitable and coordinated process of jointly disarming down to global zero.

If the U.S. and Russia can also forswear nuclear first use and put all weapons on de-alert, that would help even more. If the Obama administration, once it settles down, were to take such steps, it could truly lead the world in a fundamentally new direction. If all this sounds hopelessly unlikely and idealistic, it is surely less so than the larger vision of a nuclear weapon free world that is now being advocated by men of the world.

Lastly, it may be considered premature to seek global disarmament without first stopping nuclear testing and fissile material production through the entry into force of CTBT and a verifiable FMCT. Logically this makes sense. But these “pre-requisites” have proven very hard to achieve despite decades of effort. So, perhaps the opposite strategy is better — to ride on this new disarmament wave, create a different mindset about nuclear weapons and devalue them. In that changed atmosphere, agreement on sundry nuclear treaties may be easier to reach.

(R. Rajaraman is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

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