Le Monde diplomatique, November 2005 - OUR FISSILE WORLD
- From: "Pacifist" <mushroom200@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 15 Nov 2005 02:35:51 -0800
Le Monde diplomatique
-----------------------------------------------------
November 2005
OUR FISSILE WORLD
The bomb proliferates
___________________________________________________________
The original intention in preventing the proliferation of
nuclear weapons was less the preservation of the world from
nuclear destruction than the retention of military supremacy for
those states that had it already, plus a few chosen allies. What
will happen now?
by Georges Le Guelte
___________________________________________________________
THE more countries that have nuclear weapons, the greater the
risk that they will be deliberately used to destroy rather
than deter, that a conflict will be triggered by mistake,
that a country will make a pre-emptive strike on an
adversary's nuclear installations, or that nuclear weapons or
fissile material will fall into the hands of criminal groups.
Nuclear proliferation is one of the greatest dangers for the
future of humanity. But that was not why steps were first
taken to prevent it. From the beginning of its military
programme in 1942, the United States banned disclosure of any
information about atomic energy, its aim being to prevent
Nazi Germany becoming the first country to possess the bomb.
After 1945 the ban was maintained to delay work in the Soviet
Union. After the Soviet Union had tested its first
thermonuclear device in 1954, secrecy was abandoned in favour
of a policy of "atoms for peace", under which countries
wanting to engage in nuclear activities could obtain
assistance from the US provided they undertook to use the
technology only for peaceful purposes. They remained free to
develop a military programme if they were able to do so on
their own, and several countries took advantage of the
absence of overall international regulation to pursue their
military ambitions. Seven of the eight countries that now
have a nuclear arsenal acquired the know-how in 1960 (1).
The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was the main factor in the
establishment of a global non-proliferation policy.
Washington and Moscow realised that if another country with
nuclear weapons had been involved, they might not have
managed to control the crisis. The two superpowers originally
saw the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) mainly as a means to
keep control of the countries in their blocs. It was signed
on 1 July 1968 and divided the world in two: "nuclear-weapon
states", those that had exploded a nuclear device before 1
January 1967 and were required not to help other countries
acquire such weapons (2); and all the rest, which were
required not to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons and to
place all their nuclear facilities under the control of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
For all its shortcomings, the NPT provides the means to
prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Had it been applied in
full, only five countries would still have a nuclear arsenal.
But for it to succeed, it had to be universal: all states had
to accede to it, the control machinery had to be totally
efficient and, in the event of violation, strong measures had
to be taken to end the violation and deter other states from
following suit.
The first signatories
From the outset, many states saw the NPT as an unacceptable
infringement of their sovereignty. Germany, Japan and Italy,
at which it was originally aimed, at first refused to sign
it. It entered into force in 1970 (3) because it had been
signed by countries such as Ireland, Denmark, Canada, Sweden
and Mexico, which saw it as a means of reducing the risk of
collective suicide, by states closely aligned with the US or
the Soviet Union, and by countries that did not think they
would ever have the means to manufacture atomic weapons.
Iraq, Iran and Syria were among the first signatories.
A turning point came in the mid-1970s with the rise of the
anti-nuclear movement in the US and then in Europe, and above
all with India's first nuclear test in 1974. Public opinion
was alarmed at the dangers of proliferation for world
security, and many states decided they would be more secure
if their neighbours had no nuclear weapons. Combined with
pressure from both the US and the Soviet Union, the
anti-nuclear movement brought about a rapid increase in the
number of NPT signatories, now joined by major industrialised
countries such as Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland and the
Netherlands. By 1979 more than 100 states had signed. The
wave of accessions continued and accelerated after the end of
the cold war, despite the break-up of the Soviet Union. In
1995, when the signatory countries decided to prolong the NPT
indefinitely, they numbered 178.
Yet for various reasons the major powers have never made the
necessary effort to persuade India, Israel and Pakistan to
join them. These have always refused to accede to the NPT and
have been able to acquire nuclear weapons without infringing
their international obligations. That would no longer be
possible today: the treaty has 189 signatories (4), almost
all existing states, and no country would be able to build a
nuclear explosive device without violating its international
commitments.
Among those states are Argentina and Brazil, countries that
embarked on nuclear programmes with military aims in the
1970s and 1980s. Since they had not signed the NPT at the
time, those activities did not conflict with their
international obligations. Both abandoned their military
programmes and acceded to the NPT, Argentina in 1995 and
Brazil in 1998. They did so not because their external
security had improved, but because military dictatorships in
power had been replaced by democratic regimes.
The same applies to South Africa, which built half a dozen
nuclear bombs in the 1970s and 1980s without violating any
international obligations and with the IAEA unable to
intervene. It dismantled its weapons shortly before
abandoning apartheid and acceded to the NPT in 1991.
In the mid-1990s the US sought to bolster the NPT with a
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and a convention banning
the production of enriched uranium or weapons-grade
plutonium. Both agreements were aimed solely at India and
Pakistan, but the US believed it would be easier for them to
sign a treaty that applied to all countries.
Of doubtful use
In fact, the agreements are almost meaningless for other
countries. Since 184 states have already undertaken not to
acquire nuclear weapons, it would be no great achievement for
them to promise not to test weapons they do not intend to
build. The five nuclear-weapon states have stopped their
tests (France would not be able to resume them since it has
dismantled its Pacific test polygon). But India and Pakistan
exploded nuclear devices in 1998, continue to produce fissile
material, and refuse to accede to the CTBT or convention.
Inability to conduct tests has not prevented countries from
acquiring weapons. Israel has never tested a nuclear device,
but all specialists agree that it has a nuclear arsenal.
South Africa never officially had any nuclear tests, yet it
possessed several weapons. Nor is there any doubt that there
were weapons in Pakistan even before 1998. The draft treaty,
which the US now refuses to sign, is nearly worthless apart
from the symbolic value attributed to it by public opinion.
The IAEA is responsible for verifying that states comply with
treaty obligations, but its task was always complicated. IAEA
inspectors can only enter an NPT signatory country that has
concluded and ratified a special agreement with the IAEA
setting out its rights and obligations. They were unable to
enter North Korea until April 1992, although the existence of
the reactor and reprocessing plant that produced plutonium
had been known since 1990. Inspectors' access to
installations is hampered by administrative restrictions.
They must first apply for visas, which may take time, and are
allowed to inspect a given installation only for a time
calculated strictly according to the nature of its activities
and the quantity of uranium and plutonium it contains.
The 1970s control system
The rules governing the activities of IAEA inspectors were
laid down in 1971, not by IAEA officials, who could have
specified the means required to carry out their task, but by
representatives of the signatory states, especially those
most advanced in the field at the time. They took care to
keep to a minimum the constraints that inspections would
place upon them and their industrial enterprises. The
inspection machinery was based on the assumption that a
nuclear programme could not be pursued secretly and that the
only way of cheating was to divert for military purposes
uranium or plutonium that should have remained in the civil
domain. So the inspectors only had access to installations
whose existence was declared by the signatory states, and
their task was to ensure that all fissile material entering
those installations was used for peaceful purposes. They did
not have to check whether a country had nuclear facilities
whose existence had not been declared.
These restrictions were not wholly unreasonable considering
the technology of the period. The production of enriched
uranium then required large plants with a characteristic
layout and high power consumption, whose construction and
operation could not go undetected. In the early 1970s only
highly industrialised countries could contemplate large-scale
nuclear activities. Such countries were democratic states in
which information circulated freely and a decision to acquire
nuclear weapons could scarcely be kept secret.
Within the limits, the control system worked reasonably well,
no explosive device having been manufactured since 1945 in a
facility under the surveillance of the IAEA. The controls are
not are infallible, but up to now they have been effective
enough for those tempted to cheat to prefer not to run the
risk of being caught by IAEA inspectors.
Nevertheless, after the Gulf war of 1990-91, installations
were discovered in Iraq that would have enabled it to acquire
a nuclear arsenal within a few years. Saddam Hussein proved
that clandestine nuclear activities are possible, at least in
a country subject to ruthless dictatorship. The Iraqis had
used the centrifugal enrichment process introduced in Europe
in the mid-1970s, which requires much smaller facilities that
can be housed in unobtrusive buildings, consume much less
energy, and are unlikely to be detected by intelligence
services unless they have informers on the spot.
Exemptions for the five
In 1997, to adapt its control machinery to this new cheating,
the IAEA adopted an additional protocol (5) that gives its
inspectors enhanced powers, although they can only be applied
to states that have signed and ratified it (6). These powers
have produced significant results (7) and could give IAEA
inspectors the means to detect the existence of activities
conducted in secret. But they are not a panacea. Unless the
inspectors are lucky, they are unlikely to identify a
clandestine installation without having been informed of its
location by an intelligence service.
An international organisation such as the IAEA is not an
espionage agency. It has no means of acquiring secret
information and must respect the agreements concluded with
countries whose activities it investigates. Locating the
exact site of a nuclear plant is a job for intelligence
services; it is up to them to provide the IAEA with the
information.
None of the five nuclear-weapon states is required to sign
the additional protocol. It would be no surprise if the
inspectors concluded that there are military nuclear
installations on well-known sites in the US or France.
Nevertheless France has symbolically signed a sweetened
version of the protocol to humour its partners in the
European Union, for whom the difference in treatment of the
two categories of states is a sensitive issue.
Nor is there a treaty banning the five from manufacturing new
types of weapons, although that would be contrary to the
spirit of Article VI of the NPT. It is not entirely contrary
to the letter of the treaty, which hypocritically establishes
a link between nuclear disarmament and general, complete
disarmament. For more than 40 years the five nuclear-weapon
states, which are also the world's leading exporters of
conventional weapons, have deliberately refrained from
calling for general disarmament while cynically invoking lack
of progress in that area to ignore their own commitment to
nuclear disarmament.
The US regularly talks about building new nuclear weapons.
The arms manufacturers, who have been grasping for decades at
every argument for developing their activities, are obsessed
with the idea. These plans have no real operational
significance, but they monopolise public attention and have
obscured the more important changes introduced by the nuclear
posture review of January 2002. In particular, nuclear
weapons are no longer a separate category of US weaponry:
they are now an integral part of its offensive strike system
and, like any other weapon, can be used by the president as
he sees fit, according to the mission.
The review also proposed the recruitment of a new generation
of arms specialists to carry on when the present generation
retires, and the replacement of US intercontinental ballistic
missiles in 2020, submarines in 2030 and bombers in 2040. The
US nuclear arsenal is conceived for the indefinite term; at
any rate until the end of the century.
If the IAEA finds that a state has infringed its obligations,
it refers the matter to the UN Security Council, which is the
only body authorised to take measures to end the
infringement. The UN has twice dealt with violations of
non-proliferation commitments, with mixed results. In Iraq,
whose clandestine activities were not discovered until after
the Gulf war in 1991, when it had been defeated militarily
and was obliged to accept the conditions imposed by the
Security Council, the IAEA was able to destroy all the
installations that had been built illegally.
Non-proliferation: a cold war concept?
In 1992 the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North
Korea) was condemned for violating its commitments under the
treaty. It reacted almost immediately by announcing that it
would consider any penalty as an act of war, and China
proclaimed that the crisis should be settled by negotiation.
Beijing's attitude, plus fear of a war liable to cause many
casualties in South Korea, led in 1994 to an agreement
between Pyongyang and Washington under which South Korea
undertook to build two large electricity-generating reactors
in the North in exchange for an end to North Korean nuclear
activities. This agreement held until the US decided to
terminate it at the end of 2002, whereupon North Korea
withdrew from the NPT, expelled the IAEA inspectors and
announced a few months later that it now possessed nuclear
weapons.
None of these decisions drew any reaction from the Security
Council or other countries, except for terrifying but
ineffectual threats from the president of the US. Since then,
and in accordance with China's wishes, there have been joint
negotiations among North and South Korea, the US, China,
Japan and Russia (8). Under the terms of a joint declaration
signed on 19 September 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon
its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and
security guarantees from the other countries. But Pyongyang
questioned the agreement the next day, demanding recognition
of its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,
before softening its position again. North Korea's
announcement of its intention to renounce nuclear weapons has
been welcomed by the IAEA in a resolution adopted unanimously
by 139 member states on 30 September.
In Iran, no infringement has been established if, as the IAEA
is entitled to do, it interprets the treaty literally. But if
the current talks with Britain, France and Germany do not
produce a satisfactory outcome, IAEA member states may refer
the matter to the Security Council on the basis of a
political, rather than a legal, interpretation of the text.
Non-proliferation policy has been seriously undermined since
the 1995 conference, when the main aim seemed to have been
achieved. The need to halt the spread of nuclear weapons was
challenged by neoconservatives in the US, who do not want the
country bound by any international obligations. They have
been followed by others for whom non-proliferation is a cold
war concept that makes no sense now the cold war is over, and
who believe the appropriate response to the threat of nuclear
proliferation is the construction of anti-missile defence
systems, which all countries should have to purchase from the
US. Others, perhaps more numerous or more influential,
consider that nuclear proliferation should not be condemned
if the countries involved are allies of Washington.
The NPT has also been severely criticised. For many years
there have been complaints about an arrangement that allows
five countries to possess the most powerful weapons and bans
all others from acquiring them. Such unequal treatment was
deemed inevitable during the cold war, but it has been much
harder to put up with since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What has aggravated this frustration is that the NPT also
contains provisions on nuclear disarmament, which the five
states have ignored. By maintaining their nuclear arsenals at
mid-1970s levels, the five can only encourage others to
follow.
Disillusionment with the idea of non-proliferation was
strikingly evident at the NPT review conference, 2-27 May
2005. Instead of unanimously condemning those signatories
that cheated on their obligations, the participating states
parted without reaching any agreement, revealing a world
divided, disillusioned and distressed. Meanwhile the
much-decried NPT system, to which no alternative has ever
been proposed, remains in force, and its fate may well be
decided by the outcome of the North Korean and Iranian
crises.
If North Korea and Iran abandon their military ambitions, as
many have done before them, countries that might be tempted
to imitate them will probably think again about embarking on
a costly project that appears doomed to failure. If they get
their own way, several other states may also decide to
develop nuclear weapons.
________________________________________________________
Georges Le Guelte is director of research at the Institute of
International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), Paris
(1) The Soviet Union tested its first A-bomb in 1949 and its
first H-bomb in 1953; Britain exploded its first fission
device in 1952 and its first fusion bomb in 1957; for France,
the dates are 1960 and 1968; for China, 1964 and 1967. In
1956 France supplied Israel with the Dimona reactor and
reprocessing plant that produced the plutonium for its first
weapons, and in 1955 Canada delivered to India the
heavy-water reactor that produced the plutonium for the first
Indian bombs.
(2) In order of first explosion: the US, the Soviet Union (of
which Russia is the successor state), Britain, France and
China. Contrary to a widespread misconception, there is no
formal link between permanent membership of the Security
Council and the status of nuclear-weapon state. The permanent
members of the Security Council (which were the victorious
powers in the second world war) were designated as such by
the UN Charter signed on 26 June 1945, when no country
possessed a nuclear device. "Nuclear-weapon countries" are
those which had them at the time the NPT was signed.
(3) The text of the treaty stipulates that it will enter into
force when it has been signed and ratified by a total of 40
states.
(4) This would be reduced to 188 if account were taken of
North Korea's decision of January 2003 to withdraw from the
treaty. However, the other countries do not recognise that
decision, since it does not comply with the conditions laid
down for a state to exercise its right to withdrawal.
(5) The full title is "Protocol additional to the agreement
between ... (name of state) and the International Atomic
Energy Agency on the application of safeguards".
(6) Iran has signed the additional protocol but not ratified
it, and the new parliament is unlikely to approve the
document. The Iranian authorities sometimes claim to be
complying with it on a voluntary basis, but they do so only
partially and with considerable reservations.
(7) In 2004 IAEA inspectors established that South Korea and
Taiwan had in the past secretly conducted research into
uranium enrichment and plutonium separation techniques. This
work remained secret until they acceded to the additional
protocol.
(8) In this framework Washington agreed to bilateral talks
with Pyongyang, which it had hitherto rejected.
Translated by Barry Smerin
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