Disarming Conflict

In a recent[i]speech to the New York policy community, the Secretary-General (S-G) put forward a “five-point proposal” that highlights a range of issues that have for some time been regarded as key to recovering from the disastrous arms control posture of the Bush Administration.

It will take more than just the absence of George W. Bush to get disarmament back on track (and two follow-up postings here will examine just two of the challenges), but it is clear that there will now be new opportunities to use the next two years leading up to the 2010 Nucleaqr Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to break through the current stalemate.

Not surprisingly, the Secretary-General’s first point was to renew a general call on nuclear weapon states (NWS) to meet their nuclear disarmament obligations, but he upped the ante considerably by encouraging nuclear weapon states to negotiate “a nuclear-weapons convention, backed by a strong system of verification.” The pursuit of such a convention has broad international support, demonstrated annually through a resolution in the UN General Assembly, but the nuclear weapon states (NWS) are still a long way from being persuaded.

Ban Ki-moon also said “the world would also welcome a resumption of bilateral negotiations between the United States and Russian Federation aimed at deep and verifiable reductions of their respective arsenals.” It is an idea that US Defence Secretary Robert Gates[ii] has also recently endorsed. Both Russia and the US would like to lower the burden of maintaining huge nuclear arsenals, but there are also major differences or points of dispute. The nature and extent of verification (i.e. how intrusive should it be?) is guaranteed to be a sticking point, as is agreement on what to do with weapons taken out of service. At the 2000 NPT Review Conference all states agreed that disarmament should be “irreversible” – that is, all weapons taken out of service should be destroyed – but the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) did not honor that principle, simply putting decommissioned warheads in storage.

The S-G called for significant preparatory work toward new disarmament agreements, including attention to verification requirements, and he endorsed what has long been sought by non-nuclear weapon states, that is, unambiguous assurances from NWS that non-nuclear-weapon states “will not be the subject of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” (see the next post, Ban Ki-moon on Nuclear Disarmament II). The Secretary-General called for “new efforts to bring the CTBT (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) into force. The Bush Administration’s refusal to seek Congressional ratification of the Treaty, which the US has signed, has been a major impediment to its entry into force, but Barack Obama has promised support for ratification. In response to a survey by the Arms Control Association in Washington, Senator Obama wrote: “I will reach out to the Senate to secure the ratification of the CTBT at the earliest practical date and will then launch a diplomatic effort to bring onboard other states whose ratifications are required for the treaty to enter into force.”[iii] 

The Secretary-General also called “for the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations on a fissile material treaty immediately, without preconditions.” He declared his support for nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties and declared “strong support” for “efforts to establish such a zone in the Middle East.”

He urged “all NPT parties to conclude their safeguards agreements with the IAEA, and to voluntarily adopt the strengthened safeguards under the Additional Protocol.”

He also emphasized “accountability and transparency” and called on the NWS to “expand the amount of information they publish about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material and specific disarmament achievements” (see Ban Ki-moon on Nuclear Disarmament III).

He called for other efforts to complement nuclear disarmament measures, including the elimination of chemical and biological weapons (already mandated by treaties), restrictions on conventional arms production and trade and a ban on “space weapons.”

What is required, he said is “global taboo” against “the very possession of certain types of weapons. As we progressively eliminate the world's deadliest weapons and their components, we will make it harder to execute WMD terrorist attacks. And if our efforts also manage to address the social, economic, cultural, and political conditions that aggravate terrorist threats, so much the better.”

It is a welcome entry by the new S-G into the disarmament debate, a debate that promises to be engaged with new vigor, and even new hope, over the next two years.