Nuclear Threat Dwarfs Existing Treaties

U.S. President George W. Bush must be prepared to make major compromises if he wants a tougher nonproliferation regime to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that do not now have them, according to a new report released here Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP).

At the very least, he should be prepared to give up his latest efforts to devise new nuclear weapons, such as so-called "bunker-busters" that are supposed to penetrate targets buried far underground, and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to eventually eliminate its nuclear arsenal, according to the report, "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security."

A global blueprint for a kind of grand bargain between nuclear and non-nuclear states to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and begin the process of their elimination, the 220-page report comes two months before the May 2005 review of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whose effectiveness is being questioned today as never before.

It also comes amid rising tensions over North Korea's recent assertions that it has produced nuclear weapons and U.S. accusations that Iran is carrying out a secret program to develop them.

Bush, who has labeled both nations charter members of the "axis of evil," has stated that a nuclear-armed Tehran or Pyongyang is "unacceptable" and repeatedly insisted that all options to deal with the question are "on the table."

The NPT has been badly battered in recent years despite a 1995 toughening of the treaty made possible by an agreement by 173 non-nuclear states to forswear their development in return for a commitment by the five main nuclear states and permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, Britain, and the U.S. – to eventually eliminate their arsenals.

In 1998, India and Pakistan, neither of which had signed the NPT, carried out nuclear tests, while the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon raised the specter of terrorists obtaining nuclear arms of their own.

In 2003, it emerged that a sophisticated network of engineers, companies and individuals spanning at least nine nations and headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan had been selling nuclear-arms-related designs and equipment to at least three nations over several years.

Since then, North Korea, one of Khan's clients, boasted that it had developed a weapon, and some political leaders, notably in Japan and Brazil, suggested that they might have to review their decisions not to do so, adding to fears of an ever more rapid spread.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, which has rejected the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty and renounced the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, has pushed Congress to authorize the development of new kinds of nuclear weapons.

The Carnegie report, a draft of which was circulated to some two dozen foreign governments last year and subsequently revised to take their views into account, is an effort to establish the framework and basic principles of a tougher nonproliferation regime that would cover not only NPT signatories, but also non-signatories, including nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and Israel.

The report, which was written by five nuclear specialists at Carnegie, including the endowment's president, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, is based on a number of assumptions, beginning with the conclusion that the existing NPT framework cannot possibly address the problems that the world now faces.

It also assumes that "the United States cannot defeat the nuclear threat alone, or even with small coalitions of the willing" and that, therefore, international cooperation is indispensable to the success of any successor or tightened regime.

To gain that cooperation, however, the United States, as well as the other declared nuclear states, must persuade the have-nots that the new regime will be "balanced and fair," according to co-author John Wolfsthal.

"We have to assure [non-nuclear] states that this isn't a new form of colonialism … [and] that the law also applies to the United States," he said.

The report sets out 20 priority actions allocated within six core "obligations" that the regime should incorporate to meet the range of proliferation of threats.

The six obligations include:

* Making "nonproliferation irreversible" by, among other measures, barring the acquisition of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants by any state that does not have them already in return for providing guaranteed, affordable supplies of fuel and services needed to meet nuclear energy needs; ending production of fissile material, suspending nuclear cooperation with countries that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cannot certify are in full compliance with the NPT; and tightening the terms by which states can withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did several years ago.

* Devaluing the political and military currency of nuclear weapons by requiring nuclear states to do more to make their previous nonproliferation commitments irreversible, particularly through the steady, verifiable dismantling of their nuclear arsenals and producing a "road map" for eventual eliminating them, as Britain did in a "White Paper" published last year; and

* Securing all nuclear materials by maintaining strict standards for securing, monitoring and accounting for fissile materials in all forms to prevent nuclear terrorism and by accelerating the identification and removal of all vulnerable nuclear states within four years.

* Stopping illegal transfers of nuclear material by establishing enforceable prohibitions against efforts by individuals, corporations, and states to assist others in secretly acquiring nuclear-related technology, equipment, and know-how by making such activity illegal under domestic law, making mandatory existing voluntary international controls on technology transfer under the IAEA, and enhancing the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) by grounding it international law through a UN Security Council resolution and broadening it to cover interdictions in international waterways and airspace, in addition to the member nations' territorial waters and airspace.

* Committing greater effort to conflict resolution through diplomacy with the understanding that the underlying insecurities that drive states to pursue weapons cannot be addressed by nonproliferation measures by themselves.

* Persuading India, Israel, and Pakistan to accept the same nonproliferation obligations accepted by the NPT nuclear-state signatories, most particularly their commitment to eventually eliminating their nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration already favors a number of these recommendations, particularly those that would toughen enforcement, such as the PSI, according to Rose Gottemoeller, another co-author.

"They are less enthusiastic about our emphasis on nuclear state obligations to devalue nuclear weapons," she added, noting renewed efforts by the administration over just the past two weeks to get Congress to approve millions of dollars in research and development of bunker-buster bombs.

(Inter Press Service)