This Week in Nuclear Non-Proliferation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
posted by Mr.B
The good news is the The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK (North Korea)), China, Russia, South Korea, the US, and Japan (home of Hello Kitty!) have signed a joint statement. For the Six-Party-Talks which have been on-again/off-again for the last two years, this represents a huge achievement and is potentially the biggest step in the direction of keeping all of Korea, north and south nuclear weapons free since North Korea officially left the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003. Basically the statement says that all parties are agreed that North Korea will give up its existing nuclear weapons and its program to develop more as well as giving up its existing civilian power generating nuclear reactors and will re-join the NPT in exchange for a bunch of aid including primarily electrical power to be supplied by South Korea and possibly China and Russia and a new nuclear reactor to be supplied by the United States. Kudos to the North Koreans, the Chinese negotiator who drafted the statement, and The Secretary of State Dr. Rice. Under her leadership the US negotiating team gave up a crucial concession, namely allowing North Korea to have a civilian power generating nuclear capability in the future.
The bad news is that a day later the North Koreans have clarified their position with regard to the timing of these events stating that they have to get the new reactor before they give up their existing nuclear programs and weapons. The joint statement is significantly vague on timings of events. Based on the reactions of the other parties, the North Koreans' reactor-first requirement may destroy this process. I mean, reactors take years to build, and billions of dollars.
In further bad news, the European 3, Germany, the UK, and France, now seem to have lost patience with negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear programs. Iran is threatening to pull out of the NPT altogether should the matter be referred to the UN Security Council, or, even if the 3 or the US use threatening language with regard to Iran nuclear programs. Well the 3 are circulating a draft resolution which will in fact bring the matter before the Security Council. Given what they know, they are mandated by the NPT to do just that, or they would be in NPT noncompliance. According to Reuters the draft asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement."
In the cold war, nuclear arms issues were considered a matter of rationality, an international chess match in which self and mutual interests were calculable and predictable. Now that Iran and North Korea are entering into potential nuclear weapons capabilities, it seems that from a Western, Russian, and even Chinese point of view the motivations and potential actions of these potential new nuclear weapons wielders are unfathomable, even crazy. Disregarding for a moment the temptation to escalate the name-calling from "rouge nations" to "kooks with nukes", I gotta say I think it makes a lot of sense for Iran and North Korea to want to have nuclear weapons. Were I a State Department negotiator I wouldn't know how to begin to try to convince either Iran or North Korea how it makes more sense for them not to have nukes. I mean, you can't go in saying, "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them..." North Korea, for example, has demonstrated in past that it would rather put up with unmitigated famine than loss of its nuclear program. Iran knows it can weather even the harshest of economic sanctions, their only real worry is a potential US invasion, which, from Iran's point of view, ultimately has little if any connection to the Security Council's considerations or proclamations.
Poor Iran and North Korea. Neither has any friends to speak of. Both are basically surrounded by nuclear weapons equipped military forces. For their military forces to have any credibility, ultimately, they have to have nukes because in the way these things are generally considered, a nuke trumps any weapon, except another nuke.
It seems to me that the main and basically overriding reason that any country would seek to gain nuclear weapons is because their potential adversaries have them. That is, in any given potential conflict, the non-nuclear side "B" cedes to the nuclear-weapons bearing side "U" the ultimate decision as to whether "B" will even exist after the conflict regardless of campaigns' results, regardless of effort, sacrifice, or even apparent victory.
Which brings us back to the NPT. Iran's negotiator is right when he says that the NPT was founded on the idea that ultimately total nuclear disarmament was the agreed goal. In this regard, they fault the nuclear weapons powers, in this case, the uglies, with what they consider amounts to NPT non-compliance. We've had almost 40 years of the NPT and rather than a significantly nuclear-disarmed world, we have a world of nuclear weapons haves and have-nots and an ongoing IAEA effort to enforce a status quo rather than an improving situation. And that effort at maintaining a status quo has been far less than successful. Firstly signing into the NPT is voluntary, China, Israel, Pakistan, and India have become nuclear weapons powers when they each were not NPT signatories. That means they broke no international law in their obtaining these weapons. China was even subsequently let into the treaty as a "have" and India may soon follow suit. Iran and North Korea are technically NPT violators as they both did sign in as have-nots and their actions were pretty much inarguably in violation while still in the treaty. As mentioned above, North Korea officially left the NPT in 2003 and Iran is currently threatening leaving the treaty.
What is all this worth? Why doesn't the NPT work? I think it is primarily because the perpetuation of nuclear haves and have-nots. I think it is past time for the big 5 nuclear powers to get serious about drastic nuclear arms reductions. I'd even go so far as to say that the US military is so good at conventional warfare that it doesn't need nukes in the context of a nuclear- disarmed Russia and China. The problem here would be the perceived unequally of might diminishment. That is, Russia might balk saying, with great credibility, that without nukes, Russia becomes proportionately much weaker than either the US or China. But to my way of seeing it, if the big powers could get their act together and disarm, then it would be so much easier to disarm the lessor nuke weapons nations.
Only then could an arms negotiator in the US State Department really say "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them." Let's face it, unless we go there, it is actually irrational for Iran, North Korea, hell, even Japan and Taiwan not to have nukes.
The bad news is that a day later the North Koreans have clarified their position with regard to the timing of these events stating that they have to get the new reactor before they give up their existing nuclear programs and weapons. The joint statement is significantly vague on timings of events. Based on the reactions of the other parties, the North Koreans' reactor-first requirement may destroy this process. I mean, reactors take years to build, and billions of dollars.
In further bad news, the European 3, Germany, the UK, and France, now seem to have lost patience with negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear programs. Iran is threatening to pull out of the NPT altogether should the matter be referred to the UN Security Council, or, even if the 3 or the US use threatening language with regard to Iran nuclear programs. Well the 3 are circulating a draft resolution which will in fact bring the matter before the Security Council. Given what they know, they are mandated by the NPT to do just that, or they would be in NPT noncompliance. According to Reuters the draft asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement."
In the cold war, nuclear arms issues were considered a matter of rationality, an international chess match in which self and mutual interests were calculable and predictable. Now that Iran and North Korea are entering into potential nuclear weapons capabilities, it seems that from a Western, Russian, and even Chinese point of view the motivations and potential actions of these potential new nuclear weapons wielders are unfathomable, even crazy. Disregarding for a moment the temptation to escalate the name-calling from "rouge nations" to "kooks with nukes", I gotta say I think it makes a lot of sense for Iran and North Korea to want to have nuclear weapons. Were I a State Department negotiator I wouldn't know how to begin to try to convince either Iran or North Korea how it makes more sense for them not to have nukes. I mean, you can't go in saying, "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them..." North Korea, for example, has demonstrated in past that it would rather put up with unmitigated famine than loss of its nuclear program. Iran knows it can weather even the harshest of economic sanctions, their only real worry is a potential US invasion, which, from Iran's point of view, ultimately has little if any connection to the Security Council's considerations or proclamations.
Poor Iran and North Korea. Neither has any friends to speak of. Both are basically surrounded by nuclear weapons equipped military forces. For their military forces to have any credibility, ultimately, they have to have nukes because in the way these things are generally considered, a nuke trumps any weapon, except another nuke.
It seems to me that the main and basically overriding reason that any country would seek to gain nuclear weapons is because their potential adversaries have them. That is, in any given potential conflict, the non-nuclear side "B" cedes to the nuclear-weapons bearing side "U" the ultimate decision as to whether "B" will even exist after the conflict regardless of campaigns' results, regardless of effort, sacrifice, or even apparent victory.
Which brings us back to the NPT. Iran's negotiator is right when he says that the NPT was founded on the idea that ultimately total nuclear disarmament was the agreed goal. In this regard, they fault the nuclear weapons powers, in this case, the uglies, with what they consider amounts to NPT non-compliance. We've had almost 40 years of the NPT and rather than a significantly nuclear-disarmed world, we have a world of nuclear weapons haves and have-nots and an ongoing IAEA effort to enforce a status quo rather than an improving situation. And that effort at maintaining a status quo has been far less than successful. Firstly signing into the NPT is voluntary, China, Israel, Pakistan, and India have become nuclear weapons powers when they each were not NPT signatories. That means they broke no international law in their obtaining these weapons. China was even subsequently let into the treaty as a "have" and India may soon follow suit. Iran and North Korea are technically NPT violators as they both did sign in as have-nots and their actions were pretty much inarguably in violation while still in the treaty. As mentioned above, North Korea officially left the NPT in 2003 and Iran is currently threatening leaving the treaty.
What is all this worth? Why doesn't the NPT work? I think it is primarily because the perpetuation of nuclear haves and have-nots. I think it is past time for the big 5 nuclear powers to get serious about drastic nuclear arms reductions. I'd even go so far as to say that the US military is so good at conventional warfare that it doesn't need nukes in the context of a nuclear- disarmed Russia and China. The problem here would be the perceived unequally of might diminishment. That is, Russia might balk saying, with great credibility, that without nukes, Russia becomes proportionately much weaker than either the US or China. But to my way of seeing it, if the big powers could get their act together and disarm, then it would be so much easier to disarm the lessor nuke weapons nations.
Only then could an arms negotiator in the US State Department really say "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them." Let's face it, unless we go there, it is actually irrational for Iran, North Korea, hell, even Japan and Taiwan not to have nukes.
Posted at 2:48 PM
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