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SPEAKING
FREELY
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is
a crock
By Bhaskar Dasgupta
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The 188 signatories
to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
gathered in New York Monday for another review of
the contentious regime. People have started making
noises about it, but it's going to be quite
predictable. A whole load of documents will be
produced prior to the review conference; the
pacifists and left-leaning folks will demonstrate
vociferously; North Korea and Iran will be hauled
over the coals for daring to want nuclear weapons;
Israel will maintain a discreet silence; India
will bellow about unfair treatment; Pakistan will
squirm about its proliferation history; the United
States will tie itself in knots trying to navigate
some extremely contradictory policy shoals; France
will be petulant; the United Kingdom will be
diplomatically active; Russia will be lost as
usual; the conference will end with some
high-sounding declaration, and that will be it.
Frankly, if you ask me, it's a complete crock, and
the treaty should be torn up.
It is
conducive to repeat what I concluded for Iran in
2003. "Iran will have its nuclear weapons, if not
today then tomorrow. As I mentioned, there is no
downside to Iran and only an upside, which makes
it very difficult to convince Iran to give up its
nuclear weapons program. It cannot be threatened,
cannot be bribed, and certainly cannot be forced.
The neighborhood is tough and to expect Iran to
resign its nuclear aspirations is rather too
naive. All that the world should do now is to try
to address the structure around nuclear power
states. As we have seen with the press reports
about Saudi Arabia wanting Pakistani Nuclear
weapons, it's a mutual deterrence issue. The
nuclear genie is out of the bottle and no amount
of swearing and shouting will cause it to go back
in again. 'Welcome (premature, mind you) to the
nuclear club, Iran'."
Let me cut to the
chase: I recommend that the NPT be hung, drawn,
quartered and dropped neatly into the rubbish bin.
While it was useful for many years during the Cold
War, it has proven to be spectacularly ineffective
in the past decade. So what's the big deal about
the NPT? To summarize the NPT: five defined
nuclear powers, namely the US, the UK, France,
China and Russia, promise not to transfer nuclear
weapons; not to help others acquire them; and to
pursue nuclear disarmament. The non-nuclear weapon
states promise not to get nuclear weapons; accept
safeguards from the United Nations International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and in return for that
they get civilian nuclear energy help.
It
entered into force in 1970 and a huge number of
countries ratified it. So far so good. Right now,
we have Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and India
who possess both nuclear weapons and delivery
vehicles. While Pakistan and India have tested
weapons, thereby removing all doubt, North Korea
has publicly claimed to have nukes and is
suspected to have test fired a short-range missile
over the weekend. Israel is strongly suspected to
have nuclear weapons, although this has not been
officially confirmed. To top it all, North Korea
withdrew from the NPT. What is the end result? If
the objective was to stop nuclear proliferation,
then it failed miserably. We have the examples of
the above countries to prove it. If the objective
was to reduce and stop nuclear disarmament - then
that has failed miserably as well.
The nuclear-weapon states absolutely do not desire to
do anything that will reduce or remove their
nuclear-weapons capability. For example, it is the
nuclear weapons capability that gives France and
Russia their extra influence in the world. The US
and Russia are busy upgrading their arsenals - the
US is thinking about upgrading its major warhead
designs (heavy discussions have been heard lately
about spending more than US$2 billion on a routine
10-year overhaul to extend the life of the aging
warheads, such as the W-76) while Russia is
working on better delivery systems; the US has
refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT) and so on. On the other hand, for a
country to achieve nuclear weapons, it only has to
start spraying money around in corrupt or crazy
countries such as Pakistan and North Korea,
respectively, and they will get all that they
need. We have seen and heard how Libya, Iraq, Iran
and Saudi Arabia have attempted to gain this
knowledge. So frankly, the NPT has been proven to
be well and truly useless.
If so, what is
the alternative? This requires going back to the
drawing board. The main reason why nuclear weapons
were dreaded, as opposed to say battle tanks or
cruise missiles, is their sheer destructive power.
In other words, the sheer potential to virtually
wipe out the entire earth many times over is what
got people terrified. The anti-nuclear campaign
was in full swing starting from the late 1950s and
gained a head of steam, but after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the foot was taken off the
accelerator.
In addition, with the passage
of time, nuclear weapons have lost their terror,
as none has been used in anger since World War II.
The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction kept
usage of nuclear weapons down to zero. It is a
mutual suicide weapon, but recently, given the
impact of terror attacks, fear has become generic.
Gone are the days that massive rallies would take
place about the removal of nuclear weapons, but
now, people are more driven by what a few
terrorists could do, rather than what a whole
structure that owns and manages nuclear weapons
can do.
In other words, the worry is more
about individuals rather than states. Given that
most states are heading towards democracy and
responsible government, the worry is about these
individuals, terrorists and the few failed or
terrorist harboring states.
Given this
background, what can one do?
First, what
one can do is to give up this NPT business and
concentrate on and address the "root causes".
Namely, protecting of civilians from warfare,
going after the terrorists and sorting out failed
or threatening states. The International Criminal
Court (ICC) needs to be bedded down, a real
anti-terrorist treaty should be embedded, and
finally the recently proposed UN reforms should be
taken a step further to allow international
intervention.
Th Geneva Conventions should
be given more teeth and should be further
incorporated into national law. Put another way,
just as the UN and European Human Rights
Conventions are now incorporated into English law,
similarly the Geneva Conventions, with some
improvements, should be incorporated into various
national laws. At the very least, no country that
does not have these conventions and treaties as
part of its own legal system should be allowed to
be part of the UN Security Council. This will
provide the necessary teeth for the prevention of
wholesale massacres and genocide of civilians. If
anybody wishes to pop off a nuke, they should know
the penalties.
Second, the ICC is a very
good measure, but needs to be improved. This
column is not the place to go into the needed
improvements, but the big guys should again be
part of ICC, otherwise it does not make sense.
Some improvements need to be made to get countries
like the US, India and China and others to sign
up, and some of their objections are pretty valid.
It is vital to address genocide, massacres and
other crimes against humanity globally. I can
understand and appreciate the objections that the
US has raised and those need to be addressed as
well, in case any tin-pot dictator or rocket
scientist gets hold of nuclear weapons or goes
about selling them, he will be hauled over hot
coals.
Third, within the ICC or some other
framework, a real anti-terrorist treaty has to be
bedded down. Anybody who is going after civilians
for political, social or religious purposes
outside the national and international laws is a
terrorist. Interpol needs to be strengthened,
extradition treaties implanted into the treaty -
this rat's nest of bilateral treaties has to go -
perhaps Interpol can develop a structure like that
of the World Trade Organization. Intelligence
sharing, targeted eradication, information
sharing, good databases, better passports and
security, good border controls and so on will stop
or at least make it very difficult for terrorists
to go about getting nuclear technology. The IAEA
is a good idea and needs to be given sharper teeth
and a bigger scope to handle chemical and
biological weapons.
The final part is to
look at the UN reforms more critically and
aggressively. In particular, some sort of
international consensus mechanisms should be drawn
up, so that failed or failing states can be looked
at much earlier and if required with much more
force than currently applied. In addition, we also
should not be in a position to allow situations
like Rwanda happen again, though some Security
Council members are not sure. Again, this column
isn't the place to go deeper into the UN reform
proposals, but they definitely must be made more
concrete and more rigorous.
Failed states
and freely available nuclear weapons technology
are not a good combination. The objective is to be
realistic about all this. Nuclear technology is
out there. We might as well bring the states into
the structure, rather than persist in a structure
that fails in its basic objectives. Nineteenth
century American author, poet and philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned of this: "Man is a
shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a
new machine from his own structure, adapting some
secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and
leather, to some required function in the work of
the world. But it is found that the machine unmans
the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses
in general power."
All this to be taken
with a grain of salt.
Dr Bhaskar
Dasgupta works in the financial sector in
London. He has extensive international experience
and is currently working on his second doctorate
in terrorism and international relations, at Kings
College London.
(Copyright 2005 Dr
Bhaskar Dasgupta.)
Speaking Freely
is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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