BOOK
REVIEW Unity in diversity: NAM's nuclear
politics Nuclear Politics
and the Non-Aligned Movement by William
Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova
Reviewed by Kaveh L Afrasiabi
This
timely and informative book was written by two
nuclear experts who served as delegates from
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) observer states in the
arduous negotiations involving the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and thus provides
an in-depth, albeit theoretically inadequate,
analysis of NAM's nuclear politics. Contrary
to some Western voices of skepticism regarding
NAM's viability in the post-Cold War era, who say
the orginization is passe in the face of
superpower politics, the authors present a
compelling argument as to "why NAM still matters"
by focusing
on the evolution of NAM's
nuclear politics since its inception over a half
century ago.
NAM includes the nuclear
weapons states of India, Pakistan, and North
Korea, as well as a number of potential nuclear
capable members, but most NAM members have little
or no interest in nuclear issues. This means that
NAM's nuclear politics have become increasingly
complex and difficult to pursue through
"consensus" - yet through a mixture of "principles
and pragmatism" NAM has succeeded in defying its
critics and gaining momentum.
Consisting
of 120 full members and 17 observer states, some
of whom like Brazil have been heavily involved in
NAM's nuclear diplomacy, NAM by virtue of its
sheer size has the ability to act as a "very
constructive or obstructionist force" in global
affairs. According to the authors, NAM has
periodically altered its positions, if not its
core principles, and owes a debt for its recent
renewal to US's post-9/11 hegemony and
unilateralism. This has breathed new life in the
movement founded on anti-hegemony, non-aggression,
multilateralism, and sovereignty. On the whole,
however, NAM's relevance is based on "safeguarding
the interests of NAM members without reference to
great power politics" (p47).
Divided into
four chapters, the book unpacks NAM's policymaking
mechanisms and gives a glimpse into NAM in action
by focusing on the deliberations at disarmament
and NPT review conferences, as well as at the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The book presents NAM in three
inter-related but distinct ways, as a "normative
concept", a "loose multi-national association,"
and as a "foreign policy tool".
In Chapter
One, readers are familiarized with NAM's internal
structure, such as the fact that without a
charter, a permanent secretariat or headquarter it
still manages to sustain itself in a "diverse
coalition" via a rotating chair. There is a
"temporary secretariat", a "troika" consisting of
the past, present and future chair, a summit of
NAM leaders every three years, frequent
ministerial meetings, a coordinating bureau,
regional sub-groups, multiple working committee,
and a joint committee with NAM's sister
organization, G-77 + China.
However, this
cluster of states is ultimately strung together as
much by abstract principles as by the concrete
initiatives that often benefit from the
negotiation skills of its representatives who seek
to increase NAM's "bargaining position" at the
international organizations.
Chapter Two
deals with the NPT review conferences and how NAM
has tackled the twin priorities of disarmament and
non-proliferation, such as by often Western
initiatives as light on the former and heavy on
the latter, given the fact disarmament has always
been "more central to core NAM principles" (p33).
The authors give examples of variations in
the actual positions of individual NAM states that
are sometimes "masked by the official NAM
position", yet they note the considerable
negotiation power" (p38) held by key NAM
sub-groups such as the "Arab group", which is
regarded as "the most cohesive group within the
NAM" (p39).
Accommodating diversity means
"adopt a lowest common denominator", such as
ending discriminatory nuclear trade and "negative
security assurance" whereby the nuclear-haves
would pledge non-use against the nuclear
have-nots. In the NPT context this means seeking
an acceptable "balance of responsibilities and
obligations" and resisting Western attempts to
limit developing nations' access to nuclear
technology.
The authors adamantly maintain
that whereas the West has a noble faith in the
intrinsic value of NPT articles, NAM nations are
primarily interested in the exchange of bargain
(among the three pillars of disarmament,
non-proliferation, and peaceful use of nuclear
technology). This is an undue criticism that lacks
empirical support and reflects the authors'
ultimately Western-centric approach, reflected in
their praise of the US's "change in orientation"
toward disarmament under the Obama administration
(p62), which can be defended only by substituting
rhetoric for actual policy.
Another flaw
pertains to India, which the authors claim now
"attaches far less attention and significance to
the movement than it once did" (p30). In fact,
India had the largest delegation at the recent NAM
summit in Tehran and clearly is back in the full
swing of NAM politics, with an eye on how to
secure NAM support for its bid for a permanent
seat the UN Security Council. [1]
By
simply focusing on one dimension of NAM politics,
the book falls short of providing a systematic
analysis of the complex web of interrelated
issues. The book gives the impression of a hastily
written narrative, as a result of which certain
issues, such as Iran's signing of a Paris
agreement with the European powers, are mentioned
in passing without adequate elaboration.
In Chapter Three, on NAM and the IAEA,
although the authors correctly point out that NAM
covers less than half the membership of atomic
agency's board of governors, they discount the
extent to which the IAEA has been manipulated by
the Western powers, such as by increasingly
turning it into an intelligence agency fed by
Western disinformation.
The book gives no
clue about such distortions of IAEA's mission,
much as it sheds light on the the familiar
territory of NAM's episodic successes, such as
preventing the obligatory adoption of the
intrusive additional protocol, or the infringement
on right of developing nations to a nuclear fuel
cycle in the guise of proposals for a
multinational fuel bank.
The authors
rightly criticize Western nations for occasionally
failing to "appreciate NAM positions and
perspectives" (p87), yet in the same breath defend
the US's opposition to a NAM initiative regarding
Israel's nuclear program. Regarding the latter, an
IAEA resolution in 2009 called on Israel to place
all its nuclear facilities under the IAEA
safeguards. This and the NAM-sponsored initiative
for a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone,
scheduled to be discussed in an international
summit in Finland in December 2012, have put
Israel and its Western backers on the defensive,
despite all the attention they have placed on
Iran's future "nuclear threat".
The
authors highlight some of the basic defects of
NAM's nuclear politics, such as formal NAM papers
reflecting "outdated thinking", parallel efforts,
occasional lack of focus, absence of adequate
coordination, cumbersome internal debates, and
gaps between the movement's positions and the
outcome of various conferences. Concerning the
latter, their distribution of blame is unbalanced
and underestimates the degree to which the
international organizations are instruments of
hegemony.
With respect to Iran, it is
surprising that there is no mention of Iran's
two-year voluntary adoption of the Additional
Protocol and the authors give the wrong impression
that Iran's refused to re-implement this until
"Israel accedes to the NPT" (p65). This reflects a
misperception of Iranian point of view, which is
not so closely entwined with the question of
Israel, contrary to the popular belief, including
by the IR theorist Kenneth Waltz. [2]
Despite such shortcomings, this is an
informative chapter that in a crucial footnote
debunks the wide-spread argument in the Western
media that refers to Iran's "breach of its NPT
obligations". On the contrary, the authors rightly
state that the IAEA's finding of Iran's
non-compliance "does not equal non-compliance with
the NPT" (p183).
In the concluding chapter
on NAM's future, Iran's chairmanship for the
period 2012-2015 is scrutinized almost solely from
the prism of Iran's vested national interests,
without considering post-revolutionary Iran's
self-perception as an international actor and
vanguard in the movement's ideological pursuit of
a more horizontal global management, genuine
disarmament, and democratization of international
organizations.
The book sadly suffers from
the absence of a theoretical framework within
which NAM's political phenomenon would be analyzed
in all its important facets, including Iran's
current leadership, as a result of which the
narrative though highly informative has a
predominantly descriptive rather than analytical
character that limits its value as an
authoritative study on the subject.
Nuclear Politics and the Non-Aligned
Movement by William Potter and Gaukhar
Mukhatzhanova. Routledge (April 3, 2012) ISBN-10:
0415696410. Price US$16.99. 112 pages.
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