Transcript
Achieving Global Nuclear Stability in the Twenty-First Century: Towards a New Policy Agenda
Dr Andrew O'Neil
School of Political and International Studies
Flinders University
Address to the Royal United Services Institute-SA, Keswick Barracks, 6 June 2005
Introduction
One of the least contested claims in the International Relations literature is that the contemporary nuclear non-proliferation regime based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded in 1970 is worth preserving. It is claimed that although the regime has its flaws, there are no viable alternatives and therefore states must persist with the present set of arrangements because they are, in effect, the best that the international community has been able to come up with. Furthermore, to jettison the NPT regime would be to undo years of hard work on the part of states and inevitably 'open the floodgates' to increased nuclear proliferation worldwide.
Today, I want to take issue with these claims and argue that, as an instrument for ensuring nuclear stability in the years ahead, the current non-proliferation regime is woefully inadequate. However, what follows is not simply a critique of the NPT regime. I concur with the sentiments of NPT advocates that there is little point engaging in anti-NPT analysis unless one intends to present alternative options. In that spirit, I maintain that a fundamental shift in mindset among scholars and statespeople is needed if nuclear stability is to be achieved in the next one to two decades. Put baldly, we need to move beyond the outmoded view that nuclear proliferation is something that can be prevented in international relations to a mindset that recognizes it is an inevitable feature of the international system that needs to be managed. In order to reshape the policy agenda with a view to exploring new arms control regimes that accept this shift in mindset from prevention to management, the various stakeholders in securing a stable nuclear future (states, NGOs, general publics) finally need to lay to rest the myth that nuclear disarmament is a viable policy objective and begin to explore seriously how a multilateral system of nuclear deterrence might work.
A Death Not Greatly Exaggerated
Ever since the detonation of the first atomic device in 1945, conventional wisdom has been that the spread of nuclear weapons represents a negative development in international relations. States themselves have held strongly to this position (except, of course, if they are the ones doing the proliferating) and the 'proliferation pessimist' orthodoxy has pervaded virtually every facet of academic discussion on nuclear weapons. With very few exceptions, international security analysts assume that any spread of nuclear weapons - irrespective of contextual or contingent factors - represents a blow to the stability of the international system. This mirrors a fundamental conviction that the greater the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons, the greater the danger of nuclear weapons being used, either intentionally or by accident. A corollary of this view is that deterrence - defined as the ability to dissuade an adversary from using force through the credible threat of unacceptable punishment - will be problematic to achieve in an international environment populated by new nuclear powers. Given their strategic 'immaturity', new nuclear powers will struggle to formulate doctrines and develop failsafe technical systems that allow them to maintain crisis stability with other nuclear powers. Fearing a decapitating first strike, new nuclear states will confront a 'use it or lose it' dilemma and will thus be more inclined to employ nuclear force prematurely in a crisis situation.
An equally powerful assumption in much of the literature has been that the NPT and its associated safeguards system has made the world a safer place than it otherwise would have been by making it harder for states to attain the requisite means to acquire nuclear weapons. However, since the end of the Cold War, existing non-proliferation mechanisms have failed to stem the diffusion of nuclear capabilities in the international system. North Korea and Iran may be the two cases grabbing the current headlines, but other countries have either reached or crossed the threshold of nuclear possession covertly (Japan, Israel), or gone one step further and declared a nuclear weapons capability by testing (India, Pakistan). North Korea appears to have been able to accumulate the necessary expertise, fissile material, and design technology to manufacture a weapons capability while retaining its 'non-nuclear' status under the NPT. Iran now looks as if it is replicating the North Korean example. As if this were not sufficiently worrying from a non-proliferation perspective, suspicions persist about the nuclear capabilities and intentions of several other states, including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Taiwan. Furthermore, the nuclear export control groups set up during the Cold War period have failed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons related technology and material, and have proven ill-equipped to deal with the increasingly complex transnational nature of illicit global nuclear commerce.
The unmistakable trend internationally since the end of the Cold War has been that an increasing number of states are seeking to acquire, at the very least, a threshold nuclear capability. Some have laid the blame for this squarely on the NPT's ineffectiveness in preventing proliferation. But the fact remains that the Treaty itself was never intended to compel states to exercise proliferation restraint, much less act as a non-proliferation panacea. When the NPT was concluded in 1970 it was concluded on the clear understanding that most member states were opting for a sort of provisional virginity making their nuclear abstention dependent on the non-occurrence of events that would force them to reconsider. At the time, just as now, there was no shortage of countries that had the technological capabilities, both real and latent, to acquire nuclear weapons. Canada, Indonesia, Sweden, West Germany, and even Australia were touted as possible nuclear weapons powers in the early 1970s. The fact that these countries did not go nuclear after signing on to the NPT had less to do with any legal constraints the Treaty imposed and more to do with hard-headed strategic calculations concerning the perceived credibility of extended security guarantees, projected financial and political costs, and fears of triggering a 'matching' response from regional peer competitors. As any number of states have demonstrated since 1945, if nuclear weapons are deemed necessary to achieve national strategic objectives, national elites are more than willing to incur international opprobrium and risk inviting the use of blunter instruments, including economic sanctions.
The point to stress is that the NPT, and the non-proliferation regime more generally, was never meant to provide a guarantee to the international community that member states would not acquire nuclear weapons. At best, it could only ever make the quest for nuclear weapons harder - and then only for those states who decided to adhere to the NPT. Needless to say, for those such as Israel, India, and Pakistan, who decided not to join the Treaty, it provided no impediment whatsoever to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the idea of the NPT as a permanent obstacle to nuclear proliferation has never reflected the reality for most states, even following the Treaty's indefinite extension in 1995. Article X of the NPT allows countries to withdraw on a mere three months' notice in the event that 'extraordinary events[…] have jeopardized its supreme interests'. The permissive nature of this withdrawal clause was, of course, no accident. Very few countries, then or now, are willing to provide an iron-clad guarantee that they will not acquire nuclear weapons in perpetuity. Unless and until this happens - a development essentially inconceivable in an anarchic international system - achieving 'irreversible' nuclear non-proliferation will remain a chimera.
Ensuring Global Nuclear Stability: Is There a Way Forward?
Ironically, it is often overlooked by the most ardent proponents of the NPT that the Treaty was never considered to be an end in itself by its architects during the 1960s. At the time, and for the two decades following its conclusion, the NPT was regarded as the best means for achieving nuclear stability in the international system. The integrity of the Treaty, and thus the coherence of the non-proliferation regime more broadly, has been undermined seriously by the ongoing failure of member states to implement key articles of the NPT, the impression that India and Pakistan have borne few tangible costs for going nuclear despite some short lived economic sanctions in the wake of their respective tests in 1998, and the continued hedging of member states against the failure of the Treaty (e.g. South Korea's reprocessing activities revealed by the IAEA in 2004). These factors, along with the unwillingness of parties to adapt the Treaty to reflect the increasing threat of terrorist groups accessing fissile material, means that the NPT no longer represents a functional instrument for ensuring global nuclear stability.
With the continued fraying and likely collapse of the NPT regime over the next decade, if global nuclear stability is to be maintained, more focused attention needs to shift towards managing nuclear proliferation rather than preventing it. This is no minor undertaking: it requires nothing less than a radical shift in mindset among policy makers, non-official security specialists, and general publics at-large. More specifically, it requires a frank admission that the global non-proliferation architecture that has been built up around the NPT over the last three and a half decades is simply not up to the task of ensuring international nuclear stability in the twenty-first century. It is perhaps revealing that, increasingly, the best defence champions of the NPT can muster is that the Treaty is worth hanging onto because there are no serious alternatives to stemming proliferation worldwide. Yet, as Michael Wesley has recently observed, the NPT is a failing regime that is consuming diplomatic resources that could be more effectively used to build an alternative arms control regime. In order to reach the point where alternative arms control regimes can be seriously discussed, however, two steps must first be taken by those who have a stake in working towards a stable nuclear future: dispensing once and for all with the Utopian myth that nuclear disarmament is a viable policy option, and exploring the feasibility of a formal and robust system of deterrence between nuclear-armed countries in the international system.
Nuclear Disarmament: A Utopian Diversion
There are two spectrums of opinion among those who advocate nuclear disarmament. The first, more radical, perspective is that the world's five established nuclear powers should embark immediately on a significant drawdown of their respective nuclear arsenals with a view to complete elimination within a specified timeframe. Such action would, it is assumed, spur newer nuclear powers into emulating the lead of the big five by reassuring them that their own nuclear forces are effectively redundant as instruments of strategic military power. In this world, nuclear 'holdouts' would be subject to tremendous moral pressure to conform and would have little strategic, political, economic or diplomatic rationale for preserving their nuclear stockpiles. The second, less radical, spectrum of opinion among those who advocate nuclear disarmament is that it needs to be more incremental in scope to succeed. From this perspective, nuclear disarmament is a long term objective, but it is an objective that must remain subordinate to achieving non-proliferation and arms control objectives in the short to medium term. It is, in short, a process that will evolve over time as a corollary of further advances in arms control, not something that can be accelerated immediately as a matter of urgency.
Although differing in emphasis, both spectrums of opinion assume that nuclear disarmament constitutes a viable policy option for states and point to Article VI of the NPT as essential proof that states are legally obliged to pursue this objective. However, this is a serious misconception that is laden excessively with wishful thinking. As a foundation for thinking about optimum avenues for achieving global nuclear stability in the twenty-first century, it is critically flawed. Contemporary advocates of nuclear disarmament make the a priori assumption that it can be achieved without first attaining a World Government with the legal power to override the sovereignty of individual states. But there is little evidence that contemporary advocates of nuclear disarmament have given any serious thought to the obvious question of how any nuclear power could be compelled to disarm their nuclear forces without first sacrificing core prerogatives of national sovereignty to a higher international body. Even if we suspend disbelief and assume that there is an equal amount of good faith on all sides to disarm nuclear forces and neutralize latent 'breakout' capabilities (surely a sine qua non for sustainable disarmament), there remains the vexing issue of verification: Which body or bodies would 'police' global disarmament?
Treating nuclear disarmament as a viable policy aim implicitly dismisses the realities of international relations. In particular, it overlooks the dismal track record of the P-5 members of the UN Security Council (who are also the declared nuclear weapon states under the NPT) in cooperating to address international security issues. It assumes that a daunting and highly intricate array of politico-strategic obstacles can be surmounted by the P-5, a group of countries that have demonstrated a signal unwillingness to cooperate on a host of eminently 'solvable' global policy challenges such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, acting in concert to prevent ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Kosovo, and Sudan, and achieving consensus over the appropriate role and scope of international law and armed conflict. What grounds are there for assuming that states will be any more flexible on the nuclear issue and agree to bargain away their most prized military assets for the good of humanity? It is important to recognize that continued calls for nuclear disarmament are not only excessively Utopian; they also divert attention unnecessarily from the imperative of developing new policy options for ensuring international nuclear stability in a world where the NPT regime is rapidly coming apart at the seams.
Nuclear Deterrence: The Least Imperfect Option?
Winston Churchill's famous observation that democracy is the least imperfect system of governance is one that could well be applied to the system of nuclear deterrence. As a range of analysts have conceded, nuclear deterrence during the Cold War was risky, dangerous, and fraught with complex ambiguities that occasionally made for hair raising encounters between the US and the Soviet Union. However, by and large, the logic of deterrence worked between 1945 and 1991 in persuading both superpowers that any nuclear conflict was something that must never be waged under any circumstances short of a nuclear strike from the other side. Policy makers in Washington and Moscow fumbled around periodically for alternative ways of managing the bilateral nuclear relationship, but essentially came up empty handed. Nuclear deterrence remained, for all its flaws, the indispensable template for managing the East-West strategic relationship after 1945. What is perhaps even more striking is that all nuclear powers in the international system have been deterred from using nuclear weapons for over half a century.
Ironically, despite its apparent success, in recent years deterrence has been dismissed in many quarters as redundant. The Bush administration has been especially dismissive of its role in a 'new post-9/11' international security environment and has characterized deterrence as an outmoded strategic concept that may have proved effective during the Cold War, but is entirely unsuited to the 'more complex and dangerous' challenges posed by rogue states brandishing nuclear weapons.
Yet for all the talk of deterrence being outmoded, in many ways it has never been more relevant to preventing nuclear conflict internationally. After some initial uncertainty, India and Pakistan now seem to have established a fairly stable strategic relationship that embraces a classical deterrence logic based on both sides retaining a secure second strike capability against the other. Israel's neighbours remain deterred from threatening the existence of the Jewish state (as they did in 1948, 1967, and 1973). In the US case, pre-emption has never really posed a serious challenge to deterrence as the core doctrine underlying American global strategy. Pre-emption, for all the hype, was used largely by the Bush administration as doctrinal window dressing to justify the impending invasion of Iraq to a sceptical general public in the second half of 2002 and early 2003. Washington evidently has no intention of following through on the logic of pre-emption and taking military action to neutralize North Korea's and Iran's emerging nuclear capability. In the case of North Korea, there are clear signs that the United States accepts (albeit grudgingly) that it has little choice but to work towards a deterrent-based strategic relationship with Pyongyang.
While nuclear deterrence during the Cold War was predicated largely on the bilateral relationship between the two superpowers, there is no reason why it could not operate at the multilateral level in the international system. Indeed, it could well be argued that multilateral deterrence has functioned internationally since the UK successfully tested its first atomic device in 1952. It is worth noting that many predicted with alarm that China, as an archetypal rogue state, would be 'undeterrable' following its inaugural nuclear test in 1964 and that, as a revolutionary world power, China would seek to leverage its nuclear weapons to underwrite an expansionary foreign policy in Asia. If anything, China's possession of nuclear weapons induced a greater sense of caution among national elites. Today, China (along with India) remains the only nuclear weapons state to retain a no-first use pledge.
Against this background, there are some positive indications that multilateral nuclear deterrence could work in contributing to global nuclear stability by fostering greater restraint and caution among those possessing nuclear weapons. States will be less inclined to engage in destabilizing actions or conventional conflict for fear of escalating to a level where nuclear use could become a reality. A system of multilateral deterrence would probably not just appear over time; it would need to be cultivated by the existing nuclear weapons states and would entail significant diplomatic activity in 'reaching out' to newly emerging nuclear powers such as Iran. Such activity would need to include discreetly offering new nuclear states assistance to minimize the risk of accidental nuclear launch due to immaturity in force structure and underdeveloped command and control systems.
A critical requirement for multilateral deterrence to work would be agreement among nuclear powers to control and manage the proliferation of certain types of nuclear weapons systems that, if left unregulated, could prove to be destabilizing to global security by lowering the threshold to nuclear use. Examples might include those forces that could be employed to achieve tactical advantage on the battlefield in the midst of a 'conventional' war. But most important of all, any successful multilateral deterrence system would require a bold cross-cultural endeavour to effectively 'socialize' national elites in all countries into accepting the logic and benefits of rational deterrence as a basis for nuclear strategy. Only by being made aware of the circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used by other states can all states be attuned fully to the incredible costs of nuclear conflict and hence be deterred from ever considering seriously initiating the use of nuclear weapons.