INTRODUCTION
The future of nuclear weapons is under debate in
a number of forums today. One of these is a book which Professor
John Baylis and I have edited, to be published by OUP next month—Alternate
Nuclear Futures. Professor Baylis is with us this evening, and
he, Professor Freedman and I have contributed chapters to the
book, as has Sir Michael Quinlan who, I am very pleased to say
is also with us this evening.
Nuclear weapons have been the subject of two
major international inquiries. The first of these, The Canberra
Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, reported in
1996. This Commission, established in 1995 by the Australian Government,
included 16 specialists drawn from the international community,
including a former US Defense Secretary, a former Commander in
Chief of the US Strategic Air Command, a former French Prime Minister,
a British Field Marshal, and 13 others including the then Head
of the UN Special Commission on the elimination Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction and his successor. After a year of analysis
supported by a permanent staff, the Canberra Commission argued
that the elimination of nuclear weapons was desirable, and outlined
a plan for reaching that goal.
The report received widespread attention. One
of the consequences was the formation of a special group in the
United Nations General Assembly, the New Agenda Group, including
the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa
and Sweden. It issued its argument for the establishment of a
nuclear weapons free world on 8 June 1998.
In 1998 the Japanese Government, concerned at
the open proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia and its
wider implications for security in East Asia, convened the Tokyo
Forum on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. This body,
like the Canberra Commission, worked over a year, supported by
full time specialists and reported on 25 July last. Its 21 members
were drawn from around the world and included Therese Delpech,
Robert Gallucci, Joachim Krause, Joe Nye and John Simpson, just
to name several who will be known to members of this audience.
I was a member of both of these bodies.
The first two recommendations of the Tokyo Forum
were:
The principal target of both these reports is
public opinion in the United States, where there is already a
vigorous debate, led by the Stimson Center in Washington and a
group of former senior armed service officers and defence officials
who have carried responsibility for nuclear weapons policy during
their professional lives. The United States has to give the lead
on this issue or nothing will happen, and it is most unlikely
that change will be initiated from the top. Last week the US government
was urged publicly by Paul Nitze, one of its most distinguished
servants in the field of strategic policy over 40 years, to adopt
a policy of elimination of nuclear weapons. The battle of public
opinion will be long and difficult, but many are committed to
wage it until the folly of maintaining nuclear weapons indefinitely
is generally accepted by those who have them.
Fifty years ago the United States demonstrated
the phenomenal destructive power of the hydrogen bomb. Despite
the fears of many—and I suspect most of those within this
room—we have survived the perils and possibilities for mishap
which were inherent in five nuclear arsenals during the Cold War,
at least two of which were each capable of destroying human civilisation
on this planet. Our survival was a major achievement, and it is
due in no small way to the expertise, balance and judgement of
responsible government officials such as Michael Quinlan, and
to the understanding fostered by Professor Freedman whose book
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy is still by far the best
account available on that subject.
However, the nature of the world today is very
different to that of the Cold War, and the challenges of living
with the enormous destructive force of nuclear weapons are much
more severe. My argument is that policies which are essentially
an extension of those of the 1980s, retaining nuclear weapons
indefinitely as indispensable elements in the strategic forces
and policies of Nato, Russia and China, bring with them a much
higher risk of disaster than we faced during the Cold War. Therefore
a fundamentally new approach is needed, namely the elimination
of nuclear weapons.
The Meaning of Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
Having mentioned the word "elimination"
let me explain what I mean by it. Obviously it is impossible to
eliminate the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons, although
severe reduction of the means to make them is possible by adopting
different reactor designs, and establishing by international agreement
the proposed Fissile Materials Control Regime. Neither is it possible
to verify the elimination of every last nuclear warhead in everybody's
arsenals. There will always be risks and uncertainties in the
maintenance of a nuclear-weapons free world. But the threats posed
by an isolated nuclear weapon or even a few of them can be dealt
with by conventional weapons, as can any attempt to re-establish
the volume production of nuclear weapons. These risks involved
in such actions will be much less than those of a world in which
the major nuclear powers maintain and modernise their arsenals
in the name of security, and keep them on hair-trigger alert.
When the major trading powers set out to eliminate
the scourge of piracy on the high seas, they did not manage to
eliminate all pirates or acts or piracy. They established a norm
and have continued to enforce it to the huge benefit of virtually
everybody except a few outlaws. When our forebears set out to
eliminate slavery, they were not totally successful—but
there is no major trade in human beings other than as smuggled
emigrants today. We have made many other great and difficult advances,
including regulating by treaty and law the means and conduct of
war, and demonstrating the counter-productiveness of large scale
conventional wars initiated by a major power or powers against
other major powers.
What a policy of elimination of nuclear weapons
means is the establishment of a norm whereby nations no longer
rely for their security on maintaining the means to destroy all
their enemies, and much of the world besides, by use of nuclear
weapons. This "non-nuclear weapons" norm can always
be infringed, but just as the word is better off for having made
the efforts to establish an anti-piracy norm, an anti-slavery
norm, and an anti-genocide norm, so will it eventually be seen
by most people to benefit from the establishment of a non-nuclear
norm in defence policy.
Establishing such a norm will, as I have said,
be a long process. In the debates on the implementation of elimination
policies that I have taken part in, I have always resisted putting
a time line on the process. It is impossible to predict the rate
of progress towards ends which require the initiation of great
national and international debates, and the convincing of public
opinion as a prior necessity to the development of government
policies. Very few of us during the Cold War had any idea as to
when the Warsaw Pact might collapse, although that was our ultimate
end. In the absence of dramatic events, of which I will speak
later, I envisage the time required to establish a non-nuclear
weapons norm in the international community as being between one
and two generations. Elimination of nuclear weapons is not something
that I expect to see in the next decade.
I would be delighted to be proved wrong but
it is a huge task. I have outlined the process by which public
debate in democratic societies might change national policies.
But even when national leaders have committed themselves to the
goal of elimination, they then have to agree on a series of slow,
step by step multilateral reductions and create thereby through
the execution of each, the mutual confidence to proceed to the
following step. All of these stages will take more or less time
according to the impacts of other international events. If the
major nuclear powers were to agree tomorrow on the elimination
of nuclear weapons, it would take a decade and probably two to
put it into effect.
Let me now, in the remaining time available,
outline three of the arguments which have led both the Canberra
Commission and the Tokyo Forum to advocate elimination.
1. Changes in world order
The old duopoly has gone—and monopoly
is not always a help when one of the former duo is in severe internal
difficulty. We have heard many Russians, political leaders and
generals, say that nuclear weapons have become more important
in the security stance because of the growing weakness of their
conventional forces. The old basis of relative confidence in overall
parity which underlay the two sides' approach to nuclear arms
control during the Cold War has been severely eroded. We see the
results in the continued refusal of the Duma to ratify the START
II Treaty, and the extreme sensitivity of the Russian government
and defence establishment to recent US proposals to develop a
system of national missile defence. For the safety of all of us
we have to resuscitate the old process of nuclear arms control,
and probably by unilateral action. I fail to see how this can
be done now without establishing the context of elimination of
nuclear weapons as the ultimate goal.
The Russian arsenal as it now exists is a major
problem to manage securely; its size remains vast despite the
good work performed under the Nunn-Lugar funded assistance provided
by the US to reduce and break-up warheads. The Russians are not
confident that they can either secure or control it totally. This
problem will exist for many years to come for the tens of thousands
of Russian warheads that are already marked for destruction, not
to mention the thousands of warheads that will remain part of
the operational Russian weapons systems.
And, as senior officials responsible for the
Department of Defense aspects of the Nunn-Lugar programme have
told me, there is a further problem as to what happens to the
fissile materials in Russian warheads after they have been taken
apart. Up until the act of destruction of those warheads, US officials
have some oversight of them. Once the warheads are dismantled
the fissile material passes back under Russian control—to
be sent, we hope for use in a reactor. The US has little ability
to trace what happens to it in detail, and has ample reason to
be concerned about this problem for a long time to come. Russia
itself is in disarray and unlikely to provide the full degree
of co-operation that the Nunn-Lugar programme requires. I will
not go on at length about the severity of the Russian "loose
nukes" problem. It will be a challenge for many years. At
least elimination offers a long-term solution to it.
A second aspect of the demise of the old Soviet
Union is the inappropriateness of maintaining indefinitely the
doctrine and means of mutual assured destruction. Do we really
still need thousands of missiles deployed and manned for launch
within minutes in both the United States and Russia? Does this
sustained adversarial posture not undermine other policies which
we hope will lead to a warmer and eventually a normal friendly
relationship between Russia and the West? In the absence of a
policy of elimination, we will have to live with strategic nuclear
weapons by the thousand, the suspicions and tensions that they
cause in an increasingly unequal relationship, and the continuing
risks of accidental launch which accompany them. Nato leaders
would not be gratified at the response of the outside world to
their claim of April last that their security would depend on
nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Nato includes most
the nine biggest defence spenders in the world. The idea that
they cannot see their way to security without nuclear weapons
is a trifle difficult to accept for the rest of the world.
2. Continuing Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
For most of the Cold War we clung to the hope
that the spreading of nuclear weapons across national boundaries
was containable by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Yet during
the life of that Treaty several states have initiated nuclear
weapons development: among them are South Africa, Argentina, Brazil,
South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Iraq, North Korea, India and Pakistan.
The latter six of these still have nuclear weapons development
policies, and Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea almost
certainly all have nuclear warheads and the means to continue
their production and accelerate it if need be. Can it be said
that there is still a norm against nuclear proliferation? I think
it is truer to say that out of our practices of the Cold War years
the world has developed, inadvertently, an engine of slow nuclear
proliferation.
Why do other powers want nuclear weapons? Essentially
for enhanced security and to sustain the internal position of
the government of the day. Most decisions to acquire nuclear weapons
have an internal political dimension, and this was particularly
clear in the case of the BJP government's decision to proceed
via testing to full development of an Indian operational weapons
system. Such internal motivation is all the more powerful when
other major powers have already set the example through their
own possession of nuclear weapons. A number of regional powers
are likely to follow the same logic in the future and proceed
to reinforce their self-perceptions of their influence by developing
nuclear weapons. Key areas for concern are the Middle East and
East Asia. The Russian periphery also bears watching.
This desire to demonstrate nuclear might and
be treated as a major power is a different form of motivation
to that of security. It is often the result of a long period of
feeling frustrated with the current international system, a problem
of which India became very weary and there are a number of powers
other than India which have similar attitudes. Once a few more
of these acquire nuclear weapons the idea of a non-proliferation
norm will have vanished out of the window. Yet other states in
affected regions will follow the example of Pakistan and the problems
confronting the managers of national and international security
leaders will be vastly more complex. It would take only another
five or so nuclear weapons states to appear on the scene for the
apparent establishment of a new proliferation norm to emerge:
any country that had the resources to do so would, reluctantly
or not, feel obliged to acquire nuclear weapons so as not be under
the influence of a new nuclear power in its region.
Does the NPT have any teeth in the face of these
challenges? If the examples of India and Pakistan are any indication
it clearly does not. All they had to endure was shocked rhetoric
and temporary, largely symbolic, economic sanctions. The apparent
hypocrisy of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council
on nuclear weapons undermined their moral leverage, and many governments
in other parts of the world had to suppress a desire to cheer
the South Asians' defiance of great power hegemony. There is not
the slightest prospect of forcing or persuading India and Pakistan
to disarm their nuclear weapons unless the major nuclear weapons
powers join the process. Instead, the nuclear powers, particularly
the United States, are quietly bedding India and Pakistan into
the nuclear weapons community by educating them in the arts of
stable deterrence. This assistance may go beyond the mere provision
of advice and education to the supply of intelligence, permissive
action linkages, etc. And President Clinton is paying a friendly
visit to India in January.
It will be very interesting to see what transpires
at next year's review conference on the NPT. The preparatory meeting
earlier this year generated only bickering and recriminations.
The position of the United States in trying to give a firm lead
in strengthening the NPT regime has been dealt a severe blow by
the refusal of the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. The scene is set for a very unpleasant and frustrating
outcome for all concerned.
Do all these new nuclear arsenals pose much
of a problem? It is certainly possible to be too alarmist on this
count. I shall be very surprised should either the Indian or Pakistani
governments decide to use nuclear weapons against each other.
I would not be so optimistic in the cases of other new nuclear
powers such as North Korea or Iraq, if it fully reconstitutes
its nuclear programme. They do pose a series problem of potential
use. But the chief problem of proliferating nuclear arsenals is
that they make the eventual process of disarmament so much more
difficult. Persuading 10 nuclear powers to disarm will not be
twice as difficult as persuading five to do so—it will be
several times more difficult. The jigsaws of international security
and internal politics will be that much more complex to unlock
because they will be more multifaceted. A second problem is that
they increase the possibilities for weapons to fall into non-governmental
or even non-national hands. More on that point later.
Nuclear weapons give regional powers a splendid
opportunity to twist the tail of the United States. They can apply
what is now known in the diplomatic jargon as "nuclear leverage"
(which means "give me something nice of I will build nuclear
weapons") either before full weaponisation—as Israel,
South Korea, Taiwan and Pakistan have done in the past—or
they can have their day once they have proceeded far enough to
have a few warheads. North Korea has gained for itself a degree
of US attention, including substantial economic assistance, that
it could never have attained without going so far down the nuclear
path. Think of the energies and high level attention that North
Korea and Iraq have absorbed over the past decade as a result
of their weapons of mass destruction programmes. Do we want yet
more of such occurrences? We will certainly get them unless we
adopt a much more radical approach to nuclear disarmament.
But let me now introduce another factor that
will eventually compel action regardless of the difficulties in
the way of elimination.
3. The Prospects For Spreading Nuclear Weapons
to the Non-Governmental Level: Terrorism with WMD
Terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction
is now seen by both the Pentagon and the FBI has the principal
threat to the security of the United States. And it is a problem
not only for the United States. Any major power, particularly
strife-torn Russia, and the US's principal allies in intervention,
Britain and France may appear on a terrorist's target list. Naturally
one thinks first of biological and chemical devices for WMD terrorism,
but it would be very foolish to dismiss nuclear warheads as real
possibilities. The attention being given by the Clinton Administration
and the Congress to National Missile Defence is a public admission
of their awareness of the threat which rogue states can present
with nuclear weapons. And any effective defence has to be able
to destroy not only all incoming missiles but also all suspicious
incoming cargo ships, trucks and packing cases.
As the Harvard study by Graham Allison, Steve
Miller and other, Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy has pointed out:
That area would include the whole of Manhattan
from Battery Point to 32nd Street.
The only effective defence against nuclear terrorism
is to mop up the sources of supply of warheads—and that
will require elimination of nuclear weapons. The fewer the arsenals
and the fewer the weapons within them the simpler the problem
will be. But the proliferation engine will continue to run for
as long as any group of powers arrogate to themselves the right
to have nuclear weapons while denying that right to others.
Nuclear terrorists are undeterrable by the nuclear
weapons of the target state because these individuals have no
major base against which a deterrent attack can be made. As recent
events have shown, hatred of the United States and of the West
in general is palpable in the Gulf, Russia, the Balkans and parts
of East Asia. We know that large sums of money are chasing ex-Soviet
fissile material. We do not know yet whether any of this material
has been acquired. Any money is not the only motivation to be
considered. Ideological extremism and desires for revenge can
be just as effective if not more so.
The further we let the engine of proliferation
run, the greater is the probability that a major Western, and
probably American, city will be destroyed in an act of hatred
and revenge.
Once such a disaster occurs the climate of public
opinion on nuclear disarmament will be transformed. It would be
nice to think that we could take the steps necessary to establish
the non-nuclear weapons norm before any such event should occur.
Conclusion
Let me conclude by looking at our options. Essentially
there are three: to maintain nuclear weapons at their current
level of salience; to marginalise them; or to eliminate them.
It might be added that there is a fourth—apparently the
policy of the Republicans in the US Senate, which is to make nuclear
weapons more prominent than they have been in recent years by
returning to testing, and by scrapping the ABM Treaty—but
this may prove an aberration. To adhere to the first option, maintaining
nuclear weapons at their current level of salience, will destroy
the non-proliferation regime and poison relations between the
West and Russia, and very possibly China also. The second option,
marginalisation, will also destroy the non-proliferation regime
unless marginalisation should be simply a way-station on the road
to elimination. Both the first and second options carry with them
risks of accidental detonation, blackmail and terrorism which
cannot be deterred. Whatever the difficulties, elimination of
nuclear weapons is now the only path to a more secure future.