TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000

PROFESSOR PAUL ROGERS, PROFESSOR ROBERT O'NEILL AND PROFESSOR JOHN BAYLIS

  40. Perhaps I could now turn to the CTBT where in Washington we found very widespread criticism of the Senate's failure to ratify the Treaty. The question I would like to ask all three of you please is, do you believe the British Government is doing all it can to try to get a reversal of the Senate position and, if not, do you have any suggestions as to what more the British Government might do to try to achieve final ratification of the CTBT by the United States?
  (Professor O'Neill) It is very hard to know exactly what the British Government is doing on this front. I just take it for granted that it is doing everything that can be done within the limits of diplomacy between two closely allied partners. This is not really an issue on which the administration has a lot of bearing at this stage because I believe the CTBT rejection was the Senate Republicans revenge on Clinton. He let the opportunity slip several months before the debate came to a head by simply not doing enough work on this question to get support well and truly tied down in the Senate. Now that it has gone to this point and he is in his last year I do not think there is any prospect that the Senate is going to reverse itself and everything will depend on the relationship between the leader of the next administration and the Senate majority.
  (Professor Baylis) I agree with that. We have gone out of our way to make our views known with the letters with the French and so on which have expressed the position with the Europeans on this issue. That was quite an important diplomatic gesture. I agree with Professor O'Neill that the game is now with the new President, that if we are going to influence this process it is not going to be done with this presidency. It has to be done with the next.
  (Professor Rogers) A lot will depend on both sets of electoral results in November, both in the White House and on the Hill. If you have a Republican presidency and a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress then I think the prospects for a CTBT ratification will be extremely low. It is possible that if there were different people present it might be retrieved but that could take a year or two. One of the problems is that this is just not high up the overall political agenda in Washington at present. Arms control is not a major issue at the moment.

  41. Do any of you (or all of you I hope) have any comments to put us about the British Government's nuclear weapons policy in an arms control context? Do you feel, given the British Government's commitment to retaining the British deterrent within an arms control context, that it has done all that it reasonably could to establish a minimum nuclear capability that is minimal in the sense that it is the minimum necessary to preserve a deterrent or do you have any comments you wish to put to the Committee on that aspect of British defence policy?
  (Professor Baylis) We have done quite a lot as part of the de-nuclearisation programme on questions of alert status, on the question of getting rid of sub-strategic capabilities and in a sense focusing those sub-strategic capabilities on Trident, and in terms of allowing this de-nuclearisation. There is quite a lot that Britain has done in recent years which has contributed to that process. My own feeling is that there is probably more that we can do in the long term partly through the diplomatic aspects of supporting as far as we can these challenges to the arms control process and in a sense playing our role in these kinds of discussions that we have been talking about. The interesting question is in a sense whether we have any long term objectives in terms of trying to take the process of minimum deterrence to the next stage. Do we have a long term objective that we are trying to move towards? Policy I think is very pragmatic. It is trying to contribute to the arms control process while maintaining a minimum deterrent. I would like to see various research projects into how far we could take minimum deterrence a stage further. Are there for example ideas like mothballing part of our deterrent should the process, that is to say of de-nuclearisation, continue? What might that mean? There is all this debate about virtual nuclear deterrence and so on which is worth exploring. The problem of course is, as Professor Rogers has said, that at the present time there is great concern about the arms control process which prevents us from thinking through how we might develop this process further. We are just focusing our attention in a sense on existing arms control agreements and negotiations without perhaps thinking through how else we might contribute to the process. I would also like to see Britain pushing for greater institutionalisation within the NPT process. There is no governing council it seems to me. There is an institutional issue here in terms of governance within the non-proliferation process which I would like to see Britain playing a significant role in favour of. I would like to look at the weapons programme and in a sense look at how we might develop a process of de-nuclearisation further. I would also like to look into how we could further contribute to the arms control process through looking at the institutions associated with the non-proliferation agreement.
  (Professor O'Neill) As an Australian I have to say that I find the nuclear debate here rather strange but it is way off course with the debate in Australia. There is a sort of inbuilt assumption in British governmental circles and the defence community generally that nuclear weapons are actually some use to this country and do make some contribution to international peace. That case may have been arguable during the Cold War. It is demonstrably wrong in the post-Cold War period. Britain is just pouring money down a rat hole with its nuclear deterrent. What earthly good is it doing? Who is it deterring? In fact, it is setting a rather bad example to countries around the world and we have seen examples of that recently in the shape of India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iraq and probably Iran who all have active nuclear research programmes. They take great encouragement from the fact that there are the five declared nuclear weapon states who have not the slightest intention of ever disarming fully in the nuclear sense. We have a process going on which is being ratcheted up slowly and one of these days it is going to come home, particularly to the United States Government, that nuclear weapons are not its friend. The utility of nuclear weapons has slid down the chain of power in the international community. During the Cold War they were useful to the two super powers. Since the end of the Cold War they have become useful to leaders of so-called rogue states, particularly North Korea. They could slide a little further into the hands of non-national government and the more arsenals there are around the world to be controlled the more is the prospect that there will be leakage or theft into the hands of people who simply cannot be deterred. I think there is a much bigger problem out there that Britain has yet to confront.

  42. That is a rather benign reading of the future developments in the Russian Federation.
  (Professor Rogers) I would take the view that British nuclear weapons have always been far more concerned with status than security and they serve no useful purpose. Britain would be much more influential in arms control arenas if it de-nuclearised than if it maintains its current forces. The whole problem with proliferation from the perspective of countries like not just the United States and Russia but from Britain, France and China is that it is a case of "do as I say, not as I do" and this is a view which has a strong resonance in many other parts of the world. I would like to see a much more vigorous debate in Britain about whether it is necessary for Britain to have nuclear weapons in the first place. It is certainly a view that I do not hold. I have not for 40 years.

  43. Are you as robust, Professor Baylis?
  (Professor Baylis) I am not. You will not perhaps be surprised to hear that. I think there are three positions that in a sense could be held. One is the traditionalist view about nuclear weapons and the high saliency of nuclear weapons. The other is the abolitionist view that we should move swiftly down the road towards abolition, which I think my two colleagues share. I think there is a third position which is a marginalist position, that we do as much as we can to marginalise nuclear weapons but I do not think it is realistic to move towards an abolitionist position, I do not think the British Government take that position, I do not think the American Government would take that position, I do not think our European allies, most of them anyway, would take that position. I would like to see less and less emphasis placed upon nuclear weapons in our defence policy. Whether or not long term abolition is a feasible possibility is a moot point. I would not necessarily rule that out. I do not think it is a realistic possibility at the moment.

  44. So what is the advantage to the United Kingdom of the continued possession of the nuclear deterrent?
  (Professor Baylis) I would disagree with Professor Rogers and say that I think it is not just a question of status. I think there is an element of status in it but I think there is a question of political influence, and we have been making the case all morning that Britain has some influence in these arms control negotiations. They are not going to go away. The CTBT is not going to go away, the NMD debate is not going to go away, biological and chemical weapons debates are not going to go away. Do we want to influence that process or not? I think—and this is a matter of judgment clearly—that we can influence that process from being within that debate rather than from being outside. I do not think that we actually influence the question of whether or not regional powers will develop nuclear weapons at all. I think those are regional initiatives, regional threats, regional security concerns which affect the Indians or Pakistan. I do not think Britain influences that process.

  45. Your judgment is that stripped of a nuclear capacity our influence in arms control negotiations would be substantially reduced?
  (Professor Baylis) That would be my judgment.

  46. This is an aside as it were but clearly, rightly or wrongly, it is bound up with the Security Council scene in maintaining it.
  (Professor Rogers) Which raises the question of whether we should seek to maintain it.

  47. Indeed. The thing I wanted to ask on Russia was about the current assessment of the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal, infrastructure and so on, and could we and should we be doing more?
  (Professor Rogers) I think there are two elements here. One is that Russia had massive nuclear forces which are slowly being withdrawn and dismantled. The economic situation in Russia is so serious that there are still very grave concerns about the security of those forces and I am bound to say that I think the amount of aid provided from the United States and the European Union has sadly been far too little to try and bring a potentially very dangerous situation under control. We have the paradox though that because Russia's conventional forces are in such disarray and they really are incredibly bad at present, within Russia there is an element of thinking that core strategic and tactical nuclear forces are more necessary than 10 years ago because they cannot afford to maintain large conventional forces. In a sense that is a worrying development which is coming at us from many different Russian sources. One would have to say that, for quite different reasons, if anything nuclear weapons developments are getting increasing saliency both in the United States and Russia at the present time.
  (Professor Baylis) And China.
  (Professor Rogers) And China of course.

  48. Are there research or developments going on in Russia on new technologies and nuclear weapons which we have not fully understood?
  (Professor Rogers) There is very little money for research and development. There is probably some evidence that they are trying to produce modern tactical nuclear systems on a small scale and they are doing some upgrading to one particular intercontinental ballistic missile, but they are having extreme difficulty in funding these.

  49. You said something just now—although you did not use this phrase—along the lines that we are not throwing enough money at their deteriorating nuclear arsenal. I do not know if you can put for a layman some sort of scale on what we should be doing. Is this something which is achievable and also can you amplify what we should be doing in your view and could be doing that is politically achievable and tenable?
  (Professor Rogers) The kinds of finance that have been proposed and in part implemented, particularly from the United States and within the EU, more notably from Germany than from other states, are at a level which ideally should have been three to four times greater over the last six years. That is a very broad ball park figure.
  (Professor Baylis) I think it is about three billion dollars in the Nunn-Lugar programme if I recall. I agree with what Professor Rogers has said. What we have seen is that clearly even that amount of money is very small in terms of the scale of the problem. As we have seen with the Start I Treaty protocol, the Start II Treaty and so on, the Russians have found it increasingly difficult to dismantle their nuclear forces and ballistic missiles within the timescale that has been laid down. It has already been moved from 2003 to 2007. Part of the indication of that is that this is an immense problem given the level of capabilities which they have and the level of reductions which are involved in the Start process. I think three to four times the scale of the finance is probably the right figure.

  50. I do not know if you are also able to comment on the same phrase but two separate matters, the leakage of fissile material, if you want to give us your views on that.
  (Professor Rogers) I think probably the leakage of fissile material and indeed leakage of the technical knowhow, which is even more significant, is bound up with the issues that Professor Baylis has mentioned. If one had a substantially increased level of funding to draw in people who might otherwise be attracted abroad and to get better control of fissile material, we would all be in a rather safer position than we are in now.

  51. It is all redeemable presumably?
  (Professor Rogers) So far things have not gone dramatically wrong. That may well be more a matter of luck than anything else. Yes, it is redeemable in that sense.
  (Professor O'Neill) The problem on the theft of fissile material is that we simply do not know. Material could have gone missing and someone is sitting on it, and the first thing we will know is that either there will be an imminent threat or something very nasty has happened. I talked to some of the Pentagon people who are involved in implementing the Nunn-Lugar programme and they point out that under the programme they have a fair amount of oversight of control of what happens to the material while it is still in warheads. Once the warhead is broken open the fissile material goes back into bulk storage under control of the Russian Government and there is no foreign oversight on that. It is in that form where it is most difficult to account for in detail. That is where the real concern is on leakage.

  52. Can I first of all offer my apologies to my colleagues and to yourselves for my late arrival. I had an important constituency question to deal with and I guess at times such matters take precedence even over a meeting with such distinguished visitors. If I may say so, Professor O'Neill, you seemed to use a characteristically Australian phrase when you said that we are pouring money down a rat hole. Professor Rogers said that the nuclear deterrent serves no useful purpose, amongst other things, and Professor Baylis, you talked about the need to examine the question of the marginalisation of nuclear weapons. Might I say first of all that I have a constituency interest in this matter. Hundreds of my constituents have been employed and continue to be employed at the nuclear base on the Clyde but I have often questioned the usefulness of this deterrent. There are now something like 10 Asian nations with the technology to develop nuclear weaponry. How on earth can the western nations persuade these new nuclear powers to agree to the NPT?
  (Professor O'Neill) It is very difficult and certainly they will not without some commitment that the five nuclear weapon states are doing something much more serious about moving towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. India has laid that out as a very specific objection. Pakistan has said it would follow the Indians if the Indians decided to eliminate their holdings. We are in a logjam and there is not the slightest intent on any of the five nuclear weapon states to even discuss going to zero, let alone implementing it over a period of 20 or 30 years. I think we are in a situation where we have created an engine of slow proliferation and the nuclear scene is going to get much worse.

  53. And it has its own momentum?
  (Professor Rogers) It has. Essentially the non-proliferation Treaty was a bargain and it remains a bargain. It is a bargain between states who say they will not develop nuclear weapons if in return the existing nuclear weapon states under Article VI agree progressively to give theirs up. The problem is that it is a bargain which is not being kept.

  54. And your view, Professor Baylis?
  (Professor Baylis) In general I go along with that. There is a prolific problem which faces us. Clearly questions of national security are balances of judgment in terms of perceptions of how our national security is best enhanced with the balance of concepts of global security. Is our security best achieved through giving up nuclear weapons in the hope that we can influence this process, or is it best achieved through progressive marginalisation of nuclear weapons, in other words, playing our part in the bargain that Professor Rogers talked about, while at the same time trying to influence this process through the continuing nuclear weapon status? I think the interesting question about the NPT—and I suspect that Professor O'Neill will disagree with me on this—is that some of the nuclear powers see the bargain slightly differently. If we look at Article 6 of the NPT Treaty, what we see is a linkage between a commitment to nuclear disarmament and a commitment to general and comprehensive disarmament. We tend to focus on the commitment towards nuclear disarmament. Many of the nuclear powers say, "If we are going to move down this road of denuclearisation", and we have moved since 1989 quite a long way down this road, "there has to be a movement towards general and comprehensive disarmament by other states." There is no such movement taking place. I am not necessarily saying that that perception of Article 6 is wholly accurate, but there is that perception there that you will see when you come on to nuclear plans, for example, in the United States.

  55. The two are clearly linked under Article 6.
  (Professor Baylis) That is right.

  56. Looking at that, it would stop hundreds of millions being poured down this rat hole. One of you talked about moth-balling our system. This is a western driven bargain, Professor Rogers, and it may be seen entirely differently in South East Asia. You come to the fora with an Australian perspective. If the United Kingdom alone moth-balled its nuclear force, what influence would that have on these ten nations in Asia? The scaling down would have to come from all five nuclear powers, would it not?
  (Professor O'Neill) Absolutely, and this has to be done on a joint front.

  57. That is not going to happen, is it, with the Americans?
  (Professor O'Neill) Curiously, the most active debate on the elimination of nuclear weapons is in America. There are a couple of major research institutes that have really put their heart and soul into this in the past five years. You have leading figures from the American defence establishment, like former Defence Secretary McNamara and the former Commanding General of Strategic Air Command, General Lee Butler, who have come out very explicitly. I worked with them on the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and they have also published chapters in the book that John Baylis and I have just edited. There is a real chance to turn the ship around in the United States.

  58. You have got to turn the ship around on Capitol Hill.
  (Professor O'Neill) Yes, and it will take time. I just hope that the force of argument does it before we see a very nasty terrorist incident blow the central business district out of a major American city. That will do it.

  Chairman: On that horrific prospect we will call to an end this first session. May I thank you very much indeed. If there is anything that you desperately want to say to the Committee before we conclude, now is your chance, but if not, may I thank all three of you very warmly indeed on behalf of the Committee. We now move onto the second set of witnesses.