TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000

PROFESSOR WILLIAM WALKER, PROFESSOR JOHN SIMPSON, AND MS REBECCA JOHNSON

  59. On behalf of the Committee can I welcome Professor John Simpson of the Department of Politics at the University of Southampton, Professor William Walker of the Department of International Relations at the University of St Andrews and Ms Rebecca Johnson, Executive Director of The Acronym Institute. I believe that you were all present at the last evidence session we had and it may be that you are bursting to give your agreement or disagreement with some things that our three previous witnesses have said. Is there anything which occurs to you at this stage that you would like to supplement, contradict or disagree with in our previous session?
  (Ms Johnson) I substantially agreed with the three previous speakers, but there were a couple of points that I had a different emphasis on that I would want to stress. One is the question of national missile defence and the limited national missile defence. What I would want to stress is the reason why Russia and China are so concerned is because they are linking two aspects of this. One is what I call the Yugoslav factor, which relates back to their understanding of US doctrine and strategy prior to the end of the cold war. This was so that if there was the necessity to go to war there would be a pre-emptive nuclear first strike that would attempt to knock out the major facilities and capabilities, combined with a mop-up. The mop-up, under Reagan, was the Star Wars idea. It never flew because it was far too ambitious. China particularly—but I also think that this is an area of concern for Russia—are worried about a limited national missile defence which is not about fear of missile defence, it is about the intercepters in Alaska and North Dakota which the US presents as only being capable of knocking out a small number of attacking missiles. What they are linking with is not that missile defence dealing with their entire forces, but that missile defence dealing with a remnant force, a 5 per cent that might be left after a pre-emptive strike in the United States. We might, as allies to the United States, consider this scenario as completely unreasonable. The point is not whether or not there is a likelihood of this, the point is the threat assessment that the serious analysts within Russia and China have to take into account.

  60. Are you saying that this is one of their key perceptions?
  (Ms Johnson) This is one of their key perceptions and it is one of their key worries. China, in particular, I would say, which at the moment only has 20 or so missiles capable of reaching the United States, would perceive that even if a thin missile defence is aimed at them, if it is combined with the first use/first strike of nuclear weapons—this is where the Yugoslav factor, which again, when I am in the United States I really feel that the United States—

  61. When you say the "Yugoslav factor" do you mean the precedent of what the allies did in the air strike against the Federal Republic of Yugoslav?
  (Ms Johnson) Yes. This is something that again we might disagree about, whether or not it would ever be applied to countries such as China or Russia. From the Chinese or Russian point of view the two lessons they learned were that the US with NATO, but not necessarily with UN Security Council endorsement, could—if it thought that it could fight a war on whatever basis, which for some reason it considered sufficiently important—fight this war without its own domestic casualties, then it might be prepared to go ahead. What China is worried about is this combination of first strike and mop-up that might give the US the confidence to think it could. The second area is the concern that I think Paul Rogers alluded to, but I think it has to be underlined a little bit more. They see limited national missile defence as really the very thin end of a wedge which is about doing the research and development now that will, in 10 or 15 years' time, allow them to go back to Congress and say, "We can control space." If they weaken the ABM Treaty now, the concern is that in a few years' time, if they have the confidence with the research and development and throwing the money at space development, they will then walk away from other treaties like the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

  62. I am now going to ask your two colleagues to see whether there is anything on that, or which arose during the first session, that they would like to comment on. Professor Walker?
  (Professor Walker) I will just highlight two points. One is that it is important to understand the whole framework of international law, particularly multilateral arms control, has been damaged by recent events and recent trends. The notion that nuclear relations should be founded upon mutual obligation and on mutual trust, which was fundamental to the development of nuclear relations over a 30 or 40 year period, has been seriously weakened. I think for the United States, and for other states, the big question is how you re-establish an effective and legitimate international nuclear order.

  63. Is that because of unreliable players on the stage?
  (Professor Walker) In all sorts of ways, yes, and I think that one of the miracles of the NPT is that it provides a framework for effective and legitimate order in which all states feel they have a stake. I think my only other point to make is that I felt that there was too little discussion of China, and China is terribly important.

  64. What is your reading of the China dimension?
  (Professor Walker) I think that the Chinese are on the horns of various dilemmas and they do not, frankly, quite know what to do at the moment. I think there is a real danger that the Chinese are being driven to a position in which they will become more militarised and they will focus more and more of their resources on the development of military capability and trying to maintain their great power status. That too may have consequences for the issue of democratisation in China. I think that from the stand point of national missile defence, from the stand point of what India has been doing and from various things coming at them, you might say that the Chinese seem to be driven, at the moment, I think against there will, into the corner of increasingly relying upon military power and military capability.

  65. Would you designate the limited national missile defence as myopic in that in the longer term it might provoke greater threats to the US?
  (Professor Walker) I think so, and I think that during the cold war the great alliance, in a sense, and the handling of the non-proliferation policy was between the Soviet Union and the United States. In some way the United States has to find a relationship with China which is productive for both and allows them both to feel secure.

  66. Mr Simpson, this is your chance to comment on what went on previously.
  (Professor Simpson) I completely agree with Professor Walker's comments about the arms control environment. I think what specifically has not really been noted is that when the Russians ratified Start I they made its continual implementation effective upon the ABM Treaty remaining in force. We may have a ratification of Start II in the not too distant future and the same condition will be applied as to any ratification of the CTBT. What we have at the moment is a rather baffling situation where if you talk to the Russians they tell you that there is to be no modification of the ABM Treaty. If you talk to the Americans, they say that it is a done deal.

  67. Is that because they are in a bargaining situation?
  (Professor Simpson) I think it is because there has been bargaining going on, but one is not clear of the degree to which that bargaining has been effective and the degree to which the Americans are correctly or incorrectly reading the situation in Moscow. I think clearly what is going on is that there is a bargain out there, the question is whether President Putin, as he now is, is prepared to go along with the bargain. One of the things that I think one ought to remember is that if you look at the ABM Treaty itself, it does allow the deployment of defensive missiles in certain limited circumstances. The Russians have deployed those capabilities. The Americans have not. To that extent one of the key issues is going to be the degree to which Article 1 of the ABM Treaty is amended, because that is the element which says no to national missile defence, as against the details of the Treaty, where one could see a certain marginal amendment. The point that my colleagues made about perceptions still applies, because even if the Americans effectively are just implementing an agreement which has been on the cards as being an agreement for 20 odd years now, which previously they did not implement, the perceptions will still be that this is the thin end of a very large wedge.

  68. In the previous evidence session it was suggested that even if a deal could be done between the Russians and the Americans involving Start III and that could be got through, it would not get through Congress when it got back to the United States anyway, so it would not be a deal worth doing. Do you agree with that?
  (Professor Simpson) As I understand it the calculations at the moment are somewhat complicated. There is a view in Washington that it is in the Russians' interest to get a deal through with the Clinton Administration because they are not going to get a deal through with any following Republican Administration. Therefore, it is better to get a deal through which limits the American deployments than to have no deal at all and then to have the incoming Republican Administration just withdraw totally from the ABM Treaty. The other view, of course, is the one which has been articulated here, which is that even if a deal is done the Senate will not ratify it because the Republicans in the Senate are looking to a much larger prize, they are looking for national missile defence, and there is a view that what is going on is a very complicated tactical battle within the Senate and the Administration. Whereas what Clinton is doing is giving a quarter of a loaf in order to hold it at that, the Republicans want the whole loaf and therefore they will reject any deal between the Americans and the Russians which is done under the Clinton Administration out of hand. So it seems to me that the stakes are very high and a lot is going to depend on what happens in the presidential and congressional elections in the United States. I think this in itself is illustrative of the problems that we are now facing, which is that many proliferation decisions, many decisions on nuclear weapons, are going to be made in domestic political contexts where the ability of the outside world to influence state decisions is going to be very limited. Again, the Indian case is very illustrative in this respect.
  (Ms Johnson) I think that the Clinton administration would very much like to get some kind of offence/defence deal with Moscow prior to the NPT conference, although time is running very, very short for that, or at least to be able to go to the NPT conference and say that a deal is on the way. It would be the ratification of Start II and some agreement on Start III levels that maybe goes a bit closer to Moscow's wish on that, in return for Moscow agreeing the amendments for the limited national missile defence. There are two major problems with that scenario. One is that while there is some indication that Putin might welcome this, there is, among his advisers, a lack of trust and an increasing sense that the US changes the goal posts partly because of its domestic debate, as Professor Simpson has referred to, but there is a general feeling that you get an agreement with the US and the next time round they want more, they pocket it and they want more. The second set of problems about that is the China factor, because if the US and Russia do a deal, China is left more isolated. Certainly over the last few years China and Russia have been having a number of very high level meetings and agreements in which they are, in effect, saying that they will support each other on this issue.

  69. If your analysis is correct and China responded to this by putting more resources into weapons proliferation and presumably by becoming more isolated, in a sense, itself, does it not have implications for Taiwan and is that not actually counter productive from the point of view of the Americans?
  (Professor Walker) Yes. I think one concern that I would have is that the Chinese might feel they have a window of opportunity. If they are going to do anything about Taiwan, they have to do it quickly, because all of these capabilities are going to be built up, which may be used to shelter Taiwan. I think that is a danger. I think that the Chinese are in a very difficult position because in the long run their great fear is Japan, and if they do rather aggressively build up there capabilities it will have the effect of making Japan feel less secure. If you combine that with the difficult situation with Taiwan, uncertainties in South Asia and Indonesia and problems in Korea, you have a real risk that the Japanese attitude towards nuclear weapons and to its whole military policy could change. I think that the Chinese are extremely sensitive to that. That may be one of the main factors of restraining their own behaviour.

  70. You kept talking about NMD and its political ramifications, but you have not talked about its technological feasibility. Is it actually feasible or are we have having this huge discussion about something which is never going to work anyway?
  (Ms Johnson) The understanding I have from people in the United States who are much closer to it that I am is that if they threw enough money at it they could probably make it feasible up to a point, in a very limited way. At the moment it probably is not and we know that the tests have either appeared to be rigged to some extent, or have failed, but I think there is a larger question which is, as they try to make it work they create much greater threats than their system technologically could ever deal with. For example, recent statements to the Senate Inquiry about this have pointed out that any country capable of a ballistic missile threat is also capable of mounting a fairly sophisticated counter measure to, particularly, a relatively thin missile defence shield, and these are not being taken into account—counter measures such as decoys and chaff to confuse the sensors—and that would greatly increase the technological infeasibility of actually being able to prevent such an attack. Plus they are probably looking at the wrong kind of delivery for potential weapons of mass destruction. The threat is more likely to be within the country itself, more likely to be covert delivery, hand delivered, truck delivered that sort of thing, and, if you are talking about biological, into the water supplies, that kind of thing, rather than missile delivery. The essential and very important danger is that by pursuing it they will—as the previous speakers and Professor Walker and Professor Simpson have alluded to—undermine the current existing network of international treaty regimes and norms to such an extent that there is, to some degree, a free-for-all. They will have encouraged and driven more missiles and weapons of mass destruction proliferation and they will not, in the end, have any kind of shield that can deal with those.

  71. Can we first focus on the British Government's policy in the various nuclear arms control fora? Could you tell us what your views are as to the British Government's goal at the forthcoming NPT review conference? What would you see the British Government trying to achieve that is realistic? (Professor Walker) I think it is obvious to us all that the British Government has a very great interest in the survival of the NPT, and this should be a healthy institution and all states should feel commitment to it. I suspect that the British Government will try to approach the conference by appearing both on the side of the United States and appearing, in a sense, to be speaking in a slightly different language. I think that it is very, very important that in fact the British Government comes to this conference making it absolutely clear that this nuclear weapon state—and in this case I think you will find an ally in France—does not share the American view of multilateral arms control and that the British Government believes very strongly upon it and believes that its own security depends upon the maintenance of multilateral arms control. In that context, may I say, I think it is very, very important that here the British Government does have a significant role in the effort to develop the CTBT, develop the CWC, develop the Biological Weapons Convention and bring the Cut-off Treaty into some kind of negotiation. That commitment remains on the table and most states still try to achieve these things. Historically the British have played a very constructive and important role in this field. If you take the Test Ban Treaty, over many years when it seemed very, very difficult to negotiate, the British did very, very important technical work on the Test Ban Treaty and it has done very important work recently on international safeguards and it has done a lot of work on the Cut-off Treaty. Next to South Africa, in fact, the British have probably done more work than any other state on the Biological Weapons Convention. I think that is one field in which the British can play a very important role in trying to maintain this technical and political commitment to the development of these treaties, even if our favourite ally is of a different mind at the moment. One other thing that I stress is that we have not actually discussed international safeguards. As you are probably aware, in the mid-1990s there was a reform of the international safeguard system, the so-called 93 plus 2 programme, leading to this additional protocol. So far rather few states have actually adopted these new safeguards, and I think it is very, very important that this initiative is maintained and, again, this could be an area in which the British play an important part.
  (Ms Johnson) I endorse what William has said, but I want to ask, are you asking about what I think the British will do or what I think they should do?

  72. Should.
  (Ms Johnson) The one area in which I disagree with William is that I am not sure that Britain and France will be speaking with the same voice on a number of issues. I think the nuclear weapon states are generally very divided. I think what Britain is going to try to do is keep as common a front as they can, both with the European Union and the P5, and the trouble with that is the likelihood that the only way to get that common front is very much on the lowest common denominator, which is going to ultimately fail to address the kinds of questions around lack of sufficient progress on Article 6, the nuclear disarmament obligation, lack of sufficient progress on universality with regard to India, Pakistan and Israel, and the problems about missile defence. Where I think Britain is going to differ from France is that I think France is going to be much more vociferous in actually trying to stamp out initiatives from the non-nuclear weapon states who are going to want to ensure that we come out of this conference with stronger commitments to take more progressive steps towards nuclear disarmament and stronger mechanisms in place. We saw that happen at the UN First Committee this December past, with initiatives from a group of states that, in fact, Britain ought to consider itself to be very much an ally with South Africa and Brazil, which gave up nuclear ambitions, and states like Ireland and Sweden within the European Union with a strong commitment for nuclear disarmament. They are not calling for nuclear disarmament yesterday but actually calling for a reduction in the reliance on nuclear weapons, they are calling for steps that Britain should and does agree with like transparency, but they are also going further forward to make a bridge between the current reinvigoration of nuclear doctrines and where they see Article 6, by calling for steps like the de-alerting of nuclear weapons to reduce reliance, steps like no first use, which I think would make a very big difference in terms of strategic stability now, steps like transparency not only of the weapons in the holdings, but also of the materials, and steps to begin to take the first steps towards negotiating real nuclear disarmament. They make a distinction between the quantitative, which they support, and the Start II process of bringing the levels down -and they welcome Britain's unilateral reduction of its own arsenal—and the qualitative, which is about whether or not they believe that the nuclear weapon states actually envisage a time when they can do without nuclear weapons. This is where statements in the Strategic Defence Review like retaining Trident for the foreseeable future really act against our interests. I would like to see Britain combining some of the good research that we have been doing at Aldermaston on how you would verify the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and maintain a verification of a nuclear weapon free world with Britain coming out and making some kind of an announcement that we would not seek to replace Trident. We can put with it some conditions to say that providing there is stability and continued validity of the central treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiation of a fissile material ban and so on, if we were to come out and remove that we are going to rely on them for the foreseeable future and say we can see a time when we will not need nuclear weapons, we will not seek to replace Trident providing that this moves forward. That would make a huge difference in the tone and the level of argument at the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference.
  (Professor Simpson) Can I make three quick points? One is that on disarmament I think what is important is that the British Government should demonstrate that, to quote the South African phrase, "They are unequivocally committed to nuclear disarmament." In terms of how you do that, I think what is important is to show that you are not only committed on paper, but you are actually taking action. I would emphasise one of the points that Rebecca has made, which is that we have been taking action as a consequence of a Strategic Defence Review, which is quite significant. Also a set of transparency of fissile material stocks that we have for military purposes, a set of actions on verification and starting to look at what verification of a fissile disarmament process would involve, and it seems to me that it is terribly important that the United Kingdom, at the NPT conference, is able to give details of what is going on and to demonstrate that it is action that we are taking, not just words that we are producing on this. Secondly, there is going to be a real problem for us over the question of universality as far as India and Pakistan are concerned. This is because I think there are increasing concerns about the situation in Kashmir, and increasing concerns that here we have two states which have demonstrated that they can make nuclear explosives and which are liable to be in a military conflict with each other in the near future. Therefore, there is a real concern to try to do something about this, to handle the problems which arise from this situation in terms of weapons or materials which might go from those two states—which are not constrained in any way by everybody else—to third parties. The other problem that this situation generates is for the NPT itself with the Japanese, for example, saying, "In no way can we in any sense recognise these states as nuclear weapon states, because when we entered the NPT Treaty we only entered it on the basis that there were going to be five nuclear weapon states."

  73. The third point?
  (Professor Simpson) The third point is that I think we would be looking for a very clear set of forward looking goals to come out of the NPT review conference and for agreement on what those goals would be. It seems to me that in the area of disarmament, for example, one of the goals could be to try to tease out the third of the elements in the disarmament package which was agreed in 1995, which was to look at what the systematic pursuit of disarmament might involve, because one of the things that is sadly lacking at the moment in the international context is any real vision of how one would actually get to nuclear disarmament, any agreed vision. What we have got are a set of ideas which were first produced in the late 1950s and which were probably applicable to that period, but it is, I think, open to debate whether they are applicable to the new millennium.

  74. I want to pick up two areas, one is the Fissile Material Cut- off Treaty and also China's insistence that it should take place in parallel discussions with the arms race and outer space, and also the whole question of the export of intangibles to the extent that expertise has already been spread, and our export control regimes. They are the areas that I want to ask you about. There is something that I should have, perhaps, asked our previous witnesses, I do not know if you can give any view on this. We were talking about the United Kingdom with our own listening post of technology, which was referred to. What about our friends in Canada? Presumably they have a pretty damn obvious interest in all of these areas? I do not know whether you can throw any light on that and then perhaps go to these other matters.
  (Ms Johnson) I can throw a little light on the Canada question. They are in a similar position to us in that they are close allies of the United States. They have actually a similar split to the one that was recently revealed between the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office here in that their Ministry of Defence is more inclined to let the United States use their facilities, up-grade them and so on, whereas their Foreign Office is very much more concerned about the impact of missile defence on the larger security questions in the arms control and non-proliferation regime. They are probably not very much further along in that than we are here, but there is a potential alliance there. There is actually a potential alliance with most of the NATO states. We would not be on our own if we were to deny the United States the up-grading at Fylingdales that they want, and I understand it actually does definitely violate the ABM Treaty as it currently stands. Therefore, we would be entirely within our rights to at least hold off any kind of agreement on that unless and until there were some modification of the ABM Treaty that would change that position. I think we would have partners. I know Canada is actually seeking some partners. On the fissile material question and the Chinese position, I spend a lot of my time in Geneva monitoring talks on disarmament, and this goes back to the earlier point I made about the way that China perceives what the US is trying to do with missile defence. They do not perceive it just as this limited system, they perceive it as a system that, if they want to retain their deterrence, would require that they enormously enhance their own arsenal, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They do not want to do that. They saw the way the Soviet Union was brought to its knees through an arms race and they do not want to engage in an arms race, but they do not want to lose what they perceive as a deterrent based on a second strike. The second thing is that they are very concerned about this being the thin end of the wedge of the US moving militarily much more into space, because this issue of prevention of an arms race in outer space has been on the CD Agenda for many years, in a sense it is the tool through which China is able to say, "Okay, we will prepare to agree to a fissile material cut-off negotiation, but in terms of our national security the space issue has got to be dealt with at least equally." It is the only leverage that they think they have.

  Mr Mackinlay: I would like to debate that and also your point about your view that the ABM Missile Treaty will be violated by an up-grading of Fylingdales. It would be very nice to have a little note on that. Can I move to the question of the export of intangibles?

  Dr Godman: I am sorry to interrupt. Were you saying that the up-grading of Fylingdales violates the long term—

  Chairman: We will obtain a memorandum from the FCO on the extent to which the up-grading of Fylingdales is part of the limited national missile defence.

  75. It is a very important point that has been flagged up by Ms Johnson and we will look into that. The other part of my question was about you and your colleague's views on the extent to which there has been export of intangibles, the extent to which export control regimes have either worked for failed or can be improved. That is the ball-park of what I wanted to ask you about.
  (Professor Walker) I think I rather agree with Professor O'Neill when he said earlier that we do not really know, unfortunately, and clearly the problem of controlling this huge legacy of expertise, materials and everything was a massive undertaking. I think one has to pay some tribute to the Russians and to the Americans in the great effort that they have made collectively to bring this whole matter under control.

  76. Is there something more that we in the United Kingdom or our European partners should be doing, not leaving it all to the US?
  (Professor Walker) I think we can do a bit more, but I would not say that we can do a fantastic amount more. I think in the end it is bound to be American and Russian initiatives and it requires a huge investment of money. Essentially the Americans have been gaining Russian compliance and co-operation through financial transfers on the whole. It is essentially arms control purchased with money.

  77. That is pretty depressing, is it not?
  (Professor Walker) One has to recognise that probably the most significant transfers have been undertaken by the States and one that has caused great concern internationally has been the transfer from Korea to Iran and other states of missiles, and also the relationship between China and Pakistan. There is a still a lack of clarity, one might say, over exactly what the Chinese policy is these days in relation to these transfers.

  78. Do you want to wade into this, Professor Simpson, and then I have finished?
  (Professor Simpson) First of all, one of the problems of getting a handle on the situation in Russia is that the Russians have to agree to whatever is going to be done, and the Russians, as an independent state, have very clear views on this and are going to want to make their own decisions. One consequence of this is that we are getting into very odd situations in terms of the relationship between the United States and Russia in that the Russians are insisting that any deal that is done on what is to happen to the plutonium that is going to come out of Russian and American missiles must be a reciprocal deal. So, whereas the Americans originally wanted to immobilise this material, mix it with highly radioactive waste, and put it in Yucca Flats or some other repository, the Russians took the view that it was a material which had an energy value and the net result of it is that it looks as though we are now going to get into a situation where both sides are going to immobilise some of this weapons grade material, but also both are going to burn it as Mox fuel in light water reactors. This is going to have two affects, one is that the Americans, since the Carter administration, have taken the view that they will not burn Mox, they are not interested in civil plutonium and burning Mox in civil reactors, and they are going to have to, as it were, reverse their non-proliferation policy. Secondly, it rather looks as though they are going to have a new generation of civil reactors which are actually going to be built to advance designs—probably European designs—but built in Russia with European and American money, in order to burn the Russian Mox. The point that I am making is that it is all very well for us here to say, "This is what the Russians ought to do", but that is not what happens in the real world, you have to negotiate with the Russians and the Russians have very clear ideas as to what should happen to this material. The second point that I would make in terms of this is that we do at the moment have a very, as it were, undeveloped situation in terms of delivery systems and particularly in terms of missiles, in that the international agreement to constrain these systems is not particularly well developed in the way that the agreement and the regimes to constrain the weapons of mass destruction themselves is developed, because we do not have any treaty on this. There is a suppliers' agreement over missiles. It looks as though there is going to be another round of attempting to see if these agreements can be taken further, but when you start to address the ins and outs of such a treaty it becomes clear that it will be very difficult. There are two reasons for this. One is that such a treaty would, in the end, probably look like the NPT in that you would have technology holders and those who had missiles and those who did not, and there would have to be almost a sort of commitment on the part of those who have to get rid of them. The second thing is that it would be terribly difficult to draw lines between what is a missile which in fact has got a weapon of mass destruction capability and what is not, what is a space launcher and what is used purely within conventional weapons. This is a point I drive home as one of the key changes. I think we have seen in the last 10 years that it is starting to become clear that a driver in the nuclear area now is the advent of precision guided munitions, it is the fact that the US and ourselves can substitute our nuclear weapons for these conventional munitions and others cannot. Therefore, one of the things which it appears that we are in danger of getting into is that while we can effectively suborn other states by using these munitions, the only way they can see themselves as able to defend against this is by them developing weapons of mass destruction.

  79. And they have not got the technology for that?
  (Professor Simpson) No.