TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000

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

  80. You mentioned that Taiwan and China might have a window of opportunity, but Taiwan has billions of dollars of investments in mainland China. Would the Chinese Government want to risk all that for a military conflict whose outcome could be uncertain?
  (Professor Walker) I think it is an issue on which they are completely torn and they clearly have built this up into something of an obsession, as I am sure you are well aware, and the notion that the Chinese should reinstate the old borders, you might say, around the Chinese empire has become a complete fixation for them. Also, I suppose, they feel threatened by the development of democracy in Taiwan, and also by the great financial power that Taiwan and other ex-patriot Chinese communities have, so before it develops further they feel they have to proceed with the unification project. In some ways I think the recovery of Hong Kong has increased that obsession for the Chinese, but on the other hand I do accept that the risks for them are extremely high. There has been much attention recently to the Chinese capabilities and the more we look at the Chinese capabilities we realise that their military capabilities are actually rather limited. So their capacity to actually do something about Taiwan may be quite limited. On the other hand, they may be prepared to take some very big risks in the short run to make sure that they can try to resolve this, whereas in the long run they may have very little faith that they can.

  81. Ms Johnson, you said it would be a contribution if we said clearly that we will not replace Trident, but are you ruling out up-grading Trident?
  (Ms Johnson) My argument has to do with the political effect. Personally I would like us to get rid of Trident, but I recognise that at the moment the mood of this Government is that we have spent all that money and we are not going to throw it away now. Trident, in a sense, has probably about a 20 year life span, so if we were to make the announcement now, it could be extended, it could potentially be up-graded, although there is a real question about what we would want to up-grade it with that we could research and develop without doing nuclear testing. By the time that Trident was being deployed it probably was not capable of doing the missions that the Government might have envisaged for it, and you have got this scramble to try and find a sub-strategic role for it, which I have always found somewhat incoherent. My point is that if we were to make the announcement that we would not seek to replace Trident, the effect that that would have is that we would undercut this idea that we, as one of the five recognised nuclear weapon states, understand the NPT and somehow believe that the NPT gives us an indefinite right of possession. Article 6 very clearly does not give that indefinite right of possession. As Professor Rogers said, it was a bargain between the countries that would renounce attempting to acquire nuclear weapons in return for a commitment by the five that already had that they would progressively move towards nuclear disarmament. The point which was made earlier, which I did profoundly disagree with, was linkage between nuclear and general and complete disarmament. That has been de-linked in two ways. In 1995 when the NPT was indefinitely extended it was extended with two sets of decisions, principles and objectives on nuclear disarmament and proliferation and a review process, and in the language there you see a de-linking and that de-linking was made more manifest by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1996. In a sense, we cannot just fall back on saying, "When there is total disarmament and nobody has a gun we will get rid of Trident", that does not wash, and the non-nuclear weapon states are feeling as if they were betrayed in the agreement they made in 1995, let alone the agreement they made as they signed and ratified the NPT in the first place. This is what we have to seek to change, and we have to seek to change it in a climate in which, certainly the United States and Russia and possibly partly in response to China, the role of nuclear weapons is being reinforced rather than reduced.

  82. I offer my apologies for interrupting Andrew Mackinlay, but it just seems to me that a case might well be argued that America by up-grading the Flylingdales has violated the ABM Treaty. I just want to ask a couple of questions about Asia. You said that China is at the heart of the matter. Professor Paul Braken of Yale University in a paper entitled The Second Nuclear Age, which appears in the current edition of Foreign Affairs asks the question, "Can anyone seriously imagine China, Iran or India scrapping it missiles?" He answers his question by saying, "Giving them up would permanently lock in the western advantages of the 1990s." He goes on to say, "Consider too the actual behaviour of countries confronted with the American missile shield. Several Asian states have already expanded their production of missiles. Deployment of the US anti-ballistic missile defence system is likely to speed proliferation of missiles as Asia churns out greater numbers to offset US defence and changes tactics to make its attacks more effective." Given this backdrop, is it not the case that in the world we are living in now the powers that used to control Asia and Asian countries no longer have that control? What influence does the United Kingdom Government have over China in these matters?
  (Ms Johnson) I would change the way that question relates. It is not so much what influence we would have over them in terms of us as a weapons state or us as a former colonial power, so much as what influence we can have on them and with them as part of the collective arrangements for security which underpin our security and underpin their security, not only nationally, but actually underpin their regional security. I think that sometimes we forget, within the negotiating bodies, the discussion fora and the treaties we can actually have a restraining influence on countries who otherwise have other kinds of pressures on them to go for a much sharper build up.

  83. If I may interrupt, because time is running on and I do not want to be ruled out of order by this Chairman of ours, as polite and as courteous as he is. One of the pressures in some of these Asian countries that now possess the capability to develop their own weapon systems is that of nationalism, and given the force of nationalism, and given the emergence of conflicts amongst these states, where stands the United Kingdom Government? What influence do we have?
  (Ms Johnson) I think that is a very difficult consideration. I do not know if my colleagues want to come in on that?

  84. Professor Walker, would you like to have a shot at that?
  (Professor Walker) I think the gist of your question is entirely appropriate. I think we have rather limited influence, although one should not under-estimate these countries. These countries want to develop economically and they want finance. I think also one should not think just of Britain in relation to these countries, one should think of the European Union and other members of the European Union, and so we do have some leverage in those respects.

  85. Do we have a coherent EU policy on these matters?
  (Professor Walker) It is difficult, but I think I would agree with the gist of what Ms Johnson was saying, our main influence is actually through trying to up-hold multilateral arms control. One of the great problems in Asia is the fact that there are not bilateral relationships between, for instance, China and India, there is no arms control process between them. The way in which arms control has developed in Asia is in fact through the multilateral process and through countries actually buying into it or not buying into it. So one has to have a dual track. One is to try and reinforce multilateral process and the other is, wherever possible, to encourage the bilateral process. In fact, in South Asia that is what the British Government has been very much trying to do, to get the Pakistanis and Indians to perform some kind of bilateral process—so far everyone has failed - and to try and get some kind of arms control to take place. Likewise between the Indians and the Chinese, but that has also been extremely difficult. One is left with the multilateral process being the most simple process.
  (Professor Simpson) Can I just make a point that is not in direct response to you? I think in Asia the key role is played by the United States. If you look at Taiwan, if you look at South Korea and if you look at Japan, the existing security relationships with the United States are the things which stabilise the situation. It is, as it were, a replay to some extent in this new context of what was going on in Europe during the cold war. It is extended US deterrents. I think there is a dilemma out there now, which is that most of the states, the Japanese in particular, just cannot conceive of a situation where that would not be there, but we saw what happened in the mid-1970s when the Nixon administration started to talk about putting the responsibility for security back on the shoulders of the national governments, which was when both the South Koreans and the Taiwanese started to develop nuclear weapon programmes. Therefore, there is a real dilemma which the Chinese must be aware of. On the one hand the ideal world that they are looking to is a world in which the United States is withdrawing from Asia, but that active withdrawal, that transformation, runs the risk that in its train will come a major proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to a number of the states of Asia which, at the moment, have some potential in these areas but have not transformed that potential into anything resembling a real capability. This is, in a sense, where I think the situation meshes into the discussions on national ballistic missile defence, because it may well be that some Americans take the view that if they are going to stick their necks out in these areas and if they are going to provide security guarantees, then they themselves need some guarantees.

  86. From those they defend, as part of their own defence?
  (Professor Simpson) They need some guarantees to be able to prevent an attack upon themselves[11].

  87. This was linked to the nuclear blackmail argument. It is not the attack on the US mainland itself, but rather the danger that the US foreign policy objective will be constrained by that threat.
  (Professor Simpson) I offer no solutions, I am just describing a situation, but it is a situation which is very difficult and which, if it was mishandled, couldbe the next area where we see very significant proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

  88. Two quick things, if I may, one is on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. We came from Geneva in a fairly gloomy frame of mind at the current impasse in respect of that treaty. Is there anything, in your judgment, that the United Kingdom can do to help break out of that

  impasse?
  (Ms Johnson) A creative, somewhat daring idea, hat is beginning to be talked about—I do not know whether it can be put in place, but it is worth knocking around at least as a possibility—is that the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty was the second item identified in 1995 at the NPT. The deadlock is in the Conference on Disarmament for good political reason. Unfortunately, it is not just states playing games, it is some political reasons. Is there something that could be done at the NPT? What Britain probably wants to do is just get some kind of statement reinforcing the necessity to move this forward, and hopes to catch China in that. I would go a bit further forward and say, could the NPT, for example, decide to convene a subsidiary or something like that to take place in Geneva, inter-sessionally, to start exploring the groundwork for the Cut-Off Treaty, in a sense, to start negotiations? This would not include India, Pakistan and Israel at that point, but from the very start they could invite those countries to participate in the same way that during the CTBT Israel was not actually a member until the very last three months, but fully participated. They could start that process going, of actually negotiating, with the understanding that the minute that the CD had resolved its problems over the workprogramme the negotiations would be—

  89. Which has been stalled for three or four year now.
  (Ms Johnson) It has been stalled for four years. What this would do is that it would separate the real objections from the political games, it would allow negotiations to begin to move ahead and I suspect that it would probably remove the incentive for the blocking in the CD at present.

  90. Thank you very much. The final question is, and perhaps one of your colleagues can comment on this, the CTBT. Is it possible for states to actually design and to test nuclear weapons through simulation devices without contravening the CTBT? At what point does simulation lead to contravention?
  (Professor Simpson) I think the simple answer to that is that it does not.

  91. It does not?
  (Professor Simpson) The treaty, as it was negotiated and as people set out to negotiate it, was not a treaty to prevent the further development of nuclear weapons per se, it was a treaty to stop nuclear test explosions. Admittedly as the negotiations went on there were those who had aspirations to convert it into a treaty which would stop nuclear developments per se. Having said that though, I have not yet come across any weaponeers who take the view that if they were to develop a new nuclear weapon design and were not able to test it, they would feel confident in recommending to a government that it should be deployed.

  92. Any final words, Professor Walker?
  (Professor Walker) I would make one final observation, which is that Britain in a number of important respects has more in common these days with the non-nuclear weapon states than with some of our other nuclear weapon states in relation to verification, in relation to common interest and the need for multilateral arms control and so on. We seem to have more of a community of interests with these states than with the nuclear weapon states. I see that as an opportunity for Britain to establish a rather distinctive diplomatic position in relation to both the nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states, and I hope that it will search for it.

  93. You mentioned the EU dimension. Is that relevant?
  (Professor Walker) Yes it is relevant.

  Chairman: Can I thank the three of you most warmly on behalf of the Committee for giving such valuable evidence.