1.  These notes offer comment on some aspects of WMD matters. They make no attempt at a comprehensive or systematic overview.

I.  THE CONCEPT OF WMD

  2.  The term "weapons of mass destruction" is long-established in international discourse, and it would be fruitless to yearn for its disappearance. Its portmanteau use can however too easily become an impediment to clear thinking, and perhaps even to useful action. It lumps together weapon classes that differ widely in key respects and so need markedly different policy handling.

  3.  The international community is fairly close to achieving the root-and-branch prohibition and outlawing of all facets of BW and CW armouries—development, acquisition, retention, threat and use. Nuclear weapons are in a quite different situation. They are uniquely overwhelming and conclusive weapons, with a consequent impact in the prevention of war which no other category can approach. They are, for good or ill, deeply embedded in global security structures, as BW and CW have never been. There is no reasonable prospect, even if it were otherwise desirable, of winning global agreement in any practical-policy timescale to a wholesale ban upon their existence. They are not prohibited by international treaty or law (the Annex herewith briefly reviews the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, often misportrayed as a sweeping and authoritative ban on all nuclear weapons). And their existence incidentally provides a salutary underpinning to the BW and CW prohibitions—those prohibitions cannot be perfectly verified, and overtrumping capability in the hands of key powers is a last-resort deterrent to breaches and reassurance to good-faith parties.

  4.  The lumping together of nuclear weapons and BW/CW risks hampering any distinctive opportunities to exploit more fully the major achievement which the successful banning of the latter will constitute. Just for example, one could conceive of possible moves to criminalise the use of BW/CW, or to put in place a standing instruction to or resolution in the Security Council that any such use should be dealt with, regardless of any claimed excuse, by full collective force. Such steps might valuably reinforce international deterrence of BW/CW. But the "WMD" aggregation makes them vulnerable to demands, whether by the naïve or by the manipulative, that similar steps be taken in respect of nuclear weapons. Given the realities noted above, demands of such kinds would amount in practice to blocking action.

II.  NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT

  5.  The eventual dissolution of all nuclear armouries is a proper long-term aspiration. In any circumstances at all like today's it is however nowhere near capable of achievement, even if its desirability were (as it is not) indisputable. There is no likelihood that key countries such as Russia would truly agree; nor is there serious prospect (as experience with Iraq and North Korea should warn) of securing the rigorous universal verification and enforcement arrangements that would be essential supports for a ban. In my judgment the general abolition of armouries can be expected to come about only as the result of much wider political change, not of head-on disarmament demand. The removal of the Berlin Wall offers an analogy.

  6.  I note (but much current comment does not) that in Article VI of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty the commitment of the accepted nuclear powers to nuclear disarmament is directly partnered by a commitment, binding upon all parties, to general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. Nothing in the text of the Treaty gives a different status or timescale to the two commitments.

  7.  I believe there to be a useful potential agenda for further reducing the size, cost and readiness of current armouries, and for increasing transparency about them, even in the absence of abolitionist proposals. Indeed, unrealistic demands for such proposals risk distracting political and diplomatic effort from the practical agenda and providing cover for countries that might prefer to evade elements of that agenda.

  8.  It remains nevertheless necessary to evaluate the components of the candidate agenda soberly. Some of those commonly put forward do not come well out of such evaluation; No First Use, Virtual Armouries and Minimal Armouries (at least in extreme forms) are examples.

III.  NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION

  9.  The global non-proliferation drive, from the NPT onwards, has in the round been and remains a notable success. In the 1960s predictions of 20 or 30 nuclear-weapon states by the end of the century were commonplace; they have been confounded by the complex of measures of which the Treaty is the cornerstone. The Treaty has the largest number of acceding countries of any treaty in history, and in 1995 its indefinite continuance was endorsed unanimously. Particular successes within the past decade have been registered in respect of Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.

  10.  Worries of course remain. Iraq and North Korea are being tackled. The situation in India and Pakistan (though neither was party to the NPT, so no question of "break-out" arises) is plainly unwelcome. These apart, Iran should perhaps be the key focus of future concern, not least because of repercussive possibilities.

  11.  The above list is significant, but it is short. The vast majority of parties remain faithful to the Treaty, kept so by the fact that it is wholly in their interest, obligation quite aside, to be so. Given this, it is no service to non-proliferation to portray the regime—as a good deal of current comment does—as in danger of some sort of general breakdown. The particular worries need to be addressed coolly in their own specific terms and regional settings.

IV.  UNITED KINGDOM NUCLEAR-WEAPON CAPABILITY AND ARMS CONTROL

  12.  In its Strategic Defence Review the Government announced significant unilateral changes, additional to those already decided upon by its predecessor, in the content and transparency of UK nuclear-force capability. This has had a wry incidental effect, in that there now remains little that could be put on the table, other than the complete abandonment of the capability, were we to be included in some wider START-type arms-reduction negotiation. (Given that UK requirements have never been a function of the size of anyone else's offensive armoury, such inclusion has in any event always seemed to me of doubtful logic or utility.)

  13.  Are there circumstances in which complete renunciation should be considered? The case for independent UK capability is markedly less cogent than it seemed during the Cold War; it rests now in my view (and leaving aside general ideas of political prestige, to which I assign little strategic importance) upon the sense of a very general insurance against the future's long-term uncertainties. I doubt whether that consideration would now warrant incurring the capital cost of the Trident force were we addressing the Polaris-replacement decision on a clean-sheet basis. But that is not our actual situation. The capital investment is essentially complete; it will not require to be renewed for many years ahead, and I am not aware that any large decision bearing upon renewal (which is likely, I recognise, to merit a sceptical approach) need be faced in any near future. Meanwhile, I would expect renunciation to become a practical issue only if either pressures upon the defence budget became so severe that some major component of our force structure had to be excised (in which event the nuclear force could not be exempt from consideration) or there were solid evidence that UK withdrawal from nuclear-weapon ownership would dependably secure some very substantial international dividend in the form of action by others. I am aware of no sign that either of these eventualities is in prospect.

Michael Quinlan

29 January 2000

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: THE ICJ 1996 PRONOUNCEMENT

  1.  The ICJ pronouncement is an advisory opinion, not an authoritative determination. It cannot create binding international law.

  2.  The opinion contains six statements. The first four were described in the written contribution of the Court's own Vice-President, later its President, as "anodyne asseverations of the obvious". That may be over-severe, since there are within them some restatements or clarifications that may be found useful; but they cannot be supposed to be of major new importance.

  3.  The fifth statement—reached by the narrowest possible margin and by means, unusually in an advisory opinion, of a casting vote—is on the legality of the use or threat of nuclear weapons. It says that this would be "generally" illegal. But the use of nuclear weapons is not addressed to any generality of situations; it would arise only in (and its threat would relate only to) exceptional and extreme circumstances. The qualification "generally" therefore largely deprives the sentence of practical application. The statement goes on to indicate that the Court cannot make up its mind on whether use by a state would be legitimate "in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which its very survival would be at stake". "Survival" is a term not defined—does it refer to averting physical extinction? or political annexation? or massive loss of territory, population or other key resources?—the Court does not say. And whose is the survival in question? The natural meaning is just that of the state itself possessing the weapons; but that would imply that it was illegal to extend to others, or to receive from others, nuclear-deterrent protection as in the NATO or US-Japan alliances. Such an implication would be an open incitement to proliferation; and that cannot be sensible, or what the Court really intended. In brief, this fifth statement is both inconclusive and unclear.

  4.  The sixth statement—not made in response to any question put to the Court, and so strictly obiter dictum—is about the obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament. The statement neither adds to nor strengthens that obligation; it merely recalls what is already present in Article VI of the NPT. Article VI sets nuclear disarmament close alongside general and complete disarmament, and it is understood that the Court fully recognised this even though making no mention of it. One may wonder what are the current prospects, conditions and timescale of general and complete disarmament, and what steps towards it are being proposed by any party. Yet nothing in the ICJ statement, or in the NPT, places the two obligations on a different footing one from the other. Most of the nuclear signatories have done considerably more about nuclear disarmament than other signatories have about general and complete disarmament, an obligation resting equally on them.

  5.  In summary, the ICJ pronouncement will not bear the weight which anti-nuclear comment often seeks to place upon it as altering the status of nuclear weapons in international law, or as requiring dramatic new action by the nuclear powers.