HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, U.S., Sep 18
2013 (IPS) - Every nation in the world has been invited
to participate at the highest political level in the High-Level
Meeting of the General Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament scheduled
for Sep. 26. This has never happened before. We have never been at
such a moment of crisis and opportunity.
The crisis arises because the rational route forward which has
been identified by the vast majority of the world’s countries in
support of advancing a convention banning nuclear weapons or, as
the secretary general has also suggested, a framework of legal
agreements achieving elimination, has not been supported by the
U.S. or Russia, two states with more than 95 percent of the
world’s nuclear weapons.
Thus, progress toward disarmament lacks the galvanising focus
preliminary negotiations on a treaty would provide. It is also a
moment of opportunity since except for India and Pakistan, no
states with nuclear weapons are actually hostile to one another.
Rhetorical puffery has become expected in season after season
while regularly a new crisis du jour sweeps attention away from
nuclear disarmament obligations. Anyone can see cynicism as a
dangerous and contagious problem looming on the horizon if nothing
meaningful is done soon.
Many countries know this and that is why the 67th session of the
General Assembly Resolution A/RES/67/39 moved to convene this
high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament for the 68th session of
the General Assembly next week.
China and India have both expressed support for negotiating a
universal ban on the weapons and Pakistan has stated it would
follow. France, the U.S. and UK, and Russia openly oppose progress
now on even taking preliminary steps to negotiate a legal ban.
Claims are made that progress through the START process and
obtaining incremental steps such as entry into force of the
Comprehensive Test Ban and a treaty banning the further production
of weapons grade fissile materials must be achieved and focused
upon to the exclusion of other efforts. Diplomats from nuclear
weapons states even assert that advocacy for a universal,
non-discriminatory ban would divert attention and diminish
effectiveness in pursuing incremental steps.
The problems with only taking this incremental approach are many.
The U.S. Senate is unlikely in the near term to ratify the test
ban. The case for the test ban as part of the march toward
disarmament has not been made domestically and thus its advocacy
appears as incoherent.
It is hard to make the case that the U.S. military should ever be
constrained without demonstrating the benefits of obtaining a
universal ban on the weapons. Incoherence in advocacy leads to
policies going in multiple directions. An example of such
incoherence was obvious in the policy for ratification for the
START treaty – support the treaty and pledge hundreds of billions
of dollars to “modernise” the arsenal and infrastructure.
The negotiations for the fissile materials cut off treaty are
being done in the Conference on Disarmament, a body of 61 nations
in Geneva that operates by consensus. Thus, one country can always
stop progress. This body has not even had a working agenda in over
a decade. Spoilers abound. Progress will not take place there.
Third, reliance on progress on the bilateral leadership of Russia
and the U.S. is foolish. Russia has made clear that the next round
on START reductions will not happen without resolution of
differences on the dangers of global precision strike aspirations
of the U.S. military where nuclear warheads are replaced by
conventional warheads and new weapons fulfill old missions,
missile defense as a possible sword and shield should technical
breakthroughs arise, and weaponisation of space, a course Russia
wants prohibited by treaty.
These issues will not be resolved soon since behind them all is a
cadre within the U.S. military which wants to always have a
dominant position for security purposes. Progress is unlikely
while Russia feels threatened.
Yet: Consensus with Russia and the U.S. that through a universal
treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, progress in Syria can be
made thus making us all safer bodes well for progress on banning
nuclear weapons. Surely no one would claim nuclear weapons are any
less abhorrent and more legitimate to use than chemical weapons.
Yet: Imagine if the 114 leaders of governments in the five
nuclear weapons-free zones of Latin America, Africa, South Asia,
Central Asia and the South Pacific each said, “My country benefits
from being in a nuclear weapons-free zone and remains threatened
by those countries with nuclear weapons. It is time we made the
entire world a nuclear weapons-free zone.”
The necessary upgrading of the issue to the prominent position it
deserves would happen.
Imagine if the statement from the gathering said, “We will
dedicate a high level day each year until the threat of nuclear
weapons is gone.” Imagine if commencement of preliminary
negotiations were committed to happen by a critical mass of
leaders “in the Conference on Disarmament, or any other
appropriate and effective venue at the earliest possible time, and
we commit to full participation in this process.”
Such a call for progress would be an irresistible stimulant. But
what would really ring a bell for progress would be a statement
along these lines:
“There are global common public goods which must be obtained to
make us all safer. Cooperation in addressing terrorism, cyber
security, stable financial markets, and peaceful democratisation
in countries in transition are of high value and critical
importance. The very survival of civilisation depends on how well
we work together in obtaining other global common goods –
protecting the climate, the oceans, the rainforests, all living
systems upon which humanity depends.
“There is an existential imperative that we cooperate in new
dynamic ways to meet these new challenges. Nothing could compel us
more strongly to resolve our differences in a spirit of peace and
common purpose. Even thinking of seriously stating what is common
and good for us all makes clear that possessing and threatening to
use nuclear weapons is irrational, dysfunctional and must end,
now.
“We breathe the same air and it is either cleansed with a spirit
of cooperation or befouled by fear and threat. We are resolved to
succeed in spirit of cooperation for this and future generations.
That spirit calls us to denounce and renounce nuclear weapons for
all now.”
Jonathan Granoff is President of the Global Security Institute,
and Adjunct Professor of International Law at Widener University
School of Law.