British Official Backs Global Nuclear Disarmament

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett yesterday called for the world’s nuclear weapons states to recommit to eventual disarmament (see GSN, June 25).

Returning to the “grand bargain” written into the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — the idea that non-nuclear states would not seek atomic weapons while the nuclear states would eventually disarm — is necessary to continue the fight against proliferation, she said (see GSN, May 14).

“The need for such vision and action is all too apparent,” Beckett said, speaking here at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference.  “Today the nonproliferation regime is under particular pressure.”

In addition to the nuclear saga in North Korea, the current push for fuel cycle technology in Iran is “raising the specter of a huge push for proliferation in what is already one of the most unstable parts of the world.”

One challenge is balancing the expansion of nuclear energy programs with concerns about the spread of sensitive fuel cycle technologies that could be applied to military ends (see GSN, June 25).  

“How do we do so without prejudice to the economic development of countries that have every right under the NPT to develop a civil nuclear capability?” Beckett said.

She called for development of a multilateral disarmament framework when the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia expires in 2009 (see GSN, June 22).

Under the 1991 pact, the two nations agreed to reduce the number of deployed warheads to less than 6,000 each with no more than 1,600 delivery vehicles.  The treaty allows inspectors from both countries to verify deployment of strategic warheads by the other nation.

Moscow and Washington agreed in the 2002 Moscow Treaty to reduce their counts of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, but the new pact has no verification provisions.

Beckett also urged nations to work toward consensus at the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference (see GSN, May 27, 2005). 

“By the time that is held, we need the international community to be foursquare and united behind a global nonproliferation regime,” she said.  “We can’t afford for that conference to be a fractious one.  Rather we need to strengthen the NPT in all its aspects.”

While the stance of the international community on nonproliferation has been “remarkably resilient” for the past 40 years, a “genuine commitment and concrete action on disarmament” is crucial to stem the spread of nuclear weapons, Beckett said.

If it appears weapons states have completely abandoned their obligations to move toward disarmament under Article 6 of the nonproliferation treaty, those states seeking nuclear weapons will be provided rhetorical ammunition to support their pursuits, she said.

“Our efforts on nonproliferation will be dangerously undermined if others believe, however unfairly, that the terms of the grand bargain have changed,” Beckett said.  “We risk helping Iran and North Korea in their efforts to muddy the water.”

Beckett pointed to stalled progress in arms control discussions between the United States and Russia, the fact that the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has not yet entered into force, and a fissile material cutoff treaty that has failed to materialize as evidence of stagnated disarmament efforts. 

“They all point to absence of debate at the highest levels on disarmament and a collective inability thus far to come up with a clear forward plan,” she said.

“U.S. ratification would provide a great deal of impetus” for bringing the test ban treaty into force, Beckett said.  Creation of a fissile material cutoff treaty, meanwhile, would “signal to the rest of the world that the race for more and bigger weapons is over and the direction from now on will be down and not up.”

While the conditions permitting the abolition of nuclear weapons are not currently in place, losing sight of that ultimate goal would be a “grave mistake,” she said, suggesting such a loss of faith could erode support for arms reductions. 

“If there will always be nuclear weapons, what does it matter if there are 1,000 or 10,000,” she said.

In building an impetus for global nuclear disarmament, Beckett called for the United Kingdom to become a “disarmament laboratory,” to be at the lead of both the “thinking and the practical work.”  She said the government’s efforts would include participating in a think-tank study on what would be required to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

In beginning her address, Beckett referred to a January Wall Street Journal commentary in which former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn called for a concerted effort to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons (see GSN, Jan. 22).

Speaking earlier in the day at the conference Nunn returned to the principles outlined in that joint statement.  “I have slowly but surely come to the realization that the United States cannot be protected without taking the steps that we outlined in that article,” he said.

Such a forward-looking disarmament vision is necessary to pull together the international cooperation required to realize a world without the most destructive weapons.  “Without the vision I do not believe we can get the cooperation and without the cooperation we cannot protect the security of the United States and the world,” Nunn said.

Considering the “earthquakes” of the Iranian nuclear crisis and the proliferation of nuclear power in the face of concerns about global climate change, “we are approaching a perfect storm,” he said.  The world could soon see a great expansion in the proliferation of fissile material production and sensitive nuclear know-how, Nunn said.  “We are at a precipice now.”

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