By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

GENEVA — Efforts to negotiate arms control and nonproliferation measures remain deadlocked after three years here at the Conference on Disarmament despite nearly universal agreement among CD delegations that such measures seem more necessary in light of the terrorist attacks against the United States last year.

Outsiders question whether the conference has become unworkable, and many countries, even close allies, are pointing fingers at the United States.

During the past two months of speeches here, in the first of three conference sessions this year, delegates have employed particularly strong language levying often thinly veiled criticisms of the Bush administration’s approaches, charging it has turned its back on multilateral arms control.

It is a conclusion U.S. officials are aware of and have sought to refute.

“We’re trying our best at disabusing people from feeling that,” said Ambassador Eric Javits, U.S. representative to the CD, told Global Security Newswire in an interview last week.

The United States “is certainly not walking away from multilateral engagement or this forum,” he said.

Differing Agendas

The deadlock currently centers on a fundamental difference of agenda between the United States and China. The former wants to negotiate a treaty banning future production of fissile materials for weapons purposes, but is willing only to discuss, not negotiate, agreements banning all weapons in outer space or nuclear force reductions.

China opposes negotiations on a fissile material treaty without negotiations on the other issues.

Exactly who is at fault can depend on how you look at it, says Wade Boese, a senior research analyst at the Arms Control Association and frequent writer on CD negotiations.

“You could assign blame on the United States, but you could also assign it to China,” he said.

One could also blame the nature of the Conference on Disarmament itself, a Cold War-born institution composed of 66-diverse countries, any one of which can block any action with a single vote.

“The conference itself is utterly unwieldy,” said James Leonard, a former U.S. ambassador here.

It became so, he said, as membership grew and U.S.-Soviet direction over negotiations was eliminated.

Leonard and some other observers think the CD, the principal multilateral arms control and nonproliferation negotiating forum, may have seen its day.  The two giant U.S. and now Russian missions, nearly side by side and practically overlooking the United Nations complex where numerous major treaties were negotiated, have overseen several years of fruitless oratory and scattered attendance.

“To be perfectly blunt,” said Javits in a speech to the conference, “after so many years of deadlock and delay, to waste yet another year would be an evasion of our collective responsibility.  History may judge at what point this comatose body actually expired, or at what stage continued inaction became dereliction of duty or even inexcusable negligence.”

Many delegations, however, including some of the closest U.S. allies, are assigning blame to certain Bush administration policies for the inaction.

Cited in particular, is U.S. resistance to negotiations on anything but fissile materials, as are the administration’s aggressive pursuit of a national missile defense system, which it says could include a space component, and its announced withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that currently prevents such a system.

Earlier this month, senior Chinese and Russian officials issued a statement saying U.S withdrawal from the treaty “has adversely affected a solution to nonproliferation problems” and indicated they agreed to coordinate at the CD to prevent deployment of offensive weapons in space.

Bush Administration “Unilaterlism”

More generally, delegations are charging that “unilateralist” Bush administration policies regarding a host of existing or potential international agreements over the past year have undermined the spirit of mutual compromise and cooperation needed for multilateral cooperation here, and international law and norms in general.

Among the sharpest of U.S. critics is its close ally in its international campaign against terrorism, Canada.

Apparently referring to the Bush administration’s controversial Nuclear Posture Review made partially public in January, Canada’s ambassador to the CD Christopher Westdal, lamented that “the combined visions and security postures of major players continue to preclude wholehearted multilateralism and the political will and specific instructions we delegates need to be able to work here” (see GSN, March 14).

He called multilateralism “essential in countering ubiquitous WMD threats.”

Canadian Foreign Minister William Graham reiterated his government’s concerns last week at the conference, arguing for multilateral cooperation in starker terms.

“After what the world has been through with Sept. 11, one would think that our minds would finally be concentrated and that we would see — more clearly than ever — the need for an international security system within which all people and countries might feel secure,” said.

Not only has the conference been unable to agree on a program of work, he said, but also the existing system of treaties “representing the acquired gains of decades, is threatened from within and without.”

The international community “is now in danger of getting stuck again,” said British Ambassador David Broucher.  Although 2001 saw some successes, he said, “we remember the past year as much for its disappointments.”

Russian Ambassador Leonid Skotnikov said failure last year resulted “largely because of the fact that a unilateral approach was pursued at the expense of a multilateral one and doubt was cast on the efficiency of multilateral efforts … where fundamental national security interests are brought together and may be reconciled.”

Retreating From Commitments?

While these diplomatic leaders decline to name names, other diplomats here have privately cited at least a half a dozen major international arms control initiatives allegedly undermined, prevented or destroyed by the Bush administration including the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001), the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention protocol (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2001), the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty inspection system (see GSN, March 19), the U.S. negative security assurances issued in 1979 and in 1995 (see GSN, February 22), a proposed treaty against putting weapons into space, argued as unneeded and the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, declared abandoned for replacement by a new, not fully negotiated U.S.-Russian agreement on “operationally deployed” nuclear warhead force cuts.

U.S. officials say the administration has good reasons for its approach to each item.

The BWC protocol, which would have created an inspection regime, was rejected last summer as too intrusive on the United States yet too weak on its targets.  The administration refuses to forswear future nuclear testing, required by the CTBT, ostensibly in case arsenal maintenance some day requires it (see GSN, March 22). 

Regarding negative security assurances, previous administrations had offered possible exceptions in response to chemical and biological weapons attacks (see GSN, March 19). A treaty against weapons in space is seen as unneeded, unenforceable and potentially hampering unique U.S. military advantages.  The START II Treaty and follow-on negotiations were announced discarded last year for a new regime to preserve U.S. strategic flexibility. Abandoning the ABM treaty was needed for pursuing aggressive missile defense plans, deemed necessary for U.S. security.

Javits, in a Feb. 7 speech to the conference, explained that the administration’s approach was motivated by U.S. national interests, and reflected that some arms control approaches were not equally beneficial to all countries:

“Although maintaining international peace and security is our primary goal and overarching purpose, in the final analysis preserving national security is likewise necessary and essential,” he said.

“Mutual advantage is one key factor, for any arms control treaty must enhance the security of all states parties,” he said.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton in a January speech to the conference put it even more bluntly, calling U.S. policy “quite simply, pro-American, as you would expect.”

Canadian officials have argued that embracing the full body of the international rule of law, while having costs, brings its own security benefits.

“This in its own way opens other options — collective options — that have the power of international legitimacy.  Embracing the rule of law means that the law must apply to all, equally,” said Foreign Minister Graham.

In the long run, said Ambassador Westdal, sustained cooperation from states is “best invoked through international law; the engagement of all states in collective, binding multilateralism is essential in countering ubiquitous WMD threats.”

U.S. Supports Multilateral Efforts

While unapologetically pursuing U.S. interests to the detriment of others’ multilateral priorities, Ambassador Javits has nevertheless sought to discourage the idea that the United States is unilateralist.

We’re “doing our best to try to bring people along to feel it’s not one way or nothing else,” he said.

“There are a number of international agreements we have signed on to,” he also said, citing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, banning weapons of mass destruction in space.  In his February speech, Javits also listed the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which reduced U.S., West European and former Soviet bloc conventional arms levels to reflect the end of the Cold War. 

The United States “supports and upholds many multinational arms control agreements,” he said in the speech.

Where To?

Bolton argued the CD’s attention has been misplaced and should be changed.  He urged negotiations on a fissile material cutoff treaty, which officials have said could have important consequences for curbing the proliferation of nuclear materials.

Nearly every other CD member is believed to support such a treaty. Yet, because of the three-year deadlock, the conference has been unable to approve a work plan.

A possible solution to please everybody came with the widely supported Amorim proposal of August 2000, named for its author, Brazil’s former ambassador to the CD Celso Amorim.  It proposed creating four separate ad hoc committees to negotiate fissile material and negative security assurances treaties, and to “deal with” nuclear disarmament and preventing an arms race in outer space.

Many countries including the United States continue to support the Amorim proposal. Javits said in his speech holding discussions on the other issues is “the only appropriate approach when member states have not reached agreement on a realistic framework for seeking to negotiate a multilateral treaty.”

Other countries do not see that way.  The United States provides “no support for things others want to talk about … other countries are saying what are we here for?” said former Ambassador Leonard.

“To put all the CD’s problems on the U.S. is excessive,” Boese said. “You can’t identify one country, and say they’re to blame.”

China’s proposal for banning weapons in outer space is untenably broad, he said, noting it calls for banning satellites that would inform or assist military action on the ground.

“That isn’t going to happen, those satellites are already up there, and not just [put up there] by the United States,” he said.

Still he, like many, think U.S. actions within the international arena in recent years “have definitely led to a negative atmosphere at the CD, perhaps provoking unwillingness to negotiate and give the United States what it wants.”

Some CD diplomats are hopeful a change in political will (read governing party) in the United States or elsewhere might one day change things dramatically for the better.

Some analysts, though, say the CD’s effectiveness ultimately is hampered by its nature.

“The consensus rule might have made sense when the CD was called something different and had 18 countries there,” said Henry L. Stimson Center President Michael Krepon. “As the conference has grown, its procedures have become disabling.”

Suspending the conference should be an option, he said, possibly prompting states to work informally to the exclusion of those with intent on blocking progress.

“You either have to change the procedures, which is very hard to do since the CD works by consensus, or you have to change the setting for useful work to be done.”

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