THE more countries that have nuclear weapons, the greater the risk that they will be deliberately used to destroy rather than deter, that a conflict will be triggered by mistake, that a country will make a pre-emptive strike on an adversary’s nuclear installations, or that nuclear weapons or fissile material will fall into the hands of criminal groups.
Nuclear proliferation is one of the greatest dangers for the future of humanity. But that was not why steps were first taken to prevent it. From the beginning of its military programme in 1942, the United States banned disclosure of any information about atomic energy, its aim being to prevent Nazi Germany becoming the first country to possess the bomb. After 1945 the ban was maintained to delay work in the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union had tested its first thermonuclear device in 1954, secrecy was abandoned in favour of a policy of “atoms for peace”, under which countries wanting to engage in nuclear activities could obtain assistance from the US provided they undertook to use the technology only for peaceful purposes. They remained free to develop a military programme if they were able to do so on their own, and several countries took advantage of the absence of overall international regulation to pursue their military ambitions. Seven of the eight countries that now have a nuclear arsenal acquired the know-how in 1960 (1).
The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was the main factor in the establishment of a global non-proliferation policy. Washington and Moscow realised that if another country with nuclear weapons had been involved, they might not have managed to control the crisis. The two superpowers originally saw the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) mainly as a means to keep control of the countries in their blocs. It was signed on 1 July 1968 and divided the world in two: “nuclear-weapon states”, those that had exploded a nuclear device before 1 January 1967 and were required not to help other countries acquire such weapons (2); and all the rest, which were required not to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons and to place all their nuclear facilities under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
For all its shortcomings, the NPT provides the means to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Had it been applied in full, only five countries would still have a nuclear arsenal. But for it to succeed, it had to be universal: all states had to accede to it, the control machinery had to be totally efficient and, in the event of violation, strong measures had to be taken to end the violation and deter other states from following suit.
The first signatories
From the outset, many states saw the NPT as an unacceptable infringement of their sovereignty. Germany, Japan and Italy, at which it was originally aimed, at first refused to sign it. It entered into force in 1970 (3) because it had been signed by countries such as Ireland, Denmark, Canada, Sweden and Mexico, which saw it as a means of reducing the risk of collective suicide, by states closely aligned with the US or the Soviet Union, and by countries that did not think they would ever have the means to manufacture atomic weapons. Iraq, Iran and Syria were among the first signatories.
A turning point came in the mid-1970s with the rise of the anti-nuclear movement in the US and then in Europe, and above all with India’s first nuclear test in 1974. Public opinion was alarmed at the dangers of proliferation for world security, and many states decided they would be more secure if their neighbours had no nuclear weapons. Combined with pressure from both the US and the Soviet Union, the anti-nuclear movement brought about a rapid increase in the number of NPT signatories, now joined by major industrialised countries such as Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. By 1979 more than 100 states had signed. The wave of accessions continued and accelerated after the end of the cold war, despite the break-up of the Soviet Union. In 1995, when the signatory countries decided to prolong the NPT indefinitely, they numbered 178.
Yet for various reasons the major powers have never made the necessary effort to persuade India, Israel and Pakistan to join them. These have always refused to accede to the NPT and have been able to acquire nuclear weapons without infringing their international obligations. That would no longer be possible today: the treaty has 189 signatories (4), almost all existing states, and no country would be able to build a nuclear explosive device without violating its international commitments.
Among those states are Argentina and Brazil, countries that embarked on nuclear programmes with military aims in the 1970s and 1980s. Since they had not signed the NPT at the time, those activities did not conflict with their international obligations. Both abandoned their military programmes and acceded to the NPT, Argentina in 1995 and Brazil in 1998. They did so not because their external security had improved, but because military dictatorships in power had been replaced by democratic regimes.
The same applies to South Africa, which built half a dozen nuclear bombs in the 1970s and 1980s without violating any international obligations and with the IAEA unable to intervene. It dismantled its weapons shortly before abandoning apartheid and acceded to the NPT in 1991.
In the mid-1990s the US sought to bolster the NPT with a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and a convention banning the production of enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium. Both agreements were aimed solely at India and Pakistan, but the US believed it would be easier for them to sign a treaty that applied to all countries.
Of doubtful use
In fact, the agreements are almost meaningless for other countries. Since 184 states have already undertaken not to acquire nuclear weapons, it would be no great achievement for them to promise not to test weapons they do not intend to build. The five nuclear-weapon states have stopped their tests (France would not be able to resume them since it has dismantled its Pacific test polygon). But India and Pakistan exploded nuclear devices in 1998, continue to produce fissile material, and refuse to accede to the CTBT or convention.
Inability to conduct tests has not prevented countries from acquiring weapons. Israel has never tested a nuclear device, but all specialists agree that it has a nuclear arsenal. South Africa never officially had any nuclear tests, yet it possessed several weapons. Nor is there any doubt that there were weapons in Pakistan even before 1998. The draft treaty, which the US now refuses to sign, is nearly worthless apart from the symbolic value attributed to it by public opinion.
The IAEA is responsible for verifying that states comply with treaty obligations, but its task was always complicated. IAEA inspectors can only enter an NPT signatory country that has concluded and ratified a special agreement with the IAEA setting out its rights and obligations. They were unable to enter North Korea until April 1992, although the existence of the reactor and reprocessing plant that produced plutonium had been known since 1990. Inspectors’ access to installations is hampered by administrative restrictions. They must first apply for visas, which may take time, and are allowed to inspect a given installation only for a time calculated strictly according to the nature of its activities and the quantity of uranium and plutonium it contains.
The 1970s control system
The rules governing the activities of IAEA inspectors were laid down in 1971, not by IAEA officials, who could have specified the means required to carry out their task, but by representatives of the signatory states, especially those most advanced in the field at the time. They took care to keep to a minimum the constraints that inspections would place upon them and their industrial enterprises. The inspection machinery was based on the assumption that a nuclear programme could not be pursued secretly and that the only way of cheating was to divert for military purposes uranium or plutonium that should have remained in the civil domain. So the inspectors only had access to installations whose existence was declared by the signatory states, and their task was to ensure that all fissile material entering those installations was used for peaceful purposes. They did not have to check whether a country had nuclear facilities whose existence had not been declared.
These restrictions were not wholly unreasonable considering the technology of the period. The production of enriched uranium then required large plants with a characteristic layout and high power consumption, whose construction and operation could not go undetected. In the early 1970s only highly industrialised countries could contemplate large-scale nuclear activities. Such countries were democratic states in which information circulated freely and a decision to acquire nuclear weapons could scarcely be kept secret.
Within the limits, the control system worked reasonably well, no explosive device having been manufactured since 1945 in a facility under the surveillance of the IAEA. The controls are not are infallible, but up to now they have been effective enough for those tempted to cheat to prefer not to run the risk of being caught by IAEA inspectors.
Nevertheless, after the Gulf war of 1990‑91, installations were discovered in Iraq that would have enabled it to acquire a nuclear arsenal within a few years. Saddam Hussein proved that clandestine nuclear activities are possible, at least in a country subject to ruthless dictatorship. The Iraqis had used the centrifugal enrichment process introduced in Europe in the mid-1970s, which requires much smaller facilities that can be housed in unobtrusive buildings, consume much less energy, and are unlikely to be detected by intelligence services unless they have informers on the spot.
Exemptions for the five
In 1997, to adapt its control machinery to this new cheating, the IAEA adopted an additional protocol (5) that gives its inspectors enhanced powers, although they can only be applied to states that have signed and ratified it (6). These powers have produced significant results (7) and could give IAEA inspectors the means to detect the existence of activities conducted in secret. But they are not a panacea. Unless the inspectors are lucky, they are unlikely to identify a clandestine installation without having been informed of its location by an intelligence service.
An international organisation such as the IAEA is not an espionage agency. It has no means of acquiring secret information and must respect the agreements concluded with countries whose activities it investigates. Locating the exact site of a nuclear plant is a job for intelligence services; it is up to them to provide the IAEA with the information.
None of the five nuclear-weapon states is required to sign the additional protocol. It would be no surprise if the inspectors concluded that there are military nuclear installations on well-known sites in the US or France. Nevertheless France has symbolically signed a sweetened version of the protocol to humour its partners in the European Union, for whom the difference in treatment of the two categories of states is a sensitive issue.
Nor is there a treaty banning the five from manufacturing new types of weapons, although that would be contrary to the spirit of Article VI of the NPT. It is not entirely contrary to the letter of the treaty, which hypocritically establishes a link between nuclear disarmament and general, complete disarmament. For more than 40 years the five nuclear-weapon states, which are also the world’s leading exporters of conventional weapons, have deliberately refrained from calling for general disarmament while cynically invoking lack of progress in that area to ignore their own commitment to nuclear disarmament.
The US regularly talks about building new nuclear weapons. The arms manufacturers, who have been grasping for decades at every argument for developing their activities, are obsessed with the idea. These plans have no real operational significance, but they monopolise public attention and have obscured the more important changes introduced by the nuclear posture review of January 2002. In particular, nuclear weapons are no longer a separate category of US weaponry: they are now an integral part of its offensive strike system and, like any other weapon, can be used by the president as he sees fit, according to the mission.
The review also proposed the recruitment of a new generation of arms specialists to carry on when the present generation retires, and the replacement of US intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2020, submarines in 2030 and bombers in 2040. The US nuclear arsenal is conceived for the indefinite term; at any rate until the end of the century.
If the IAEA finds that a state has infringed its obligations, it refers the matter to the UN Security Council, which is the only body authorised to take measures to end the infringement. The UN has twice dealt with violations of non-proliferation commitments, with mixed results. In Iraq, whose clandestine activities were not discovered until after the Gulf war in 1991, when it had been defeated militarily and was obliged to accept the conditions imposed by the Security Council, the IAEA was able to destroy all the installations that had been built illegally.
Non-proliferation: a cold war concept?
In 1992 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was condemned for violating its commitments under the treaty. It reacted almost immediately by announcing that it would consider any penalty as an act of war, and China proclaimed that the crisis should be settled by negotiation. Beijing’s attitude, plus fear of a war liable to cause many casualties in South Korea, led in 1994 to an agreement between Pyongyang and Washington under which South Korea undertook to build two large electricity-generating reactors in the North in exchange for an end to North Korean nuclear activities. This agreement held until the US decided to terminate it at the end of 2002, whereupon North Korea withdrew from the NPT, expelled the IAEA inspectors and announced a few months later that it now possessed nuclear weapons.
None of these decisions drew any reaction from the Security Council or other countries, except for terrifying but ineffectual threats from the president of the US. Since then, and in accordance with China’s wishes, there have been joint negotiations among North and South Korea, the US, China, Japan and Russia (8). Under the terms of a joint declaration signed on 19 September 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and security guarantees from the other countries. But Pyongyang questioned the agreement the next day, demanding recognition of its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, before softening its position again. North Korea’s announcement of its intention to renounce nuclear weapons has been welcomed by the IAEA in a resolution adopted unanimously by 139 member states on 30 September.
In Iran, no infringement has been established if, as the IAEA is entitled to do, it interprets the treaty literally. But if the current talks with Britain, France and Germany do not produce a satisfactory outcome, IAEA member states may refer the matter to the Security Council on the basis of a political, rather than a legal, interpretation of the text.
Non-proliferation policy has been seriously undermined since the 1995 conference, when the main aim seemed to have been achieved. The need to halt the spread of nuclear weapons was challenged by neoconservatives in the US, who do not want the country bound by any international obligations. They have been followed by others for whom non-proliferation is a cold war concept that makes no sense now the cold war is over, and who believe the appropriate response to the threat of nuclear proliferation is the construction of anti-missile defence systems, which all countries should have to purchase from the US. Others, perhaps more numerous or more influential, consider that nuclear proliferation should not be condemned if the countries involved are allies of Washington.
The NPT has also been severely criticised. For many years there have been complaints about an arrangement that allows five countries to possess the most powerful weapons and bans all others from acquiring them. Such unequal treatment was deemed inevitable during the cold war, but it has been much harder to put up with since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What has aggravated this frustration is that the NPT also contains provisions on nuclear disarmament, which the five states have ignored. By maintaining their nuclear arsenals at mid-1970s levels, the five can only encourage others to follow.
Disillusionment with the idea of non-proliferation was strikingly evident at the NPT review conference, 2-27 May 2005. Instead of unanimously condemning those signatories that cheated on their obligations, the participating states parted without reaching any agreement, revealing a world divided, disillusioned and distressed. Meanwhile the much-decried NPT system, to which no alternative has ever been proposed, remains in force, and its fate may well be decided by the outcome of the North Korean and Iranian crises.
If North Korea and Iran abandon their military ambitions, as many have done before them, countries that might be tempted to imitate them will probably think again about embarking on a costly project that appears doomed to failure. If they get their own way, several other states may also decide to develop nuclear weapons.