The Evolving Nuclear Strategy of the United States and the United Kingdom and its implications for the NPT

Mr Chairman, Distinguished Delegates

Counter-proliferation theory has been in gestation for many years and, following the terrible events of September 11, 2001, made its entry onto the world stage, with a vengeance. The proponents of aggressive military intervention had attained control over the defense establishment in the most powerful military nation in history and proceeded to implement their programme of action.

Technological developments have always had a determining effect on military strategy but so too has the political analysis of educated, determined and influential individuals and organisations. The end of the Cold War promised much for the cause of nuclear disarmament but delivered very little as nuclear weapons strategy was redefined to meet the perceived and real threats of the last decade of the 20^th Century and the start of the third Millennium. 

Nuclear deterrence is a belief system masquerading as a scientific theory. Since the first and second use of nuclear weapons by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, adherents of nuclear deterrence have been in the ascendancy in those countries who have maintained their ‘right’ to possess them as initially permitted under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They have constructed edifices at great financial, human and environmental cost. The belief system has been nurtured by a veritable production line of learned proponents and perpetuated by an insufficiently questioning education system and largely acquiescent media. Nuclear deterrence has endured, but it has also evolved.

But there is no ‘indefinite right’ to possess nuclear weapons, even under the discriminatory provisions of the NPT. The signatories to the treaty accepted this discrimination on the basis that the gap between the nuclear ‘haves’ and the nuclear ‘have nots’ would be narrowed and eventually eliminated. It hasn’t happened. Some of the ‘have nots’ are understandably impatient and some have perhaps decided to attempt to join the unofficial nuclear club of the three nations who refused to sign up to the NPT from the start.

Substantive progress on nuclear disarmament has been blocked by the refusal of the Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) to consider that their possession of nuclear weapons is anything other than their ultimate guarantee of national security. Yet they also manage to maintain that nuclear weapons in the hands of anybody else are dangerous and destabilising. This is what unquestioned belief systems can lead its adherents to do – inhibit their own rational thinking.

Ill-defined ‘rogue’ states made their appearance on the world stage soon after the Soviet Union took its final curtain call. President Gorbachev’s brave attempt to halt and reverse the arms race was taken as a sign of weakness and the advantage just had to be pressed home in what had been presented as a zero-sum game, winner takes all. The reality was somewhat different and the legacy of the Cold War is still with us.

The rationale for the indefinite possession of nuclear arsenals was modified and repackaged. The proponents of multilateralism were marginalised, international treaties stagnated or were abrogated. International law and engaged diplomacy were out; national security and interventionist military expeditions overseas were in. Counter-proliferation was the new buzz word; non-proliferation was discarded like an old hat, first in the United States and then in the United Kingdom, officially just two weeks before the start of this conference. This isn’t just a change of wording; it brings with it a new range of assumptions and a new toolkit to ensure its coercive implementation.

The time is past when the US and its NATO allies can simply assert their compliance with the NPT and associated security assurances. Changes in nuclear use doctrine over the period since the last Review Conference mean that they must now demonstrate their good faith efforts to implement the NPT and the associated parts of the non-proliferation regime.

The US abandonment of the ABM Treaty, the refusal to press for ratification of the CTBT, the acceptance of the nuclear status of India and Pakistan, the termination of the START process in favour of the questionable viability of the SORT process, together with the inadequate support for the threat reduction and non-proliferation programmes, are all signs that this administration has abandoned diplomatic non-proliferation. The ‘End of Arms Control’ has been announced in Washington DC, and the end of non-proliferation is implicit in the Nuclear Postures Review, the National Security Strategy and the latest Strategy to Combat WMD. NATO too, at US insistence, amended its position on the CTBT in two communiqués in 2001.

Questions about nuclear strategy must also be answered by all NATO member states, not just the ‘declared’ nuclear weapon states. NATO conducted its own nuclear policy review following the US Nuclear Posture Review, and in June 2002 NATO ministers are believed to have adopted revisions to the NATO Strategic Concept to bring NATO nuclear doctrine more in line with US doctrine. It is likely that the NATO doctrine is less explicit than the US version, such is the nature of a compromise paper, but the meaning is clear. NATO now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Turkey participate in the controversial nuclear sharing programmes within the alliance. These countries need to state if they would be prepared to sanction the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state if called upon to do so by the Alliance Supreme Command? An exercise in the spring of 2002 posed this very question in the context of a chemical or biological weapons threat to Turkey, and resistance to even conventional pre-emptive strikes by NATO was strong. But the NPT regime is threatened from within as much as from without, and member states of NATO, nuclear sharing countries in particular, must decide if they stand behind the norms of the NPT, or behind the emerging policies of the United States.

As new language is introduced, old words are imbued with new meaning and previously understood demarcation lines are undercut, thus blurring the distinction between recognisably conventional means of waging war and hitherto decidedly unconventional means of waging war. For example, the generic and emotive term ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ has replaced the differentiation that ‘Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons’ offered. This has resulted in policy drifts in both the US and the UK  that have sought to legitimise the threatened use of nuclear weapons against a perceived chemical or biological attack – or even actual use pre-emptively. Perversely, pre-emption is the new deterrence, or even the new nuclear deterrence. Lip service has been paid to continued support for the security assurances that the NWS gave to the NWSS, but very much as an after thought, and after it had been pointed out they were being marginalised, perhaps in preparation for being discarded altogether.

The United States must account to this forum for the inconsistencies between the Nuclear Postures Review and the National Strategy to Combat WMD with the NPT and with the negative security assurances. A simple statement that the US respects the latter will not suffice.

Not only has the Administration in the United States declined to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it is now proposing to develop modified and even nuclear weapons designed to destroy deeply buried, hardened targets. Disturbingly, new legislation will reduce the preparation time to resume full-scale nuclear explosions should the order be given. The Administration has also indicated its desire to rescind a legislative prohibition on the development of low-yield nuclear weapons below 5 kilotons. Should these developments be put into practice, then the effect will be to lower the nuclear threshold and make the use of nuclear weapons more likely, as they become a mere extension of hugely destructive conventional warfare.

Mr Chairman

The implications of what I have described to you today for the NPT are grave. Perhaps you should be debating changing the title to the Counter-Proliferation Treaty? You certainly should be concentrating on strengthening the NPT by demanding greater transparency, more compliance with its provisions by all States Parties, an enhanced safeguards and inspection regime, legally binding security assurances which take precedence over national nuclear strategies and progress on nuclear disarmament.

Unless, and until, the Nuclear Weapons States acknowledge that their adherence to nuclear deterrence, in all its various manifestations, stands in fundamental contradiction to their NPT obligations, a nuclear weapons-free world will remain an admirable, but unobtainable aspiration.

Thank you.

Convenors: Martin Butcher (Physicians for Social Responsibility), Nigel Chamberlain, Kathryn Crandall and Fiona Simpson (British American Security Information Council).