BASIC SPECIAL REPORT
BASIC Special Report 2004.1
· January 2004
Unravelling the Known Unknowns:
Why no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq
By David Isenberg and Ian Davis
Back to the Contents
Part III: Conclusions and Recommendations
No banned weapons have been found in Iraq. There are four
potential explanations for this:
- The weapons were destroyed or moved out of Iraq prior to
invasion;
- The weapons were destroyed in coalition bombing or subsequent
looting;
- The weapons exist but have not yet been found; or
- The weapons were destroyed even earlier, perhaps in the early
or mid1990s (i.e. the UN weapons inspectors succeeded in their
mandate).
Each of these explanations is considered in turn:
Were the missing weapons destroyed or moved
out of Iraq prior to the invasion?
This is an unlikely explanation for the general failure to find
illicit weapons that had been identified so confidently prior to
the war. There have been suggestions in US circles that some
weapons may have been transferred to Syria, but given the
geopolitics of the Middle East this seems unlikely. First, Syria
was not a very close ally, and second, Iraq had a very bad
experience of hidding aircraft in Iran prior to the first Gulf War
(when the Iranian government confiscated the planes).
In addition, the logistical problems of transporting or
destroying large stocks of chemical and biological weapons just
days before the US-led invasion are likely to have precluded this
as a realistic option. This is not to say there is not a real
danger that in the post-war chaos and looting some WMD materials
may have been diverted out of Iraq (as was predicted by one analyst
prior to the war118 ).
Were the weapons destroyed in the bombing
campaign or stolen by looters?
Scores of suspect sites, industrial complexes and offices were
stripped of valuable documents and equipment. Investigations at the
Qa Qaa facility, for example, were hampered by the failure to
secure it from looters. Word that the plant was open to pillage
spread quickly through surrounding impoverished villages, and by
the time specialist units arrived, much had already been looted.
For instance, the experts found manuals that came with two drying
ovens imported from Germany, equipment that can be used to culture
viruses and bacteria for weapons. But the ovens themselves were
gone by the time the specialists arrived.119
Again, although it is very possible that much evidence for CBW
would be
degraded by looting or military action, it could not possibly be
the case that all conclusive evidence would be destroyed. If
chemical or biological weapon stockpiles had been destroyed by
coalition bombing, for example, the inspectors would have expected
to find traces or remnants of agents.
Isn't it a question of needing more time to
find the weapons?
While this is the line that the Blair government is sticking to,
as mentioned in the introduction to this report, the US
administration on the other hand is beginning to accept that banned
weapons are unlikely to be discovered. Some US inspectors are
continuing to argue that more time is needed, and Pentagon
officials have said that the search process could take up to a year
to complete. That is rather ironic, considering that UNMOVIC said
before the war began that it could wrap up inspections in a few
months.
As Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, noted before he
retired, "Three-and-a-half months for new inspections was a rather
short time before calling it a day and especially when we now see
the US government is saying that, 'look, you have to have a little
patience, you know these things take time.' All
right."120
The Prime Minister has remained confident that evidence of Iraqi
WMD would be found, and has even hinted that some of the evidence
has already been accumulated. In a television interview at a
Russia-European Union summit at the end of May 2003, Tony Blair
said that he had already seen plenty of information that his
critics had not, but would in due course:
Over the coming weeks and months we will assemble this
evidence and then we will give it to people. And I have no doubt
whatever that the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
will be there. Absolutely... Those people who are sitting there
saying 'Oh it is all going to be proved to be a great big fib got
out by the security services. There will be no weapons of mass
destruction. Just wait and have a little patience...I certainly do
know some of the stuff that has already been accumulated...which is
not yet public but what we are going to do is assemble that
evidence and present it properly to
people.121
If Downing Street has as yet unpublished evidence of Iraqi
WMD, as claimed by the Prime Minister at the end of May 2003, this
should be published without delay.
The US Administration, on the other hand, is now emphasizing the
need to find a paper trail and testimony that points to the Hussein
regime's capability and intent to develop chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons, as opposed to a readily usable stockpile of
weapons. Indeed, President Bush appears to dismiss as irrelevant
the difference between a weapons program and a weapon. When asked
by Diane Sawyer, why he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
when intelligence pointed more to the possibility Hussein would
obtain such weapons, Bush dismissed the question: "So, what's the
difference?".122
This new rationale was cited again in the President's January
20, 2004 State of the Union address when he said, "We are seeking
all the facts -- already the Kay Report identified dozens of
weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and
significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the
United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of
mass destruction programs would continue to this
day."123
Such a claim is simply wrong. As a former UNSCOM inspector
noted, "From the technical point of view, it is very difficult to
make conclusions based on David Kay's unclassified report. The
unclassified report doesn't have sufficient elements for a proper
technical evaluation."124
US officials continue to argue that they were right to assume,
based on older evidence and more recent circumstantial material,
that Iraq was maintaining its unconventional weapons programs. But
developing weapons is not the same as possessing weapons. Bush and
his advisers did not argue that the US was compelled to go to war -
rather than support more intrusive inspections - because Hussein
had ongoing weapons programs; they claimed the US had to invade
because it was imminently threatened by actual
weapons.125 There are no signs of these weapons, and
evidence of active NBC research and development programs also
remains very sketchy.
The suggestions that Iraq may have concentrated on dual-use
programs in recent years - putting chemical and biological
production equipment within commercial facilities so that it would
not be discovered but could be used "on demand" or "just in time" -
seem plausible enough, but are hardly the imminent threat to the
US, UK and the rest of the world that justified the decision to go
to war.
Were the missing weapons destroyed many years
ago?
Claims that Iraq destroyed all of its illicit chemical and
biological weapons in the 1990s - an explanation that failed to
convince the UN inspectors and British and American intelligence
officials prior to the invasion - are now being given greater
credence. There was very little reporting of this speculation prior
to the war, however.
One exception was an exclusive report largely ignored by the
rest of the US media at the time. In early March, Newsweek
reported that the late Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi
official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told
CIA and British intelligence officers and UN inspectors in the
summer of 1995 that after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its
chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver
them. The UN inspectors allegedly hushed up Kamel's revelations for
two reasons: Saddam did not know how much Kamel had revealed; and
the inspectors hoped to bluff Saddam into disclosing still more.
Iraq has never shown the documentation to support Kamel's story,
but the defector's tale raises questions about whether the
stockpiles attributed to Iraq still existed prior to the
war.126
In fact, it is increasingly likely that Iraqi officials told the
truth that they destroyed remaining unconventional weapons after
the 1991 war. Iraqi Brig. Gen. Alaa Saeed, one of Iraq's most
senior weapons scientists, insisted that the combined blitz of
allied bombing and intense UN inspections in the 1990s effectively
destroyed Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs. UN
sanctions, he said, stopped Baghdad from importing the raw
materials, equipment and spare parts needed to secretly
reconstitute the illegal programs, even after UN inspectors left
the country in 1998.127 And Nassir Hindawi, a leading
biological weapons program scientist, said in April that Iraq's
biological weapons program was shut down by economic sanctions in
the 1990s.128
Hans Blix has also said that a series of suspicious discoveries
during his inspections of Iraq, including a crude, remotely piloted
aircraft; documents on a banned nuclear program in a scientist's
home; and 12 chemical warheads at a weapons depot, were likely
remnants of a destroyed stockpile. "They could have been the tip of
an iceberg, but they could also have been debris," Blix said. "Now
as we look back on it and they don't find anything, well, maybe
more likely debris."
The recent report by the US think tank, The Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, also found that the international
inspections effort generally had it right. Their assessments, both
at the end of the UNSCOM effort in 1998 and the UNMOVIC work in
2003, were quite close to what the post-war investigations have
found.130
The conduct of the war also suggests that Iraq did not have
useable WMD and posed no threat outside its borders. Most analysts
had predicted that Saddam Hussein would use such weapons if his
regime faced collapse. Either the regime displayed unusual levels
of restraint during the combat phase or the non-use confirmed that
he lacked the weapons or an effective delivery capability.
Hans Blix also said that he was surprised that coalition forces
expected to find large quantities of WMD in Iraq when UN inspectors
had made no such discovery. "What surprises me, what amazes me, is
that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on
large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons,"
Blix said in an interview with the New York Times. "I don't
see how they could have come to such an attitude if they had, at
any time, studied the reports of UN inspectors. Is the UN on a
different planet?" Blix said. "Are reports from here totally unread
south of the Hudson?" he added.131
Moreover, according to Demetrius Perricos, acting chairman of
the UNMOVIC since Hans Blix's retirement, most of the
weapons-related equipment and research that has been publicly
documented by the US-led inspection team in Iraq was known to the
UN before the US-led invasion. The only significant new information
made public by the US search team was that Iraq had paid North
Korea $10 million for medium-range missile technology, which
apparently was never delivered.132
Was the Iraqi WMD threat overstated by Britain
and the United States?
Despite unparalleled searching, nothing has turned up and the
evidence is overwhelming that Iraq did not have banned weapons at
the time that the US and Britain invaded Iraq. The brutality of
Saddam Hussein's regime was not an adequate justification for war,
and the US and British authorities did not seriously try to make it
one until long after the war began and all the false justifications
began to fall apart. Clearly, therefore, the statements made by
officials immediately before the war that suggested a far more
advanced and extensive program need to be reassessed.
An internal CIA review led by Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy
director, found that US intelligence analysts lacked new, hard
information about Saddam Hussein's NBC weapons after UN inspectors
left Iraq in 1998. Therefore, they had to rely on data from the
early and mid-1990s when concluding in the months leading up to the
war that those programs continued into 2003.133 Though
the review did not say it explicitly, the findings indicate that
there was no hard-and-fast intelligence that Iraq possessed
ready-to-go chemical or biological weapons.
Concern about the US intelligence process has been expressed
across the political divide. Marine Corp. General Anthony Zinni,
the former head of US Central Command, said that he has concerns
about the credibility of intelligence used. He questioned claims
that ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he was
an imminent threat:
I'm suggesting that either the intelligence was so bad
and flawed -- and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to
roll for that or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a
way to make a more convenient case to the American
people.134
And Carl W. Ford Jr., who retired last fall from his position as
assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, the
State Department's intelligence arm, said the US intelligence
community "badly underperformed" for years in assessing Iraq's WMD
and should accept responsibility for its failure. This marked the
first time a senior official involved in preparing the prewar
assessments on Iraq has asserted that serious intelligence errors
were made.135
In fact, a very large number of US intelligence professionals,
diplomats and former Pentagon officials have notably gone on
record, not off the record as is usually the case, to criticise the
Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against
Iraq.136
Another more benign version of why no NBC weaponry has been
found in Iraq is that Hussein was deceived by his own staff.
According to the theory, recently making the rounds in Britain,
Saddam and his senior advisers and commanders were told by
lower-ranking Iraqi officers that his forces were equipped with
usable chemical and biological weapons.
The officers did not want to tell their superiors that the
weapons were either destroyed or no longer usable. According to
this theory, because MI6's informants were also senior officials
close to Saddam, British intelligence was also
hoodwinked.137 Put another way, both Britain and the
United States fell prey to the worst case scenario. Francis
Fukuyama takes this view:
Both Unscom and U.S. intelligence were unpleasantly
surprised by the extent of the Iraqi WMD programs uncovered in
1991. Thereafter, both had strong incentives not to be made fools
of again. UNSCOM developed estimates of the extent of covert Iraqi
research and stockpiles not accounted for, but whose existence
could not be verified. The Clinton administration used the UNSCOM
tallies as a baseline, and supplemented them with worst-case
estimates based on intelligence it gathered. The Bush
administration simply continued this process. Overestimation was
passed down the line until it was taken as gospel by everyone
(myself included) and used to justify the U.S. decision to go to
war.138
Overall, therefore, the evidence clearly suggests that the US
and UK governments did not have the intelligence to back up their
pre-war claims, and that there was plenty of publicly available
information on Iraq's weapons programs that was systematically
ignored in the months preceding the war. Thus, the previous
confidence in Iraq's possession of advanced WMD appears to have
been based on a combination of US and British intelligence
misjudgements and the result of distortion by members of the Bush
administration and Blair governments.
?However, final conclusions as to whether the primary fault lies
with US and British intelligence on Iraqi's WMD program, or with
the part played by senior figures in the US and British
administrations in interpreting and disseminating that evidence,
will need to be deferred until further information becomes
available. However, the case against President Bush already seems
pretty clear cut, especially as former Treasury secretary Paul H.
O'Neill recently confirmed that the debate over military action
against Iraq began as soon as the President took office.
In the most benign interpretation - that the US and British
governments merely made exaggerated worst-case estimates, the
political fallout is likely to be minimal. Under this scenario, as
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies put it:
What we are really talking about is not whether Iraq
was a proliferator, because the UN had basically answered that
question before the war began. It is really whether the US and
Britain took what was a UN estimate that Iraq had capabilities that
couldn't be accounted for and translated that into a false estimate
that Iraq was actively developing and producing weapons for
immediate deployment.139
However, if either the Hutton inquiry report in the UK, or the
US Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on use of
intelligence, puts the blame firmly on the higher echelons of
either political camp, then the fallout could be considerable. In
the case of the US, for example, John Dean, a leading figure in the
Nixon era Watergate scandal, has written:
In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first
potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by
comparison. [...] To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and
the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked.
Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence
data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's
impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal
criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute,
which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any
agency thereof in any manner or for any
purpose.'140
In reality, however, it seems likely that Hutton and other
reports to come will continue to produce shades of grey, rather
than a conclusive outcome that many, especially in the media, are
looking for.
What are the implications of these
intelligence and political failings and what are the policy lessons
for future challenges involving suspected WMD proliferation?
Acknowledge past mistakes
Tony Blair and George Bush must acknowledge that they were wrong
about Iraq's WMD and show that they are taking sweeping action to
rectify the concerns that led to this miscalculation. There are
several pending foreign-policy challenges in which Britain and the
US will be required to make choices based on ambiguous evidence.
When an American President and a British Prime Minister confront
these future challenges, the exaggerated estimates of Iraq's WMD
will cast a dark shadow over the diplomatic negotiations. As
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Clinton administration
National Security Council staffer, puts it, "Fairly or not, no
foreigner trusts US intelligence to get it right anymore, or trusts
the Bush administration to tell the truth. The only way that we can
regain the world's trust is to demonstrate that we understand our
mistakes and have changed our ways."141
There must also be sufficient political space for political
leaders to acknowledge their mistakes. One of the most corrupting
aspects of politics in both the US and UK, is the continuing search
for hidden agendas, and the lack of trust that is afforded to
politicians. One can argue that, in the case of WMD in Iraq, there
is good reason to doubt the honesty of our political leaders, but
the simplification of questions of integrity, especially within the
media, does our democracy few favours. There will always be
multiple elements within decision-making, and it is important to
allow leaders some degree of flexibility.
Learn the right lessons
Despite the continuing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, both
interventions are being lauded by US and British administration
officials as political and military successes. The hard line stance
is said to be improving the security situation in other parts of
the world: North Korea is opening its nuclear facilities to US
inspections; Iran has agreed to additional nuclear safeguards; and
Libya has unilaterally decided to dismantle its NBC
capabilities.142 However, while the war in Iraq no doubt
helped to concentrate minds in the Middle East and beyond, such
claims are wildly overstated and mean that important lessons are
lost. Libya's welcome return back into the international community
lies in the patient diplomatic initiative set in motion long before
President Bush began his pursuit of Saddam; in any case, the WMD
program was never a serious threat. Many believe Iran's pursuit of
nuclear weapons itself is determined by the fear of US military
intervention, as seen in Iraq. The US strategy towards North Korea
has hardly been unambiguously hawkish.
By invading Iraq, which had no WMD, the US and Britain are less
able to respond to real WMD proliferation crises (including nuclear
non-proliferation in Libya, Iran and North Korea, and safeguarding
nuclear materials in the Former Soviet Union and Pakistan). The
invasion also appears to have exacerbated the terrorist threat,
reversed peace and democracy in parts of the Middle East and
undermined the transatlantic alliance, the UN and international
law.
Review the role of intelligence
The demands on intelligence gathering and assessment are enormous
and the consequences of getting it wrong can be dire. One of the
issues that undoubtedly affected intelligence assessments in Iraq
was the prior failure of US and British intelligence to spot the
strategic ambitions of Al Qaeda, and the attack on 9/11 in
particular. And even had the intelligence agencies provided advance
warnings, it seems unlikely that such "intelligence" would have
been sufficient to have justified pre-emption in Afghanistan.
Misjudging the evidence in Iraq, therefore, the picture that was
painted by the US and British intelligence agencies, especially
after political pressure was brought to bear, clearly involved
"worst case" thinking.
Iraq's alleged WMD program was the decisive argument in the
pre-war debate, the trump card that supporters of the war used to
establish the urgency of regime change. However, the failure to
find any banned weapons means that it will be harder to trust
intelligence reports about North Korean, Iranian or other "rogue
state" threats. As The Economist editorialized:
George Bush and Tony Blair, it now appears, exaggerated
the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This
is not just a negligible footnote in the history of Iraq's conquest
and reconstruction-so much propaganda under the bridge. In the eyes
of the world, especially the Arab world, the flimsiness of some of
the claims about Mr. Hussein's arsenal has helped to make a
legitimate conflict seem otherwise. It also risks making the danger
posed by WMD seem more rhetorical and less real than it is, and may
jeopardise future efforts to deal with that danger, especially any
that involve acting pre-emptively.143
Already, in the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions,
China has rejected US intelligence that North Korea has a secret
program to enrich uranium for use in weapons.
The mistrust of the intelligence community within the Bush
administration itself, also has a potentially serious consequence:
the likelihood that intelligence analysts will become less inclined
to make effective judgements. For example, writing in the
Washington Post, Stuart A. Cohen, vice chairman of the
National Intelligence Council, the body that coordinates joint
assessments by the various intelligence agencies, said:
"[A]nalysts laboring under a barrage of allegations
will become more and more disinclined to make judgments that go
beyond ironclad evidence--a scarce commodity in our business," he
explained. "If this is allowed to happen, the nation will be ...
ultimately much less secure." ... And, indeed, The New York Times
reported that the prediction was panning out: In classified
reviews, the NIC has been softening assessments of certain foreign
WMD programs to reflect little beyond what hard evidence the
intelligence agencies had collected.144
However, a softening of assessments may be no bad thing. Threats
to our security - such as those from NBC proliferation and
catastrophic forms of terrorism, as threatened by Al Qaeda - are
now much more diffuse and debatable. Since most of these threats
are developed in secret, there is a strong case for maintaining
secret specific intelligence on them. This is not only to provide
early warning, but to open up the possibilities for diplomatic and
other policy responses short of military action. But it is vital
that future non-proliferation and counter-proliferation strategies
are based upon carefully collected and analysed open evidence
rather than on prejudice or political expediency. Intelligence
agencies have a duty of care to use information properly and
objectively; and for administrations to treat the evidence
seriously.
It must also be acknowledged that because "raw" intelligence
data cannot normally be disclosed or explained in full, there will
always be a requirement to turn such data into a document or
information for public consumption. Thus, in one sense all
intelligence assessments are doctored to some extent for public
consumption. It is also self-evident that in editing and shaping
raw intelligence data there will be a tendency to present the case
in the best possible light for the government of the day. In the
case of Iraq, the requirement to persuade clearly took precedence
over the requirement to be objective. In future, therefore, public
information that draws on intelligence data should have more health
warnings and should clearly set out the context for and motives
behind publication.
Bring the spooks out of the shadows
In short, in Britain at least, the intelligence agencies need
greater visibility and accountability. If the existing Intelligence
and Security Committee is not up to this task, then anew small
oversight committee should be established to vet the procedures of
intelligence gathering and assessment, and to be responsible for
publication of unclassified intelligence reports and related
materials. The precedent set by holding a vote in the House of
Commons before committing British troops to war is one that should
be continued, but it will be important to explore new ways of
sharing the raw intelligence data with a broader cross-section of
MPs to ensure that such decisions are taken in an informed
manner.
Politicians also need more detail in order to judge appropriate
policy responses. They particularly need more context as to why
something is going on. For example, there is no evidence that
Saddam Hussein ever intended to initiate hostilities against the US
or Britain once he acquired WMD, nor that he had any significant
linkages with terrorists intent on any simlar action; if anything,
rogue state regimes view such weapons as a means of deterring
American military action against themselves.
Nonetheless, in the UK at present, almost all policy - as evidenced
by the most recent Defence, Foreign and Development White Papers -
assumes an established nexus between WMD proliferation, state
failure and terrorism. But the evidence for this is extremely
shaky, though establishing such linkages is, of course, a complex
and difficult task.
Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that most "states of
concern" are actually diminishing their active support for
terrorism, perhaps partly in response to the threat of US military
force. Only Sudan and the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan are
known to have materially aided Al Qaeda. Moreover, except Sudan,
these countries are refraining from attacking their neighbours as
well. In terms of transferring WMD materials to non-state actors,
for example, the biggest risk lies in theft or diversion of the
huge stockpiles in the existing nuclear states, especially Russia
and Pakistan.
Re-examine the doctrine of preemption
Over reliance on intelligence makes the doctrine of preemption a
flawed and dangerous instrument of foreign policy. Intelligence is
a matter of judgement not certainty. Thus, greater caution has to
be exercised in thinking around pre-emptive warfare, and better
thinking is needed about its consequences.
Moreover, if preemption became widely acceptable, it could lead
to other countries fearing an assault attacking their rivals first,
pre-empting the pre-emptor and escalating a conflict that might
have been resolved without force. Or a nation under a sudden attack
might choose to deploy chemical, biological or nuclear weapons it
otherwise might not use. The very act of one country pre-emptively
attacking another carries troubling echoes of vigilante justice
when much of the world is working toward common understandings
about the legal use of force.145
Even such a practitioner of realpolitik as Henry Kissinger has
written: "It cannot be either in the American national interest or
the world's interest to develop principles that grant every nation
an unfettered right of preemption against its own definition of
threats to its security."146 And the gravest flaw of the
new doctrine could be "that by presuming the concept of
self-defence now includes preemption (as broadly defined), the
administration has erased any viable distinction between the
offensive and defensive purposes of military action. Yet the
legitimacy of using force depends crucially on a clear and agreed
understanding of precisely this distinction".147
Return UN Inspectors to Iraq
Since international inspections and monitoring actually worked
effectively in Iraq, this is a key lesson. Such inspections and
monitoring, if applied elsewhere, can provide the international
community with the ability to contain attempts to develop
militarily significant NBC weapons. Within Iraq today, the return
of the UN inspectors would confer some much needed legitimacy to
the post-conflict search for weapons, and also help to re-engage
the wider international community in the reconstruction of a
post-Saddam Iraq. UNMOVIC should also be given the task of on-going
monitoring in Iraq once the 'coalition' military forces have left
in order to ensure that any new Iraqi government complies with its
disarmament obligations.
Create a permanent international cadre of inspectors
The British and US governments should also put their weight behind
establishing a broader mandate within UNMOVIC as suggested by Hans
Blix. Over the years, UNMOVIC has acquired much experience in the
verification and inspection of biological weapons and missiles as
well as chemical weapons, but only in Iraq. It has scientific
cadres that are trained and could be mobilized to provide the
Security Council and other concerned actors with a capability for
ad hoc inspections and monitoring, whenever this might be
needed.
Support multilateral and international law-based solutions to
WMD proliferation
Non-proliferation and arms control remain essential elements in
the fight against the further proliferation of WMD. The
non-proliferation regime has proved its worth. The regime must,
however, be reinforced and adapted to current developments, both
technological and political. This includes the worrying observation
that it has not been possible to prevent proliferation entirely.
Particularly with regard to biological and also chemical weapons,
there are insufficient means of prevention and verification.
We have reached a pivotal moment in inter-state relations with a
real opportunity to shape a new world order based on the rule of
law. The US and UK should be working to write those rules and get
them implemented. We need to move beyond unilateral intervention to
a systemic improvement of multilateral processes. Sometimes it will
be necessary to take direct action, including in extreme
circumstances military action, to stop the rules being broken. But
such action should only be undertaken within the rules of
international law, and preferably, with the authorisation of the UN
Security Council.
The UN and its agencies should also be given the primary role in
containing attempts to develop militarily significant NBC weapons
and in verifying compliance with international non-proliferation
treaties. In addition to sidelining the UN in Iraq, the Bush
administration appears determined to keep UN inspectors subordinate
in Iran and Libya. The IAEA, for example, is the most appropriate
body to supervise the dismantling of the Libyan nuclear
program.
Think about WMD closer to home
WMD threat reduction should begin at home. It is not just a
'rogue' state problem. Existing nuclear-armed states (including the
US and UK) should reaffirm their intention to implement the 13
disarmament steps agreed to in 2000 under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US has roughly 6,800
operational strategic nuclear weapons, and their destructive power
is the equivalent of some 80,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. These
weapons, and the smaller numbers deployed by the UK, continue to
threaten the very existence of humankind, yet fail to deter the
asymmetric terror activities of non-state groups like Al Qaeda.
Indeed, the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons and related
materials only increases the likelihood of a terrorist group
eventually obtaining a "dirty bomb" capability or even a nuclear
warhead.
The US Senate's decision in May last year to at least partially
rescind a ten-year ban on funding research and development of new
'low-yield' nuclear weapons, was unnecessary and destabilising.
Instead, the US government needs to renounce its goal of enhancing
the US nuclear arsenal and transforming doctrine towards a nuclear
war-fighting one. Similarly, US and Russian warheads that are no
longer operationally deployed under the Treaty of Moscow should be
eliminated under the threat reduction programme. And efforts to
expand threat reduction programmes, such as the G-8 Global
Partnership Against Weapons of Mass Destruction, and principles to
new regions and countries, such as North Korea, the Middle East and
South Asia also need to be urgently explored. The US might also
apply some pressure on Israel to make a reciprocal gesture
regarding its undeclared nuclear weapons following the positive
action by Iran and Libya.
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