Ban the bomb?

Abstract

Decades after several nuclear weapon states committed themselves to pursuing disarmament “in good faith” and “at an early date,” frustration over the pace of disarmament is growing more conspicuous. For example, calls are emerging to establish a treaty banning nuclear weapons, essentially making outlaws of nuclear-armed nations. Authors from three countries—Richard Lennane of Australia, Bharat Karnad of India (2014), and Héctor Guerra of Mexico (2014)—address this question: How would prospects for disarmament be affected if non-nuclear nations established a treaty that banned nuclear weapons outright—and how might such a ban be enforced?

It seems a preposterous idea. Nations that do not have nuclear weapons—nations already prohibited from possessing such weapons—negotiate a treaty among themselves outlawing the weapons they do not have. Nations that actually possess the weapons remain outside the treaty. How could this possibly affect prospects for nuclear disarmament?

In a rational world, the notion would indeed be preposterous. But in the surreal, looking-glass world of nuclear disarmament, the strategy might prove perversely effective. Remember, this is a world where doublethink and delusion rule—where nuclear weapons are simultaneously treasured and reviled by those who possess them, where the modernization of nuclear arsenals is presented as a step toward disarmament, and where disarmament strategies that have delivered essentially nothing but deadlock and failure for more than 40 years are earnestly advocated as practical, sustainable, and realistic approaches. It is in this context of irretrievable absurdity that the prospects for a ban treaty must be evaluated.

Traditionally, treaties have been thought of as international contractual agreements that are signed, enforced, and verified. That is not where the value of a ban treaty lies. Nobody is under any illusion that nuclear-armed states will simply join a ban treaty and start disarming. Rather, the value of a ban treaty lies in its potential as a political tool for disrupting the status quo. A ban treaty will break up the crusty rhetorical accretions that have accumulated over decades of ambiguity, delay, obfuscation, and attempts to obstruct disarmament. A treaty will clear away hypocrisy, shine a revealing light on the motives and behavior of nuclear-armed states, and reshape the disarmament landscape so that work may begin anew on more stable foundations. Obviously, it is nuclear-armed countries that will have to do the actual disarming. But before this can begin, a number of obstacles must be cleared away. Nations without nuclear weapons, by pursuing a ban treaty, can start to clear them.

Foremost among the obstacles is ambiguity over the goal of disarmament itself. Read almost any discussion on how to make progress on nuclear disarmament and you will observe that it quickly changes from a debate about how to advance disarmament into a debate about whether nuclear disarmament is desirable at all (replete with the usual arguments about strategic stability and the value of deterrence). Call this phenomenon the “wandering premise.” It pervades all aspects of the disarmament discourse—even though, for members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and most if not all of the nuclear-armed states outside the treaty, the question was supposed to have been settled long ago: These nations are committed to disarmament.

And yet the ambiguity keeps creeping back: We want to get rid of our nuclear weapons, but we want to keep them too. Often the wandering premise is disguised in diplomatic gobbledygook, but sometimes it is comically stark, as in the statement of the United Kingdom (Rowland, 2014) at the 2014 NPT Preparatory Committee meeting: “We consider that nuclear weapons have helped to guarantee our security, and that of our allies, for decades. We want a world without them … . ”

A related obstacle is the shield around the nuclear-armed states provided by the Conference on Disarmament and the NPT, and by the conflicted interests of nations in nuclear alliances (NATO members, Australia, Japan, and others). During 17 years of deadlock, the Conference on Disarmament has evolved into a kind of political fallout shelter for nuclear-armed states, which can pretend to pursue disarmament while remaining confident that nothing will really happen. The NPT provides legal cover for its nuclear-armed members and handily protects their interests by conflating them with those of the non-nuclear weapon states. The countries in nuclear alliances, meanwhile, provide a seemingly credible voice in favor of disarmament but do their best to ensure that nothing moves too quickly.

A ban treaty would remove these obstacles (Wildfire>_, 2014). It would provide for the first time an unambiguous means for non-nuclear nations to declare formally the absolute illegality and unacceptability of nuclear weapons. It would provide a disarmament forum that remains under the control of those without the weapons—in contrast to forums that serve only the interests of those who retain weapons. And it would force nations in nuclear alliances to clarify their positions and declare themselves either for or against nuclear weapons. None of this means that progress on disarmament would necessarily follow. But chances would be much better than under current circumstances.

Merely pursuing a ban would have an effect, even if a treaty were never concluded. Indeed, effects can already be seen, as in the panicked reaction of the five NPT nuclear weapon states to the international conference held in Oslo in 2013 to consider the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. The five jointly boycotted the conference, but were consistently and suspiciously unable to provide any coherent explanation why (Borrie and Caughley, 2013). Clearly, they were worried where the conference might lead, and could see that if a ban treaty process were to be initiated they would face awkward choices. Should they oppose a ban treaty? If so, on what grounds? If a nuclear-armed state is genuinely committed to disarmament, what objection could it make if states without nuclear weapons negotiated a treaty prohibiting them? A nuclear-armed state could argue, and some have done so, that a ban treaty would be a “distraction” from existing efforts. This might make sense if existing efforts were yielding results, but given decades of failure it is simply laughable. In any case, there is no reason that states cannot pursue a ban treaty while still making speeches at the Conference on Disarmament and dutifully trudging the NPT treadmill. So opposition at best looks foolish, and at worst implies bad faith.

So should the nuclear-armed states support the ban treaty? Doing so might seem the smarter option, as nuclear-armed nations’ participation in the ban process would allow them to influence its pace and direction. But ultimately, accepting the ban idea would require ceding control and making inconveniently firm, time-bound commitments on disarmament. So there is no good option. The nuclear-armed states are keenly aware of this and are anxious to avoid the trap.

For those in nuclear alliances, the ban presents an even worse dilemma. As non-nuclear weapon members of the NPT, there is no prima facie reason they could not join a ban treaty tomorrow—but their reliance on US nuclear weapons makes things awkward. Admitting this awkwardness would bring into question these nations’ compliance with the NPT and their good faith in promoting disarmament. So they have resorted to a hilarious series of flimsy excuses for not supporting a ban treaty: It would undermine the NPT (how?), it would not “guarantee” disarmament (the current approaches do?), the nuclear-armed states should be “engaged, not enraged” (they have been engaged for 40 years, and why would a ban enrage them—unless they intend to retain their weapons indefinitely?).

These reactions demonstrate the potential of a ban treaty. Indeed, it is telling that the nuclear-armed states saw the treaty’s potential from the outset (and panicked), while the majority of non-nuclear weapon states still regard the treaty with skepticism or indifference. But the non-nuclear weapon states have nothing to lose by pursuing a ban treaty. It need not impose any additional obligations or burdens on them. Compliance could be monitored by the same mechanisms currently used under the NPT. Establishing a ban treaty would be a quick, economical, and dramatic way of transforming non-nuclear weapon states from mere “moralizing spectators” (Nystuen and Lothe Eide, 2013) into leaders on the path to disarmament. They should seize the opportunity.