Abstract
On May 2, the opening day of the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), South Korea's deputy minister, Chun Yung-woo, castigated the NPT's “inherent limitations” and argued that “the Korean peninsula suffers from diminished security because of the miserable failure of the NPT to contain the nuclear specter.”
Four weeks and dozens of speeches later, that failure had been compounded, as the NPT review conference ended without any substantive agreements to deal with proliferation challenges ranging from nuclear testing to the production and spread of nuclear weapon materials.
North Korea's withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 and its much-advertised nuclear weapons program was one of several acute crises and developments facing NPT parties as they gathered in New York. But rather than sending a clear message to Pyongyang, the review conference was paralyzed, as several countries, most notably the United States and Iran, sought to avoid any outcome that would constrain their own nuclear options.
Even before the conference started, the United States had laid the groundwork for an impasse. In a strategic move that traces directly back to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, last year the United States threw down a banana peel for the delegates to slip on when it refused to acknowledge the consensus outcome of the 2000 review conference as the basis for evaluating progress on the treaty. Consequently, although the designated president of the review conference, Sergio Duarte of Brazil, shuttled around the world holding consultations on this and other issues in the intervening year, he was unable to start the conference with an agreed agenda.
Is it over yet? Delegates at the NPT conference.
From then on, things went downhill. The U.S. delegation sought to block any affirmation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or a verifiable ban on fissile material production, which Washington now opposes. Its obsession with destroying the CTBT even scuppered agreement on a three-page joint NPT-related statement by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which was intended to show that, despite the NPT's travails, there was substantial agreement among the nuclear powers on non-proliferation priorities.
For the most part, though, the Bush administration kept a low profile, manipulating procedural loopholes to further its aims rather than risk being isolated on important issues of substance. Having laid its banana peel, the United States watched from the corner as various delegations and eventually the whole conference stumbled and broke into fragments. Having declared in advance to the media, if not the conference, that it didn't matter whether there was an agreed outcome or not, the United States exercised no positive leadership to get one. Its delegation appeared inexperienced and disengaged. The architect of its NPT strategy, Bolton, was in limbo, his confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations held up by staunch opposition in the Senate.
Overall, the U.S. delegation sought to avoid both confrontation and constructive engagement. Despite issuing numerous statements, the United States refused to give the NPT conference an accountable report of efforts to comply with its disarmament commitments under Article VI of the treaty. Instead, it displayed a big, colorful exhibit on its nonproliferation achievements in the U.N. hallway and issued glossy brochures with chronologies of significant NPT-related events that conveniently overlooked the CTBT and consensus agreements from the 2000 review conference.
Iran, for its part, was determined to avoid criticism of its recently exposed uranium enrichment program and sought to block any practical discussion of measures to control or limit nuclear fuel cycle options that involve highly enriched uranium or plutonium. In matters where its core interests weren't at stake, Iran was publicly helpful, bent on deflecting attention and winning friends. Its sizeable delegation briefed nongovernmental organizations, worked the conference floor, and explained how it only desired to model its nuclear program on Japan's–even to the extent of permitting “24/7 inspections.” Pointedly, Iran took the moral high ground in its final coruscating analysis that chastised the United States for its hypocrisy and lack of progress on disarmament. Tehran's statement might have been more compelling had it not carried such unmistakable echoes of India's rhetoric in the years before its May 1998 nuclear tests.
While the United States manipulated in the background and Iran exerted its charm offensive, the Egyptian delegation was out front taking much of the flak. Egypt had played a key diplomatic role as leader of the League of Arab States during the 1995 review conference and as a member of the New Agenda Coalition, which was pivotal in promoting and achieving the 13-paragraph disarmament program of action agreed upon by consensus at the 2000 review conference. According to one explanation, Egypt was under domestic and regional pressure to uphold the agreements on the Middle East and nuclear disarmament obtained in the two previous review conferences. Faced with U.S. determination that these earlier commitments be sidelined and with the absence of strategic leadership from either the non-aligned movement or New Agenda, Egypt confronted few good options. At the same time, it needed to ensure that Iran was neither allowed to develop nuclear weapons, nor rendered more dangerous by short-term U.S. tactics to isolate Tehran.
As a result of disagreements on the agenda and the establishment of committees and working groups, debates on the substantive issues were stymied during the first three weeks of the conference. Of course, the underlying causes of the procedural ploys were profoundly political. Egypt, the United States, and the non-aligned movement bandied around demands for inclusion or exclusion of phrases such as “and outcomes” and “negative security assurances,” because in diplomacy language is code and the codes contain potential access or denial for issues of substance.
By the time this bitter exercise in word parsing was over, the conference had little more than five days left to discuss the many working papers and proposals on issues as diverse as nuclear doctrines, further practical steps on disarmament, the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear-weapon-free zones, nuclear safety and security, and keeping weapons and materials out of the hands of terrorists. The U.N. Secretary General, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings, and hundreds of elected representatives made strong appeals at the beginning of the review conference for nuclear weapons threats to be addressed across the board. Whether because of intimidation, hopelessness, or expediency, most delegations went through their diplomatic motions and at the end of this procedure-dominated conference, they reached consensus on a report that did little more than record conference data and agree to cover the financial costs.
In treaty terms, the failure to adopt further substantive recommendations means that agreements obtained in the review conferences of 1995 and 2000 still stand as the benchmarks for measuring progress and promoting compliance. It can even be argued that the lack of consensus in 2005 underscores the fact that the agreements, principles, and steps adopted at past review conferences have not yet been implemented, and that more work must be done to ensure that they are. Yet because the majority of states lacked the will or backbone to stand up to the few naysayers, the conference has sent a dangerous message to would-be proliferators and existing nuclear weapon possessors.
The current U.S. administration does not appear to mind, as it is ideologically happier working outside multilateralism and thinks it can contain nuclear threats by means of more controllable groupings such as the Proliferation Security Initiative and the London Club of nuclear suppliers. This is a dangerous illusion. True, the failure of the review conference is unlikely to have immediate security consequences. NPT parties will not queue up to leave the treaty in the next couple of years. But in the wake of this lowest-common-denominator outcome, a number of states are already reasserting their criticisms of the decision to extend the treaty indefinitely in 1995, and more will begin to hedge their bets. If the military utility and security value of nuclear weapons continue to be evoked at high levels in some states, the have-nots will lose confidence that the nonproliferation regime can meet their security needs.
South Korea, on the front line of proliferation, tried to salvage what it could from the mess, expressing the hope that work will be taken forward on the basis of some of the ideas put forth for strengthening the regime and making withdrawal from the NPT more difficult. Washington, meanwhile, appears still to be fiddling as the proliferation kindling piles up and the matches are made ready.