The 2015 Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: A Review or a Requiem?

Abstract

THE YEAR 2015 WILL BE A MEMORABLE YEAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE TREATY on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It will be forty-five years since this unique treaty--with 189 states parties, the most widely subscribed to a multilateral disarmament treaty--entered into force and twenty years after its historic indefinite extension and reinforcement in 1995. For me, it will mark a thirty-year association with the NPT since I chaired the Third Preparatory Committee Meeting of the Third NPT Review Conference in 1985 and Main Committee I of that Review Conference. Ten years later, I presided over the NPT Review and Extension Conference. Countless words have been written in exegesis of the final packages of the Three Decisions and the Resolution on the Middle East adopted in 1995, all of which will no doubt be regurgitated as we approach the 2015 NPT Review Conference. On 12 May 1995, in my closing statement as president of the historic NPT Review and Extension Conference that extended the treaty for an indefinite duration, I stated: permanence of the Treaty does not represent a permanence of unbalanced obligations, nor does it represent the permanence of nuclear apartheid between nuclear haves and have-nots. What it does represent is our collective dedication to the permanence of an international legal barrier against nuclear proliferation so that we can forge ahead in our tasks towards a nuclear weapon-free world. Since then, despite the emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear weapons-armed states and the unprincipled concessions made through the US-India nuclear cooperation deal, the continued outlier status of Israel with its undeclared nuclear weapons possession, and the withdrawal of North Korea from the NPT and its outrageous nuclear weapons testing, the nuclear nonproliferation norm has held firm for the 184 non-nuclear weapons states in the NPT--especially after the 24 November 2013 interim agreement over Iran's nuclear program. Article VI--the disarmament article of the NPT--remains unimplemented despite the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Thirteen Steps agreed on at the 2000 NPT Review Conference and the 2010 Review Conference's sixty-four-point Action Programme, together with the agreement on the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (MEWMDFZ) proposal and the conceptual breakthrough on recognizing the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, augured well for the strengthened review process. However, the report cards meticulously maintained by civil society on actual achievements, the return to Cold War mind-sets by the United States and Russia, and the negative record of all the nuclear weapons states have converted the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world into a mirage. Unless the Ninth NPT Review Conference reverses these ominous trends, it is doomed to fail and imperils the future of the NPT. Taking Stock Some stocktaking is relevant. In 1995, we had five nuclear weapons states and one was outside of the NPT. Today, we have nine nuclear weapons-armed states--four of them outside the NPT. One of them (India) is being given special privileges by the entire Nuclear Suppliers Group in violation of Article I of the treaty and paragraph 12 of Decision II in the 1995 package. Another (Pakistan) has received two power reactors from China, a nuclear weapons state within the NPT. In 1970, when the NPT entered into force, we had a total of 38,153 nuclear warheads. Today we have 16,300--just 21,853 fewer--with over 4,000 on deployed status and the promise by the two main nuclear weapons states to reduce their deployed arsenals by 30 percent to 1,550 each within seven years of the new START (the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms) entering into force. Another NPT nuclear weapons state, the United Kingdom, is on the verge of renewing its Trident nuclear weapons program. …