Transcript Slide 1

The Security Case for A Tougher
Reading of the NPT
By
Henry Sokolski
Executive Director
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
www.npec-web.org
[email protected]
202-466-4406
IFPA-Fletcher Conference
“Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces in the 21st Century”
December 14-15, 2005
Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, DC
Is the NPT Now A Bad Idea: Depends On
One’s Reading of It
• Strong security alliances do help retard proliferation
• But choice between enhancing nuclear arms to back allies
or reducing nuclear arms & losing allies is a false one:
– Total Disarmament is a distant prospect, nuclear reductions have
been propelled by improved military science since the l970s
– Strong alliances increasingly depend more on non-nuclear factors
than on nuclear ones.
• NPT as it’s currently interpreted -- assuring all nations a “per
se” right to what’s needed to come within weeks of bomb -is worse than no restraints. It’s also legally & historically
wrong.
• A proper reading of the nuclear rules (including the NPT), is
critical to strengthen alliances and US security. The
alternative -- a Nuclear 1914 – an unmanageable free for all.
Has the NPT Worked? Realists’ Answer –
Hardly or Not At All
• Nuclear-backed alliances blocked much more proliferation than
NPT (e.g., Italy, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, RoK, Switzerland,
Sweden, Australia, Spain)
• IAEA cannot detect covert nuclear activities and will not be able
to detect diversions from declared nuclear bulk handling
facilities (e.g., enrichment, fuel fabrication of MoX and HEU,
reprocessing, UF6, etc. in Iran, DPRK, India, Japan, Brazil,
South Africa and beyond)
• Article IV right to peaceful nuclear energy has been read to
allow states to come within days or weeks of having a bomb –
e.g., Iran and DPRK – and to subsidize unsafeguarable,
uneconomical nuclear projects – e.g., Algeria, Japan, Brazil,
Pakistan, India.
Sounder View Turns On What We Do Now
• “We shouldn’t make our mistakes hereditary” – A.
Wohlstetter
• Must we continue to misread Article IV as granting a “per
se” right to any nuclear technology, much less to
guarantee states the means to come within days of
having a nuclear arsenal?
• Must we continue to encourage the IAEA to attempt what
it cannot do (e.g., safeguard bulk handling facilities or
become a nuclear spy agency) rather than it to do better
what it can do –nuclear material accountancy of certain
key materials?
• The regret for not correcting our these mistakes easily
exceeds the benefits of recognizing the errors and
proceeding as if they cannot be remedied
More Studied Historical Legal Analyses
Challenge Popular View of NPT
• U.S. ACDA, International Negotiations n the Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 131 (1969)
• NPT history and legal analyses written 1978-79 for ACDA,
Wohlstetter, et. Al. Towards A New Consensus on Nuclear
Technology 34-35 (ACDA Report No. PH-78-04-832-13)
(July 6, 1979), including Art Steiner, “Article IV and the
‘Straightforward Bargain’)” (PAN Paper 78-832-08), in
Idem. Vol. II. Supporting Papers
• 1993 Eldon V.C. Greenberg, The NPT and Plutonium
(Washington DC: Nuclear Control Institute, 1993).
An NPT Right to the “Entire Fuel Cycle” ?
•
NPT aim as stated in a 1965 General Assembly resolution GA Res. 2028
(XX) Nov. 19, 1965) was to write a treaty “void of loop-holes which might
permit nuclear or non-nuclear Power to proliferate, directly or indirectly,
nuclear weapons in any form”
•
Enrichment and reprocessing not mentioned in the NPT Text
•
Spanish, Mexican NPT proposals to make sharing “the entire technology of
reactors and fuels” a “duty” explicitly rejected in 1967.
•
Swedish NPT negotiators’ interest in setting forth criteria against nuclear
fuel making.
•
“Inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear energy only available if exercised “in
conformity” with the NPT’s other prohibitions
•
Standard legal practice favors tight construction
IAEA Safeguarding Criteria
• Timely detection of diversions of significant
quantities of nuclear material from peaceful
nuclear activities to the manufacture of bombs
with 90-95% probability within time needed to
convert material into bombs
• Conversion times, 7-10 days for pu and HEU,
4-12 weeks for spent fuel, 12 months for LEU
“Peaceful,” Nuclear Activity Protected by
the NPT Must:
• Comply with NPT stricture against “manufactur[ing] or otherwise acquir[ing]” the bomb. (Art.
II)
• Be able to be verified in a manner that would
“prevent[ ] diversions of nuclear energy from
peaceful uses to nuclear weapons” (Art. III)
• be “beneficial” (NPT preamble speaks of
assuring that the “benefits of peaceful nuclear
energy” be made available)
Can Enrichment, Reprocessing Be
“Safeguarded”?
• NPT negotiators convinced would be possible eventually
but conceded not yet in hand
• Statements of concern: El Baradei, “the margin of
security under the current non-proliferation regime is
becoming too slim for comfort.” Bush, NPT is being
“cynically manipulated” to allow states to get within
days of having bombs
• British and Japanese experience with bulk handing
facilities – many of bombs’ worth of fissile gone
unaccounted for annually
NPT Negotiators’ Economic
Expectations Do Not Equal Treaty
Guarantees
• Most were also “convinced” full fuel cycle would
be economically imperative for all nations
• But this economic expectation has not yet been
realized
• Such expectations certainly should not be
viewed as being an NPT guarantee
America’s Original Understanding of
What the NPT Allowed: No “Per se Right
or Violation” to Make Nuclear Fuel
“.. it is doubtful that any general definition or interpretation,
unrelated to specific fact situations could satisfactorily
deal with all such situations…facts indicating that the
purpose of a particular activity was the acquisition of a
nuclear explosive device would tend to show noncompliance…while the placing of a particular activity
under safeguards would not, in an of itself settle the
question … it would …be helpful in allying any
suspicion…{civilian enrichment} would not be a ‘per se’
violation (of the NPT. Instead, violations would turn on
“specific fact situations” -- ACDA Director William Foster
US Senate NPT Ratification Hearings
Recent Official Recognition of These
Points
• French Non-paper to NPT Preparatory Review
Conference May 2004
• Thought pieces within certain governments
• US NPT Review Conference Representative
statement that no per se duty exists for nuclear
states to assist others to enrich or reprocess.
Hurdles to Implementing this View
• Are we willing to distinguishing what nuclear activities
and materials can be safeguarded from those that can
only be monitored (universally or regionally)?
• We will be serious enough about discouraging
unnecessary, “uneconomical” fuel making to also
discourage our friends and ourselves from doing it?
– Will we back restraints on new reprocessing construction?
• e.g., Japan and US
• Multilateral “fuel processing centers”
– Can we back even interim limits on net enrichment expansion?
• Allow enrichment modernization but no net capacity increase for 5
or more years: (in US, and France, Russia, Brazil)
• Rationalize enrichment R and D to distinguish between Iran on one
hand and Canada and Australia on the other?
Where Are We Headed Assuming These
Challenges Are Not Met?
“The regime will not be sustainable if scores more States
Develop the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle and
are equipped with the technology to produce nuclear
weapons on short notice – and, of course, each
individual State which does this only will leave others to
feel that they must do the same. This would increase all
of the risks – of nuclear accident, of trafficking, of
terrorist use, and of use by states themselves.” – The
Secretary – General of the United Nations, NPT Review
Conference, May 2, 2005
Fallout of Continuing With the Popular &
Realist Views of NPT & Article IV
•
A gutting of the nuclear rules that will make other sound alliancebuilding ideas US is pushing much more difficult –1540, PSI, CTR, etc.
•
Virtual elimination of economic tests regarding “peacefulness” – e.g.,
the case of Iran
•
Encouraging the IAEA to water down its already too generous
safeguards standards for day to day material accountancy and to be
used more and more merely to examine accusations of cheating made
by others very, very late in the day
•
Undermining of Libya model – where nations can retreat to complying
with the NPT to explain their complete abandonment of all nuclear
weapons-related programs
•
A world increasingly full of nuclear-ready states that either will
challenge US interests or be more inclined to go their own way when
called upon to support the US or its friends – e.g. a world full of
Frances and Irans