[ RadSafe ] Missing Nuclear Leadership

[Gerry Blackwood]

Editorial
Missing Nuclear Leadership
Published: May 8, 2005


Representatives of nearly 190 countries are currently meeting in New York to discuss ways of strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It's a shame that neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can find time to attend. Nuclear proliferation is the pre-eminent national security issue of our times. The nonproliferation treaty, signed in 1968, is the main reason John F. Kennedy's nightmare vision of 15 to 20 nuclear weapons states has been avoided. Instead, there are fewer than 10: the five that already had nuclear weapons when the treaty was signed, and Israel, India, Pakistan and probably North Korea, with Iran threatening to join that list in a few years' time. 

Israel developed its bomb in the 1960's, but India and Pakistan tested their first bombs in 1998, and North Korea could test at any time. These recent additions to the list are a clear sign that the treaty needs reinforcing, particularly by closing the loophole that now allows countries to legally acquire bomb-making skills and equipment under the guise of civilian nuclear power programs. That is the most important challenge facing this month's treaty review conference. But it cannot be met without committed leadership from the United States.





Washington needs to lead the way in shoring up the basic bargain that underlies the treaty. The major nuclear weapons states committed themselves to reduce their own stockpiles significantly in exchange for nonnuclear states' renouncing the ambition of joining their ranks. 

Demonstrating good faith on that score will not be so easy for an administration that has torn up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, frozen ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and talks darkly about designing new and improved nuclear bombs. But it is absolutely essential if nonnuclear countries are to stay committed to their side of the bargain. And whatever hope remains of walking back the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs is not helped by American talk of developing more usable nuclear weapons. 

The dangers associated with nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism are not confined to the six to eight bombs that North Korea may have produced or the handful that Iran may be able to manufacture by the end of this decade. The thousands in well-guarded American and poorly guarded Russian stockpiles and the hundreds possessed by Britain, France and China are also significant parts of the equation. To their credit, Washington and Moscow agreed in 2002 to cut sharply the number of warheads loaded on missiles and bombers by 2012, but with no specific timetables for doing so and no commitments to actually dismantle the unloaded weapons. 

American leadership is also needed to gather support for a treaty that would, for the first time, ban the production of enriched uranium or plutonium for nuclear weapons. Such production is at the center of the current North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. 

Instead of working to strengthen this treaty, Washington has spent much of the last year trying to strip the working draft of all serious verification provisions. The United States already has all the fissile material it needs for weapons purposes. Banning further production in the rest of the world would be an effective way to curtail rogue weapons programs and the international trafficking of nuclear materials. 

That would still leave the problem of fissile materials produced under the cover of civilian nuclear power programs. One possible approach, proposed by Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, would require all such production to take place in multinational centers, under the agency's supervision. 

Any country that wanted to have a nuclear energy program and agreed to international inspection rules would have the right to purchase reactor fuel from these multinational centers. In one variant of this proposal, all countries would be asked to agree to a temporary moratorium on building their own enrichment and reprocessing facilities while the new multinational system was being set up. The idea would be to provide a face-saving way for Iran to retreat from what is currently a legally permitted enrichment program. 

Plenty of good ideas and some not-so-good ones will be floating around the Nonproliferation Treaty review conference this month. But unless Washington brings high-level leadership to the table, the most important steps needed to keep other countries from following the paths of North Korea and Iran will not be taken.





"Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."