In the third Defense Monitor of 2000, we highlighted the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, pointing out the issues and urging you to express support of the NPT to your elected representatives. This article summarizes the results of the NPT Review Conference.

Judging by the press release from the United Nations, the 2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) Review Conference was a great success. In form it undoubtedly was, as the 155 nations present (of the 187 signatory states) were able to achieve consensus on the final communique – but only after intense negotiations involving the U.S. and Iraq that caused the Conference to go 24 hours beyond its original deadline of May 19. Yet it was the first time in 15 years that a consensus was achieved

The U.S.-Iraqi Dispute

The nub of the dispute was America’s insistence that the final document contain references to Iraq’s refusal to allow inspection of its declared nuclear weapons facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as prescribed by Security Council Resolution 687. Iraq initially insisted that Resolution 687 and the NPT were separate issues. However, in the interests of consensus – while not budging from this point – it finally agreed to allow the Conference report to note the IAEA’s April 24, 2000 statement that “[a]lthough the Agency had been able recently to carry out an inspection in Iraq, it could not...at present provide assurances that Iraq was in compliance with its obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions.”

(IAEA inspections, along with those of the U.N. Special Commission designed to uncover and destroy Iraq’s stockpiles and capability to produce nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, were halted just prior to Operation Desert Fox, the four day U.S. bombing campaign in late December 1998.)

Minimal Progress

While procedural norms were resolutely observed, the Review Conference was short on substance on the Treaty’s three main objectives: nuclear cooperation, nuclear disarmament, and nuclear non-proliferation.

On nuclear disarmament, the five avowed nuclear weapons states – Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States – jointly renewed in an “unequivocal undertaking” their previous commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons. But as in the past – most notably in 1995 – no timetable was set either to measure progress or to achieve the final destruction of all nuclear weapons. Such an omission essentially renders the “undertaking” meaningless.

Similarly, no progress was made on renouncing or modifying the U.S. and Russian declarations that nuclear weapons are the “cornerstone” of each nation’s military security. Neither country backed away from its current posture of “launch on warning” nor did either suggest abandoning the “option” of first use of nuclear weapons. Russia’s January 2000 declaration that it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in war if other means of “resolving the crisis have failed,” together with the U.S. position that America might use nuclear weapons to retaliate for a chemical or biological weapons attack, were unchanged coming out of the Review Conference.

With regard to non-proliferation, the Review Conference called on India, Pakistan, and Israel – all of which have nuclear weapons – to join the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states. Cuba, the other non-signatory state, was also encouraged to become a party to the NPT.

Finally, as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted in his remarks at the Conference’s opening, nuclear cooperation has lagged because “much of the established multilateral disarmament machinery has started to rust...a problem due not to the machinery itself but to the apparent lack of political will to use it.” The CTBT has yet to enter into force (the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it last October); negotiations on fissile material cut-off are incomplete; deep cuts in existing stockpiles remain suspended because START II Treaty ratification by the Russian Duma had conditions attached that were not part of the U.S. Senate ratification deliberations – and these differences in ratification language are holding up START III negotiations that would reduce deployed strategic weapons even further. Nuclear cooperation also is retarded by the apparent intent of the U.S. to field a national missile defense system even if discussions with Russia fail to achieve agreement on modifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

As a number of delegates to the Review Conference pointed out, the 1995 Conference extended the NPT indefinitely, not the right of the five major powers to retain their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Thus Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and especially the United States, are obliged under the Treaty to end the production of nuclear weapons and their components (tritium gas and plutonium “pits”), dismantle existing weapons and their means of delivery, and to assist non-weapons states in the peaceful development and use of atomic energy.

The Review Conference’s greatest achievement may be that none of the 187 States parties withdrew from the NPT despite fears that some might be prepared to opt out in the absence of any meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament. The “unequivocal undertaking” may have been enough to keep everyone within the Treaty’s fold in 2000. Absent genuine progress to implement that undertaking, even this language may not be enough at the next Review Conference in 2005.

Call outs

“The Review Conference was short on substance.”

“No timetable was set...to achieve the final destruction of all nuclear weapons.”

For more details and analysis, visit CDI's Nuclear Proliferation page.
 

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