Strategic Asia 2009-10: Economic Meltdown and Geopolitical Stability

To Repair, Replace, or Re-imagine the NPT Regime: Lessons from Strategic Politics in Asia

executive summary Through the prism of Asian security affairs, this chapter examines the challenges facing the nuclear nonproliferation regime. main argument: The attitudes of Asian powers toward nonproliferation and disarmament vary widely, and thus there is no agreement upon fixing the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). Perspectives among states have diverged, impeding wholesale “renewal.” Nevertheless, the treaty’s animating ideals can still valuably inform policymaking. The NPT is not synonymous with the nonproliferation regime, which is a broader web of overlapping and mutually reinforcing elements that share common inspiration. policy implications: • Relaxing the conception of “the regime” and improvisationally promoting elements that reinforce and complement it can serve nonproliferation goals, notwithstanding the NPT’s problems. • Legally institutionalized and technology-focused approaches poorly address the subjective and context-dependent challenges of national security. Such rigidity retards adaptation. Rather than focusing on capability constraints and legal mechanisms at the expense of addressing underlying political challenges, a more balanced approach is needed. Nonproliferation To Repair, Replace, or Re-imagine the NPT Regime: Lessons from Strategic Politics in Asia Christopher A. Ford The overwhelming majority of countries have committed themselves to preventing nuclear weapons proliferation by joining the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). Nevertheless, the nonproliferation regime faces grave challenges. North Korea’s violation of and withdrawal from the treaty, and tests of nuclear devices, remain unaddressed. Pyongyang has repudiated its own promise in 2005 of denuclearization, has defied the UN Security Council with missile testing, has been caught more than once proliferating nuclear technology or material to the Middle East, and has repudiated its 1953 armistice with South Korea. In defiance of Security Council resolutions, Iran continues enriching uranium and developing plutonium reprocessing. Hamstrung by veto threats, the council has been unable to impose strong sanctions. Even specialist nonproliferation institutions have been helpless (or feckless) in the face of noncompliance. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) took years to report Iranian safeguards violations to the Security Council, as required by the IAEA statute, and the director of the IAEA—who has conceded that Tehran “definitely would like to have the technology…that would enable it to have nuclear weapons”1 —nonetheless worked for years to protect Iran from council involvement. The IAEA is trying to follow up on evidence of a secret Syrian reactor project bombed by Israel in 2007—and to track down the origin of uranium particles 1 Mark Heinrich and Sylvia Westall, “Iran Seeking Nuclear Weapons Technology: ElBaradei,” Reuters, June 17, 2009. Christopher A. Ford is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Technology and Global Security at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at . 262 • Strategic Asia 2009–10 discovered at a research facility in Damascus—but the Syrians refuse to cooperate.2 Iran continues to ignore IAEA inquiries about reported work on nuclear weaponization, and North Korea re-expelled IAEA inspectors, declared an intention to restart the country’s plutonium production reactor, and announced a new nuclear test in May 2009. Since revelations surfaced about Iran’s nuclear program, moreover, a number of other Middle Eastern states have shown an interest in developing nuclear power—in some cases apparently even desiring enrichment capabilities. (In2007, the IAEAalso found mysterious tracesof both low- and highly enriched uranium in Egypt—a country the agency had upbraided two years earlier for repeatedly failing to declare all nuclear sites and materials.)3 Whatever these countries’ motives, there is talk of a broader renaissance in international nuclear energy cooperation, even as questions are increasingly being raised about the ability of safeguards to ensure against the misuse of technology. Many governments still resist the IAEA Additional Protocol, an instrument needed because traditional safeguards cannot detect undeclared activities, but the IAEA has conceded that the protocol is itself inadequate when a state truly wishes to hide nuclear work.4 Furthermore, it is often suggested that all NPT states have a legal right to fissile material production provided that they restrict such work to peaceful purposes and allow IAEA inspections. Though such a right is not actually spelled out in the language of the NPT, it is widely credited. Such technology, however, makes the holder a “virtual nuclear weapons state,” no more than a bad attitude and a brief delay away from a bomb. Although the NPT expresses parties’ desire to achieve nuclear disarmament, and superpower stockpiles have been reduced dramatically since the end of the Cold War, disarmament remains a...