Are we set for a nuclear-free future?

16/04/2009

As Obama puts The Bomb back on the global agenda, will Iran spoil the disarmament dream?

by Adam Forrest

Over the last decade, the world has learned to stop being complacent and start worrying about The Bomb once more. The long shadow of Hiroshima seemed to recede with the demise of the Soviet Union, but respite proved temporary. The threat again gathered as the capability to kill millions spread beyond the control of the old superpowers and nuclear-reduction treaties were left yellowing in embassy drawers. Today, the risk of a nuclear attack comes from more directions than even the fiercest of Cold Warriors could have imagined.

And yet some cautious optimism is in the air. The new US President has laid out the lofty goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. It may seem an obvious, elemental aim, but Obama is the first commander in chief since Ronald Reagan to place “global zero” on the US agenda and make headway on arsenal reduction talks with Russia. His recent speech in Prague was one of his most intriguing and powerful yet.

“Fatalism is a deadly adversary,” he said. “For if we believe the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable… we must ignore the voices who tell us the world cannot change.”

Professor Jonathan Schell, one of the world’s most prominent and long-standing proponents of disarmament, is cheered by the new direction. The New York-based author of The Seventh Decade says: “It’s been a 180 degree change from the Bush administration, which makes for a much more hopeful picture.

“We now have real commitment, and if Obama takes steps one, two, three and four, we can move on to five, six, seven and eight. My own inner-doomsday clock has gone back a minute or two.”

However, not everyone cared about the timing or the good intentions of Obama’s message. Just hours before he delivered a speech cleverly tailored in appealing to different capitals and constituencies, North Korea launched a long-range missile into the Pacific, leaving the Japanese and South Koreans livid, and the UN Security Council seeking sanctions. North Korea retaliated by dismissing the idea as an ‘unbearable insult’.  

Despite the furore, seasoned observers have come to expect these outbursts from Pyongyang, and claim the pariah state’s arsenal remains relatively unsophisticated (it is unclear exactly how many nuclear warheads North Korea has). “A launch is very media-genic, but it’s been a little overblown,” says Paul Carroll, programme director at Ploughshares Fund, an advocacy group committed to a nuclear-free world.

“The North Koreans do have plutonium and very likely some crude nuclear weapon, but our best estimate is they can’t deliver it on a missile or aircraft. The real risk is them selling information and technology, because they haven’t been very good global citizens. So it’s important to engage – if we cross our arms and do nothing, it doesn’t get us anywhere, as the Bush administration found out.”

Malcolm Grimston, nuclear weapons expert at international think tank Chatham House, says Kim Jong-il’s regime has actually shown willingness to talk, after its last tantrum – a nuclear test in 2006. “I think the [latest] rocket was about sabre rattling – a desire to access funds and some misguided sense of respect, so they fire off these rather dud missiles. We’ve seen this before, and there is room for manoeuvring and negotiations.”


A larger threat, and less co-operation, lies with Iran. Tehran has continued to enrich uranium despite lengthy negotiations with most of the big powers in recent years and the imposition of sanctions by the UN Security Council.

Whether President Ahmadinejad really wants to turn his energy programme toward weaponry is still unclear, but even the possibility of an unfriendly nuclear power in the Middle East stimulated outright hostility from the last White House administration.

Already, Obama has made some progress. There was the US President’s TV address to the Iranian people, and now the promise of direct negotiations (the US has joined talks with the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia, bringing to an end Bush-era obstinacy) seems to have generated this week’s more positive signals from Tehran, with Ahmadinejad saying that Iran speaks “very respectfully” of Barack Obama.

Professor Schell believes some kind of compromise that allows Iran an energy programme, but also allows rigorous inspections to prevent the type of enrichment needed to create deadly weapons, might be the best way forward.

“Nobody knows what their intentions really are, and unfortunately it’s pretty easy to develop highly-enriched uranium [once uranium has been used for energy],” he says. “But my own hope is they can be stopped short, because becoming a nuclear power would bring all kinds of danger on their heads.

“Tapping into nuclear fuel may well be enough for them in terms of prestige. I understand the Obama administration is looking into compromises of this kind. It’s a bargain I’d be ready to think about, depending on the particulars.”

It may play badly with the unrepentant hawks and the Republican opportunists ready to pounce if Obama appears soft on security, but Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, believes it might be the best deal on the table. “It’s feasible out of pure necessity, because none of the other options seem feasible,” he tells The Big Issue from his Washington DC office.

“It might be somewhat difficult to sell the idea domestically but it’s not a bad solution, if you have monitoring protocol implemented. US involvement [in talks] doesn’t automatically lead to a solution, but the absence of the US guarantees failure.”

In other words, the Iranians are already developing a nuclear project, so why not engage in influencing the project’s limits? Another suggested compromise involves offering Iran nuclear fuel, perhaps from an International Atomic Energy Agency-administered fuel bank, so the country wouldn’t need to develop its own. Uranium-rich Kazakhstan has shown interest in hosting the reserve.

Whatever the details, the major nuclear powers are unlikely to hold much authority with Iran, North Korea or any other state looking to go rogue unless they begin to show enthusiasm for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and start scaling back their own hefty stockpiles of weapons.

As Schell puts it: “You have to be able to say, ‘We’ll get out of the nuclear business if you won’t get into it’. Saying, ‘We can have them, but you can’t’ just doesn’t make for fruitful diplomacy.”

Well aware of the charges of hypocrisy from Iran and others, and also perhaps of the huge cost of maintaining such an unnecessarily vast array of bombs, the US and Russia have begun negotiations. Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev enjoyed face-to-face talks at the G20 summit at the start of this month, outlining a plan to replace the 1991 START treaty by July.

The most commonly cited estimate for cuts would leave both nations with 1,500 warheads (the US currently has 2,200, while Russia has 2,800).  The Obama administration has also indicated it is keen for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty to be ratified in the Senate, a pledge Russia has already made.


Long-conditioned to sniff out the devil in the details, Kate Hudson, chair of CND, is greatly encouraged. “Since Obama’s been in office, he’s moved past rhetoric we’ve heard for many years toward some more concrete initiatives,” she says. “For the first time in a long time, you can see progress with better conclusions on the other side of negotiations.

“Our own [UK] government has also now recognised that disarmament is part of the NPT, which is good, but there’s still a contradictory thing when Gordon Brown is carrying on with a Trident replacement.”

Despite pressing on with £76bn plans to replace Trident, Labour is keen to be at the forefront of decommissioning. The former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett made a speech in 2007, understood to have been discussed with Gordon Brown, pledging to make the UK a “disarmament laboratory” for other nations.

Yet the prospect of actually getting rid of any weapons is still years away, raising the troubling matter of the world’s large supply of bomb
technology “falling into the wrong hands”.

The cliché suggests bad guys might be able to pick the stuff up casually - round the back of a car boot sale perhaps - but the case of AQ
Khan (the Pakistani scientist involved in selling nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran) suggests wanton, ungoverned proliferation is all too real.

“We have entered the zone where it’s possible for terrorists to get a hold of the technology and the material,” says Schell. “Matching up all the necessary supply and demand is still very difficult, but if the spread continues, it will happen one day.”

Then there are the “regional” threats. Nuclear neighbours India and Pakistan, neither of whom have shown much interest in even signing up to NPT, do not have the cosiest of relationships. Still, enough has changed in a short space of time to hearten those charting the future of the disarmament cause.

“It’s very exciting,” says Paul Carroll. “The political stars are aligned in a way they haven’t been for decades.”


Update: President Ahmadinejad says Iran is putting together a plan to resolve his country's nuclear dispute with the West. At a televised speech he said: "We have prepared a package that can be the basis to resolve Iran's nuclear problem. It will be offered to the West soon."