THE CANBERRA COMMISSION ON THE ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

No nuclear weapon state has been or is prepared to declare as a matter of national policy that it would respond to the use of biological or chemical weapons with nuclear weapons. Whatever incidental contribution they might consider nuclear weapons to make in deterring the use of biological and chemical weapons (and it is not difficult to find high-level statements short of formal policy declarations seeking to establish this connection), the nuclear weapon states have not specifically included this in rationales for the maintenance of nuclear forces. They have evidently also taken full account of the fact that use of nuclear weapons in response to use or threat of use of other weapons of mass destruction would cross an important psychological as well as military threshold, making the management of future conflicts even more uncertain. The remarkable advances in the capabilities of conventional armaments, both already achieved and in prospect, can be expected on the whole to confirm this self-imposed limitation on the utility of nuclear weapons. An increasing number of states have in recent years come to be concerned at the threat of chemical and biological weapons. The issue has become enmeshed with policy responses to proposals for nuclear weapon free zones. The 1996 Treaty of Pelindaba provided an opportunity for nuclear weapon states to reaffirm to African states the assurances they have previously given. As argued in the case for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the solution to these concerns lies in the strengthening and effective implementation of and universal adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention, with particular emphasis on early detection of untoward developments. The response to any violation should be a multilateral one.

"Nuclear Weapons Confer Political Status and Influence"

It is said of nuclear weapons, with some justification, that their possession delivers important benefits in the form of status, influence and autonomy in world affairs. All of these are strong motives for states as well as individuals. Pressures to retain or acquire nuclear weapons for these reasons must be taken seriously. Yet the growth in influence of several non-nuclear weapon states tends to refute this proposition.

The example most frequently cited of the correlation between nuclear weapons and status is the fact that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the only members with the power of veto, are also the nuclear weapon states. None of the five, however, secured this status because of nuclear weapons. Not even the United States was a confirmed nuclear power when the Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945. And today, it is beyond doubt that any expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council will not be on the basis of preserving the nexus between such membership and the possession of nuclear weapons. The view that nuclear weapons deliver status and influence to their owners is due in part to the fact that nuclear weapons were in the early aftermath of World War II the supreme embodiment of economic strength and technological excellence. As the world slipped deeper into Cold War, and Washington and Moscow gathered ever more of the reins of global management into their hands, the United Kingdom, France and then China saw themselves as potential targets of superpower arsenals. Subsequently they were attracted also to nuclear capability as a means to secure a place at the top table. Nuclear weapons undeniably helped sustain the significant international standing of both the United Kingdom and France, who, importantly, both took the decision to acquire them when nuclear weapons were still fresh and novel. Equally, however, their alliance with and importance to the United States during the Cold War almost certainly contributed far more to their continued prominence in world affairs.

In retrospect, the United Kingdom and France in particular may question whether their decision to secure a nuclear weapon capability has been worthwhile. Very large economic costs, both direct and cumulative, are inevitably involved and these need to be set against any possible enhanced independence in foreign and defence policy. The direct costs of developing atomic and thermonuclear weapons and an array of specialised delivery vehicles, providing an elaborate security apparatus for warheads and their delivery systems, and keeping all of these up to date are themselves formidable. Moreover the entire complex must be operated continuously at extreme standards of excellence.

Nuclear weapons cannot exclusively be relied on for defence, especially if potential adversaries also have them. So the cost of the nuclear forces, including their continued modernisation, must essentially be added to conventional means of defence. In the cases of the United Kingdom, France and China, the need to support extensive nuclear programs has taken resources and skilled personnel away from conventional forces. The diversion to military purposes of a disproportionately large share of a country's research and development capability is a significant factor in explaining differences in the rate of economic growth that states can sustain over the medium and longer term. In part it explains the pronounced shifts that have occurred over the post-war period in the relative economic weight of the major states, and how Japan and Germany, in particular, have improved their position markedly relative to all the nuclear weapon states. The pressures to refine and update delivery systems have eased although missiles, aircraft and ballistic missile submarines will require expensive maintenance and replacement from time to time. On the other hand the outlook for the medium and longer term is less optimistic. In the absence of a commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons more countries are likely to acquire them, prompting costly competition for at least a qualitative edge. And even a modest increase in the membership of the nuclear club must sharply diminish whatever benefits these weapons are felt to deliver in terms of status.

"Nuclear Weapons Provide Effective Defence at Lower Cost"

It is sometimes argued that nuclear weapons are cost-effective and make possible a more economical defence posture. This view was briefly entertained in the early years of the nuclear era when the United States had a nuclear monopoly or a huge preponderance in deliverable nuclear weapons and when there was a temptation to discount the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and regard nuclear weapons as an important but basically evolutionary development - just a bigger bomb. While the US/NATO strategy of 'massive retaliation' was an echo of this view, it is important to note that the United States simultaneously decided to reverse the drastic demobilisation that occurred after World War II and to maintain indefinitely large standing conventional forces. The Korean War strongly reinforced this policy position. Much the same happened in the other nuclear weapon states. It was quickly recognised that the circumstances in which nuclear weapons could beneficially be employed were extremely narrow if, indeed, they existed at all. Rather than nuclear weapons being regarded as a substitute for conventional forces, the overwhelmingly dominant line of reasoning has been to maintain the strongest practicable conventional capabilities and thereby maximise the firebreak between conventional war, should it break out, and nuclear war.

No accurate data exists on the recurring or cumulative cost of the nuclear posture for any of the nuclear weapon states, though without doubt a realistic full costing would yield staggering figures. Such a costing would embrace the production of fissile material; the fabrication of nuclear weapons; environmental clean-up; testing; the design, development, production and operation of delivery systems; the command, control and communications architecture; and the panoply of early warning systems.

All the nuclear weapon states continuously face difficult decisions on nuclear/conventional trade-offs at the margin. But such trade-offs are governed primarily by the need to keep total military expenditure within acceptable bounds. There has been essentially no realistic possibility of achieving savings through assigning to nuclear weapons missions and functions previously performed by conventional forces. If anything, the reverse is true. Recent experience suggests that modern conventional capabilities can reliably perform tasks that were considered earlier to require nuclear weapons. Even here the issue is not cost-effectiveness but the fact that such conventional capabilities constitute a realistic deterrent. In contrast to nuclear weapons, they can be used.

"Nuclear Weapons Deter and if Necessary Can Defeat Large Scale Conventional Aggression by Regional Powers"

The view is held that in a prospective multipolar world with a significant diffusion of economic, technological and military power, nuclear weapons could prove valuable in deterring and if necessary defeating large scale conventional aggression by regional powers, perhaps occurring in more than one theatre at the same time. This presupposes that a nuclear weapon state would find it morally and politically acceptable to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear foe.

This contention is unrealistic. Even in the most favourable circumstances, where there has been no prospect of retaliation, political, moral and military inhibitions have excluded the use of nuclear weapons. Twice during the Korean War, when US forces were in desperate straits and when North Korea and China had no nuclear capability and the Soviet Union only a relatively small one, the US President recoiled from the moral and political costs of resorting to nuclear weapons. When French forces were besieged at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, serious consideration was given in the United States to providing assistance through use of low-yield nuclear weapons. But in these and other instances, including in the later American involvement in Vietnam, self- deterrence proved as effective as mutual deterrence. The nuclear weapon states have concluded that it is in their interests to formulate negative security assurances that formally proclaim the inadmissibility of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in circumstances where the aggressor is not a nuclear weapon state and is not being actively supported by a nuclear weapon state.

It is also plain that any attempt to unshackle nuclear weapons through contemplating a role for them in conventional regional conflicts would be short-sighted in the extreme. This would inevitably and significantly intensify proliferation pressures.

"Deep-Seated Regional Disputes Will Always Frustrate Universal Agreement on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons"

It is sometimes contended that even if the nuclear weapon states saw net advantage in the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, the necessary universal commitment to this goal would be frustrated by the states involved in the most intractable regional disputes. The two key examples given are the disputes between Israel and the Arab states, and between India and Pakistan. But, without question, the overt nuclearisation of these disputes would complicate them further and make any genuine reconciliation vastly more difficult. The states concerned would be locked into very expensive and dangerous nuclear deterrent relationships, with the familiar incessant pressures to increase and diversify the nuclear arsenals. The actual use of nuclear weapons - whether by design or by accident - would exacerbate these disputes beyond measure and make more likely the direct involvement of the major powers.

It is clearly in the interests of the nuclear weapon states, and substantially within their capacity and that of the international community, to address the concerns of the few states who may believe that a nuclear capability is indispensable to their security. Strengthening conflict mediation procedures and providing additional security assurances will be in the interests of both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states.

The striking development, post-Cold War, of increasing global interdependence has led most states to appreciate the potential of seeking security in cooperation with rather than in confrontation against their neighbours. Though cautiously in some cases, many states are now exploring the potential for dialogue, transparency and other trust and confidence building measures with their neighbours as a more reliable and effective means of providing for their security than confrontation or deterrence. Furthermore, the commitment to the goal of a nuclear weapon free world should reinforce the determination of states to strengthen collective and cooperative means of addressing their security concerns.

"The Elimination of Nuclear Weapons is Unverifiable:
Cheating and Breakout Will Occur"

The elimination of nuclear weapons will not be possible without the development of adequate verification. A political judgement will be needed on whether the levels of assurance possible from the verification regime are sufficient. All existing arms control and disarmament agreements have required political judgements of this nature because no verification system provides absolute certainty. This situation has not prevented the international community acting in the area of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction first with the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system, then the CWC and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The nature of nuclear weapons, the secrecy that has surrounded their development and uncertainties about total amounts of nuclear material produced for weapons, will make it very difficult, or in the view of some impossible, to be confident that states which have operated large scale military nuclear programs have made full declarations of their holdings of nuclear weapons and fissile material. The possession by a state of a number of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them in an otherwise nuclear weapon free world would present the state concerned with a powerful coercive instrument. While such a development is considered a significant risk it is hard to envisage the nuclear weapon states totally eliminating their arsenals. Confidence in the verification arrangements will have to apply to the nuclear programs of the declared nuclear weapon states and the undeclared and threshold nuclear weapon states. Verification arrangements are also discussed in Part Two and in more detail in Annex A.

Nuclear disarmament will be achieved in stages, and the decision point on whether verification is adequate for complete elimination is unlikely to be reached for some time. The potential uncertainty about whether a verification regime can be developed to provide sufficient confidence for final elimination should not be allowed to divert attention from the benefits of making an early start on practical steps toward a nuclear weapon free world. Development and implementation of the verification arrangements needed for each step toward elimination will provide immediate benefit through reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear proliferation including nuclear terrorism. If it were to take a long time for the verification system to deliver the levels of confidence needed for total elimination, a world of small residual arsenals would, in the meantime, be a safer place than at present although the dangers of nuclear proliferation and a renewed arms race would remain. Movement to this penultimate stage of nuclear disarmament would establish circumstances in which states could conclude, with increasing conviction over time, that nuclear weapons are not relevant to their security, thereby eliminating any remaining incentive to cheat. It should be recognised that a verification regime is composed of both its material and technical features, which should be of the highest order attainable, and the common political and legal commitments which support it. This creates the climate of confidence essential to any verification regime. An inclusive approach to verification can increase levels of assurance. In the case of verification for a nuclear weapon free world, technical verification can be supplemented by measures such as transparency in nuclear activity, relevant national intelligence information passed to verification bodies, an enhanced role for individuals in verification and application of effective export controls. A number of factors can be identified which will act in favour of development of adequate verification arrangements for a nuclear weapon free world. First, because the nuclear weapon scientific industrial complex is a tightly regulated governmental enterprise, there is an increased probability that extensive records of nuclear weapons and weapons fissile material production will be available. This is not to diminish the magnitude of the task of verifying the completeness of states' declarations of holdings of weapons and weapons nuclear material, and records can of course be destroyed or falsified.

A second consideration is the nearly thirty years of experience accumulated in verifying compliance with the NPT. The IAEA safeguards system offers a proven and evolving system for delivering a high degree of assurance that safeguarded nuclear material remains in peaceful use. Action necessary to improve the IAEA's capacity to detect undeclared nuclear activity is being taken and the Agency has expertise in verifying declarations of previously unsafeguarded nuclear programs, including its work in Iraq, the DPRK (North Korea) and South Africa after that country renounced nuclear weapons. Third, there is the experience of the SALT, START, INF, CFE and CWC agreements that individually and collectively demonstrate the powerful influence that political will can exert over what is desirable and possible in terms of verification. In the 1980s, the arms control agenda was transformed by the negotiation, in particular, of the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) and the CFE agreements. Prior to these treaties, the scope of arms control was, with the major exception of IAEA safeguards inspections, basically limited to arrangements that could be verified by so-called 'national technical means' - that is, by the information that each side could extract without the cooperation of the other. Once it had been determined politically that both sides really wanted the outcomes in question, the realm of verification expanded beyond recognition to include on-site inspections and voluntary transparency and cooperative measures. In a similar vein the verification regime supporting the CWC broke significant new ground in response to the scale and complexity of the challenge, the harnessing of new technologies for verification purposes and the forging of a partnership, worldwide, between governments and the chemical industry. These agreements show that verification capabilities can grow to support the objective when that objective is determined unequivocally to be in the political and security interests of all concerned.

The temptation should be resisted to demand a perfect verification regime and total assurance of effective collective action against any cheating state (in effect, a world government) as the only circumstance in which it would make sense to eliminate nuclear weapons. Inevitably, some risk will have to be accepted if the wider benefits of a nuclear weapon free world are to be realised. Some argue that, in a nuclear weapon free world, any state that cheats successfully and emerges with a meaningful nuclear force - warheads and credible delivery systems - would derive tremendous advantage. This seems intuitively obvious but it should be examined. The history of the nuclear era to date indicates that the threat of use of nuclear force is in practice extremely difficult to translate into political gains. This would be at least as true in the world that had succeeded in crossing the threshold to zero nuclear weapons. Furthermore, in an era in which the accuracy, penetrating power and destructive force of conventional weapons are increasing rapidly and economic interdependence is growing, the development of an illegal nuclear force would, in all probability, be self-defeating. It is important to be clear on what constitutes a 'meaningful nuclear force' and on what force might be secretly acquired. Much would depend on the sort of country that did the cheating and the scale of the geopolitical threat that it could subsequently pose before its nuclear capability was countered and negated. The risk of a single state emerging with a meaningful nuclear force is perhaps greatest in the case of a nuclear power or threshold state that succeeded in hiding away a portion of its arsenal while otherwise appearing to participate in the elimination process. This is a clear challenge for the accounting and verification regime. If states with a known nuclear weapon capability fail to create high and unblemished levels of reciprocal confidence in the course of the preparatory process, this will inevitably prejudice the elimination process. It is already practically impossible for a government to develop nuclear weapons without at least arousing strong suspicions. The instruments and procedures that would come into effect as part of the process of eliminating nuclear weapons can be expected to increase confidence in this regard very substantially. Any state that generated doubts about its commitment to nuclear disarmament or had done so in the past would be subject to particularly close scrutiny. The credibility of the new verification regime should not rest wholly on detection of just one bomb: it should rather be based on the ability to provide due warning that someone was preparing a meaningful nuclear force. Major powers with very substantial conventional forces do not require nuclear weapons to deal with threats from small states which might acquire some nuclear weapons capability. The advanced conventional weapons of the major powers would be enough to discourage or retaliate against any small state which threatens to use nuclear weapons.

In the light of these considerations, the rational requirement is to evaluate comparative risks. In considering the desirability of moving to a nuclear weapon free world, some compare its hazards not with yesterday's massive nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert holding apart nervous and deeply antagonistic states but with the prospect of relatively modest arsenals possessed only by a few states experienced in their management. But, as already argued, it is much more likely that the nuclear club will expand and the nuclear arms race re-ignite. A more telling comparison is therefore the risk of a failure of deterrence in an environment of thousands of warheads on reliable delivery vehicles, against the risks associated with whatever nuclear force a cheating state could assemble before it was exposed. It is beyond question that, of those two, the former is the vastly greater risk. Conclusion The world community has had 50 years of experience with nuclear weapons. In this period much of its effort, including of those members of the community which have owned nuclear weapons, has been directed towards protecting itself from their destructive power. Vertical proliferation - the urge of nuclear weapon states to add to and perfect their arsenals - has been a major cause of the problem of living with nuclear weapons. Horizontal proliferation - the urge of other states to acquire this perceived means of enhancing their security - has also been and remains of great concern.

It has been argued that nuclear weapons have reinforced caution in the conduct of relationships between the major powers. But their existence carries the inherent risk of their use, which would inevitably have catastrophic results. The only complete defence against such catastrophe is the elimination of nuclear weapons and the assurance that they will never be produced again. Inertia and complacency should not be permitted to prevent the international community from reaching this goal.

Footnotes

1 Graham T. Allison, Owen R. Cot Jr., Richard A. Falkenrath and Steven E. Miller, Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996), p. 1 of the Introduction.

2 ICJ Advisory Opinion, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 8 July 1996, General List No. 95, p. 36

3 Ibid.

4 Hans Gunther Brauch, "The Enhanced Radiation Warhead : A West German Perspective," Arms Control Today, (June 1978), p.3.

5 Solly Zuckerman, Nuclear Illusions and Reality (New York: Viking, 1982), p.70; Sunday Times (London), February 21, 1982.

6 Henry Kissinger, "NATO Defense and the Soviet Threat," Survival, (November-December 1979), p. 266.

7 The Congressional Record (US), 1 July, 1981.

8 The Washington Post, 12 April, 1982.

9 BBC Radio interview with Stuart Simon, 16 July, 1987.

Canberra Commission Report Continued

Proposition One