The Future of nuclear disarmament - Going to Zero: Desirable? Feasible?

Ladies and Gentlemen: It's a pleasure for me to be here at Henry L. Stimson Center. I welcome this opportunity to speak on the future of nuclear weapons.

Arms control and disarmament - in the minds of many people, these concepts are still associated with a long-forgotten era, with superpower summits in Vienna and Reykjavik and the Helsinki Final Act of the CSCE. Disarmament and arms control, however, never disappeared from the global agenda and have once again become topical issues. Disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation are at the heart of Social Democratic foreign and security policy.

Following a decade of disarmament that began with the conclusion of the INF Treaty in 1987 and ended with the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, military expenditure has been rising sharply again since 1998. According to the yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for 2007, worldwide military expenditure in 2006 amounted to some ?900 billion ? 3.5% more than in 2005. The United States is well ahead of the field, having spent a total of ?396.2 billion, which corresponds to 42% of global arms expenditure.

The threat of nuclear war may appear less than at the height of the Cold War but the dangers remain huge. Almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there are still more than 27,000 nuclear warheads in storage facilities throughout the world, of which around 12,000 are still actively deployed. In short, mankind's capacity to destroy itself several times over has only been marginally reduced since 1989.

There can be no mistaking the diagnosis: the entire system of international relations and treaties that is supposed to prevent the proliferation of weapons is in acute danger of collapse. Although the danger of a nuclear world war has receded, that clearly definable threat has now given way to previously unknown threats to international security in the form of weak and unstable states armed with weapons of mass destruction as well as non-state players, whose significance is steadily growing.

The purpose of the following theses is to explain why arms control and disarmament, especially of the nuclear weapons, remain imperative if a peaceful global order is to be constructed. If they are systematically applied, they can foster cooperation and peaceful interaction. They cannot and will not work, however, without the necessary political will, which has quite obviously been lacking in recent years.

1. Resolving the crisis over the nuclear non-proliferation regime

At the start of the 21st century, nuclear weapons are no longer regarded as the ultimate deterrent but are increasingly being seen once again as theatre weapons. Through the ongoing modernisation of their arsenals, not only the United States but also Russia, China, France and Britain are undermining the obligation to disarm, which is enshrined in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT. In spite of pronouncements to the contrary in the UN Security Council, nuclear-weapon states are less and less prepared to give assurances that they will not use their nuclear arms, preferring to reserve the right to carry out even a preventive strike. The ideal of a world free of nuclear weapons pursued by the Non-Proliferation Treaty is being replaced by the threat of a ?re-nuclearisation? of global politics. We therefore urgently need new impetus regarding nuclear disarmament. Failure of the NPT Review Conference in 2010 must be prevented.

2. Honouring the obligation to disarm imposed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The five nuclear-weapon states recognised by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, namely China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, continue to have an estimated 12,000 immediately deployable nuclear weapons. The strategic nuclear weapons with which the superpowers guaranteed their ability to destroy each other several times over during the Cold War are virtually pointless today. Any residual need for deterrence could be satisfied with a few hundred bombs. The fact that the United States and Russia have drastically reduced the number of their nuclear warheads since 1990 undoubtedly represents progress, but further action is needed.

For example, 5 December 2009 is the expiry date of the 1991 START Treaty, which provided for a one-third reduction in each side?s strategic missiles and a ceiling of 6,000 missiles. If no successor agreement were concluded, the only remaining valid legal basis for inspection of the arsenals of those two nuclear would cease to exist.

In addition, the Presidents of the United States and Russia concluded the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT) in 2002. SORT provides for a reduction in the number of strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 on each side by 2012. The Treaty, however, has several shortcomings. The decommissioned warheads need not be destroyed but may be kept in storage. This means that all the stored warheads could theoretically be deployed again once the Treaty has expired in 2012. Moreover, during the present ten-year period, both sides have the right to withdraw at any time, subject to 90 days' notice. SORT, in other words, is also far too timid a step, albeit in the right direction.

3. Supporting a zero option for tactical nuclear weapons

While the supposed utility of strategic nuclear weapons can still provoke lively argument, all experts actually agree that tactical nuclear weapons no longer have a role to play in security policy now that the Cold War is over. I am not referring only to the few nuclear weapons that are still stored in Germany but to tactical nuclear weapons in general. In two articles in the Wall Street Journal, which appeared on 4 January 2007 and 15 January 2008, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other prominent figures called on world leaders to eliminate short-range nuclear weapons as soon as possible if they wanted to avoid the risk of a nuclear conflict. The new nuclear era, they said, would be "more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence". The articles are signed by four politicians who are above any suspicion of starry-eyed pacifism. Besides Dr Kissinger, the signatories are William Perry, George Schultz and Sam Nunn. Their appeal contains eight concrete proposals, ranging from initiating a bipartisan process in Congress for the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to getting worldwide control of uranium enrichment and halting the production of fissile material for weapons globally. The four elder statesmen also call for substantial reductions in the size of nuclear forces, the complete elimination of short-range nuclear weapons and efforts to secure ratification of the Test-Ban Treaty by other key states.

4. Improving multilateral treaty regimes by means of better verification

Better verification means measures such as unannounced on-site inspections, the use of new surveillance technology and the creation of trained impartial teams of inspectors. Efforts are needed on the part of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that all parties to the NPT conclude comprehensive safeguards agreements and additional protocols and take the measures required for their early entry into force. The powers of the IAEA to conduct special inspections of facilities, including undeclared facilities, must be strengthened and expanded. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Agreement, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative and the Proliferation Security Initiative, which targets the spread of weapons of mass destruction are innovative approaches and represent new, effective ways to combat breaches of the NPT and to enhance global security.

Another innovative approach is embodied in a number of proposals to internationalise the nuclear fuel cycle. The aim of such a measure would be to guarantee the supply of nuclear fuel for energy generation to all interested countries while reducing the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons. Part of a proposal made by the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is that a special territory should be set up under IAEA administration, in which a commercial uranium-enrichment facility would be established. The precise ways in which the various proposals would be implemented are currently under negotiation in Vienna.

5. Launching regional initiatives

Nuclear-disarmament initiatives should be launched in the Middle East and Southern Asia with the aim of creating nuclear-weapon-free zones in those parts of the world, similar to those that have already been established in Central and South America, in Africa, in the South Pacific, in South-East Asia and, most recently, in Central Asia.

In the NATO framework too, disarmament and arms control must be brought back into sharper focus. For this reason, the initiative taken by Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Støre, at the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels on 7 December was an important and judicious signal. There is undoubtedly an urgent need for the world's most powerful military alliance to devote more attention to arms control and disarmament once again and to make its own contribution to the pursuit of these goals, particularly in view of the Alliance?s strong tradition of successful arms limitation.

Another important initiative is the Global Partnership initiated at the G8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002 by former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Vladimir Putin, which is helping to reduce the risks of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological proliferation in Russia. The partnership involves the destruction of chemical weapons, the disposal of decommissioned Russian submarines and the safe storage of fissile material. By 2012 a total of 20 billion US dollars will have been spent on this initiative.

Résumé

The above theses illustrate the pressing need for restoration of the role of disarmament and arms control as a guiding principle of international relations. In past decades, the strategy of limiting the size of arsenals made the world a safer place. During the era of East-West confrontation, arms control played a vital part in preventing war and building mutual trust. It created the conditions for cooperation and change. The limitation and elimination of strategic nuclear weapons, the destruction of all intermediate-range missiles, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention and the limitation of conventional forces in Europe are but a few important examples.

Moreover, no one should harbour any illusions about future scope for circumventing or evading arms-control agreements and their monitoring and verification mechanisms. Nuclear Weapons cannot be uninvented. Be they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable. And with that will, even the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is not beyond the world?s reach. In actual fact, the only alternative to contractually based, verifiable arms control is a global nuclear, biological and chemical arms race, which cannot be in the interests of the United States either.

Thank you very much.