UNU Update:The anomalies killing nonproliferation

Ramesh Thakur is senior vice rector of UN University. These are his personal views

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U.N. should work better to secure global peace

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is the most successful arms control agreement in history. Yet eminent commentators warn that it is in grave danger of erosion and complete collapse leading to a cascade of proliferation.

The diplomats gathered for a month in New York to review the treaty face difficulties rooted in six major anomalies.

First, the definition of a nuclear weapons state is chronological - a country that manufactured and exploded a nuclear device before Jan. 1, 1967. India, Pakistan and Israel could test, deploy and even use nuclear weapons, but cannot be described as nuclear powers. In principle, Britain and France could dismantle their nuclear edifice and destroy their nuclear arsenals, but would still count as nuclear powers.

This is an Alice in Wonderland approach to affairs of deadly seriousness. But can the treaty definition be opened up for revision through a formal amendment of the 188-member document with all the unpredictable consequences? If not, whither realism?

Second, even as the threat from nonstate actors has grown frighteningly real, multilateral treaties like this one can regulate and monitor the activities only of states. Abdul Qadeer Khan's underground nuclear bazaar showed how porous the border is between private and state rogue actors. A robust and credible normative architecture to control the actions of terrorist groups that can acquire nuclear weapons must be developed outside the nonproliferation treaty.

Third, the cases of Israel, India, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and North Korea show that decades after a problem arises, we still cannot agree on an appropriate response inside the NPT framework.

Significant gaps exist in the legal and institutional framework to combat today's real threats. It is impossible to defang tyrants of their nuclear weapons the day after they acquire and use them. The UN seems incapable of doing so the day before: The Security Council can hardly table the North Korean threat for discussion and resolution.

If international institutions cannot cope, states will try to do so themselves, either unilaterally or in concert with like-minded allies. If prevention is strategically necessary and morally justified but legally not permitted, then the existing framework of laws and rules - not the anticipatory military action - is defective.

The fourth anomaly is lumping biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in one conceptual and policy basket. They differ in their technical features, in the ease with they can be acquired and developed, and in their capacity to cause mass destruction. Treating them as one weapons category can distort analysis and produce flawed responses.

There is the related danger of mission creep. The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is so strong that it is hard to imagine their employment other than against enemy nuclear weapons. The creeping tendency to redefine their mission to counter all weapons of mass destruction weakens the nuclear taboo and allows the nuclear powers to obfuscate the reality that they are the possessors of the most potent of those weapons. If nuclear weapons are accepted as having a role to counter biochemical warfare, then how can we deny a nuclear-weapons capability to Iran, which has actually suffered chemical weapons attacks?

Fifth, the five nuclear powers preach but do not practice nuclear abstinence. It defies history, common sense and logic to believe that a self-selecting group of five countries can keep a permanent monopoly on the world's most destructive weaponry. Not a single country that had nuclear weapons when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed in 1968 has given them up. Their behavior fuels the politics of grievance and resentment.

Can the country with the world's most powerful nuclear weapons rightfully use military force to prevent their acquisition by others? The logics of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation are inseparable. Hence the axiom of nonproliferation: As long as any one country has them, others, including terrorist groups, will try their best (or worst) to get them.

The final paradox concerns the contradiction between rhetoric and example. It is not possible to convince others of the futility of nuclear weapons when the facts of continued possession and doctrines and threats of use prove their utility for some. Refining and miniaturizing nuclear weapons, developing new doctrines and justifications for their use, and lowering the threshold of their employment weaken the taboo against them and erode the normative barriers to nuclear proliferation.

Are these anomalies so few in number and so lightweight that they can be accommodated within auxiliary arrangements inside the nonproliferation treaty?

Or are they such big problems that the treaty will grind to a halt and be replaced? The negotiators in New York have their work cut out for them.