RevConology

As noted recently, expectations in nuke land are high for 2010. Just last year, North Korea tested another nuclear weapon while simultaneously Iran continues to move toward a nuclear weapon which has prompted serious concerns about a proliferation tipping point.  The Gang of 4 noted in 2008 that these daunting nonproliferation challenges will require “essential cooperation" "to stop our downward spiral."  With START follow-on, the NPR, the Nuclear Security Summit, and the Review Conference all happening this year there are hopes major progress can be made on the nonproliferation front.  The Review Conference in particular is important for many on the nonproliferation front in hopes the U.S will be rewarded, or at least not punished, for its efforts on that front in the last year.  

In some respects, the 2010 Review Conference will be one of the first major symbols to see whether efforts to seek cooperation produce any fruit. Held quinquennially, NPT Review Conferences bring together States Parties to the treaty to “maintain and strengthen the effectiveness of the Treaty.” The last go round in 2005 was generally considered a bust and Harald Müller went as far as to call it “the biggest failure in the history of this Treaty.” There is plenty of blame to go around for the failure but U.S. nonchalance towards the effort certainly didn't help matters.  Müller explains:

The decisive responsibility of the US positions for the failure of the Conference has already been exposed. American policy was pursuing with great determination the John Bolton line of devaluing multilateralism and international law. In the context of this policy, the NPT has ostensibly lost a lot of its meaning for US security policy

In addition to de-emphasizing the importance of the NPT and arms control, the Bush administration was also perceived, rightly or wrongly, as increasing the importance of nuclear weapons thanks to the pre-emption language it the NPR and the mangled sales pitch of RNEP and RRW. To its credit, the administration did explicitly argue for  a reduction in the role of nuclear weapons in the 2001 NPR and negotiate substantial arsenal reductions in the SORT treaty but was not the perception of the administration's policy.

Now that team Obama is at the helm, things are supposed to be substantially different on the international nuclear stage. With regards to the NPT itself, the POTUS was upfront in the Prague:

Second, together we will strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a basis for cooperation . . . To strengthen the treaty, we should embrace several principles. We need more resources and authority to strengthen international inspections. We need real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules or trying to leave the treaty without cause.

Perhaps more importantly, many of the other agenda items laid out in Prague provide the administration they ability to at least say they are making good faith efforts toward Article VI, even if the deeds to match those words will be slow in coming. This boded well for the 2009 PrepCom which was able to hammer out an agenda and has people jazzed about prospects for May 2010.

RevConcentric Nonproliferation

The wave created by the Prague agenda has produced momentum and optimism that 2010 won’t be a repeat of 2005 but it is important to keep in mind just how much the Review Conference will be able to do with regards to nonproliferation. For example, Josh Pollack follows-up his argument for a change in declaratory policy by stating:

Come this May at the RevCon, when Washington puts forward its proposals to strengthen the NPT, both Washington and Tehran will be courting the votes of some of the same countries. These include states that are neither enemies nor fully-fledged allies of the United States, and perhaps hold some reservations about the idea of a unipolar world. In this situation, the Nuclear Posture Review can deal cards into the hand of the U.S. delegation, or take them away.
So let’s recognize declaratory policy for what it is, first and foremost: an instrument of diplomacy. And let’s also recognize that “deter enemies” and “assure allies” is not the whole of diplomatic endeavor. The United States aspires to lead the international community, which is not the same thing as leading NATO. The RevCon will put that aspiration to the test. [emphasis mine]

There are two major points Pollack is dead on about. First, the NPR will be a huge driver in RevCon discussions about U.S. nuclear policy, in part because START is the only other major tangible success the administration might be able to hold up in May. The importance the NPR will play is why I have argued there need to be very realistic expectations about how much the NPR will be able to do so as to not raise the bar too high. Second, a large focus of our nonproliferation efforts need to be an effort to seek cooperation from countries like Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Egypt, and Mexico.  

Where I differ with Pollack is the emphasis upon the ballot box at the Review Conference for U.S. (nonproliferation) leadership aspirations. The 2010 NPT Review Conference is an important diplomatic endeavor that the Obama team is taking quite seriously, as it should. At the same time, it is also still subject to the same bureaucracy of consensus, the same major alliances, and  and similar, albeit perhaps slightly tweaked, talking points from the likely list of candidates. The NPT is considered by many the “cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime” which is why preventing it from unraveling is important but skepticism about how much that Review Conference can accomplish is warranted. For example, Deepti Choubey thinks the following 8 ‘realistic objectives’ should be sought:

Reaffirm the vitality of the NPT.
Reiterate the unequivocal undertaking.
Acknowledge the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Enhance transparency and factual accuracy.
Contribute to the further progress of nuclear-weapon-free zones.
Encourage universalizing the additional protocol.
Establish consequences for NPT violators.
Address states that are not party to the NPT.

Each of these actions are valuable in that failure, for example, to “reaffirm the vitality of the NPT,’ would send a very ominous signal about the health of the Treaty. That said, the vast majority of these desired outcomes are met by simply endorsing language of ideas that could help the nonproliferation regime.  There is something to be said for the importance of that but does speak to the limited ability of a setting like a Review Conference to really move the ball forward on some major issues.  Endorsements of language also suffer from the footnotes, explicit or implicit, on how countries interpret their endorsement of that language.  For example, a Middle East NWFZ remains a key issue to tackle from the 1995 indefinite extension that many countries would support in theory but actually making progress on obstacles like the Israel question (who is not an NPT member) is a much more daunting task.

The Movers and Shakers

In addition to highlighting the obstacles that hamstring making progress at the Review Conference ballot box, it is also important to underscore the value in efforts that look beyond trying to curry favor at the Review Conference by tooting our disarmament horn to the best degree we can. Many of the countries the U.S. seeks nonproliferation cooperation from say, and may even feel, that the U.S. reneging on the CTBT and other key in the 13 steps justify dragging their feet on nonproliferation issues but it may be much more complicated that it seems at first glance. Andy Grotto’s top notch analysis quoting Tom Graham’s effort to extend the NPT in 1995 is extremely informative on this front:

The NWS’ willingness to reaffirm disarmament could have been a factor in some countries’ decision to support an indefinite extension, but it was not the only factor and in many cases may not even have been an important one. According to lead U.S. negotiator Ambassador Thomas Graham, Washington’s strategy was to play on NAM countries’ security concerns about proliferation should the review conference fail to yield an indefinite extension: Much of the success of the NPT extension is owed to the United States’ strategy of sidestepping the NAM “leadership” and appealing to individual non-aligned states in capitals on the basis of their own security interests.64 Heads of delegation from both factions told the Nonproliferation Review in the aftermath of the conference that the pressures worked. Canada’s delegate was particularly blunt: In developing our strategy to gain the permanence of the Treaty, we identified both the salient peaks in the NAM which were initially opposed to indefinite extension, and the fertile valleys—countries that might be willing to support permanence. We then attempted to undermine and isolate the critics.65 For example, in the run-up to the conference, “Washington told South Africa that its tentative support for a series of 25-year extensions called into question its ‘nonproliferation credentials’ and its right to gain membership in an exclusive nuclear exporter’s trade group.”66 It “bluntly reminded top Mexican officials attending the conference of how its economy was rescued by a multibillion-dollar economic assistance plan that the United States spearheaded and is the major contributor to,”67 and “encouraged divisions brewing between powerful developing countries and smaller ones, who shared the U.S. interest in denying nuclear weapons to their bigger neighbors.”68 The result of this lobbying—decried by the Indonesian delegate, who supported the 25-year extensions, as “arm twisting”69—was that by the penultimate week of the conference, as we saw earlier, eleven NAM countries supported a 25-year extension accompanied by “stringent new disarmament measures” against around 150 countries supporting the no-strings-attached Canadian resolution for an indefinite extension. [emphasis mine]

The example of the 1995 Review Conference is a little bit different because in that case it actually was votes that were the lynchpin to being able to indefinitely extend the treaty whereas many of the issues on which the U.S. seeks cooperation are not Review Conference vote dependent (although some are). Even when votes were they key it still fascinating to look at the approach that the U.S. took to get them.  First, they sidestepped the disarmament bureaucrats and went straight to the sources of power in capitals. It was more important to head to capitals and get agreements than to try to tackle the politics of the NAM at the meeting. Even if there are some key countries that can be convinced to side with the U.S. on issues, the Review Conference is a less than ideal venue at which to try to forge these agreements thanks in no small part to the alliance politics that are particularly cumbersome at the meeting.  Second, the focus was not on the U.S. disarmament record but on playing to the fundamental security, political, and economic interests of countries we need to convince. That is no different today. Strutting a No First Use policy down the Review Conference runway may turn a few heads but at the end of day many countries will decide whether to cooperate on nonproliferation efforts if the security, economic, and political benefits outweigh the costs. In the security realm, this requires an emphasis on explaining to top level leadership in capitals why the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials should factor highly in the threat perceptions of countries. Economically, sanctions, export controls, and safeguards can be pricey endeavors for countries often focused on economic development. The U.S. approach in 1995 illuminates the way in which the U.S. was able to subtly throw its weight around merely pointing out that we do a lot, economically and otherwise, to help countries and that should not be forgotten. 

The Review Conference matters but the U.S. should be cautious about how much they expect the Conference can achieve and how much their concessions on nonproliferation issues will benefit their efforts.