Time Stamp

 The Gareth Evans/Yoriko Kawaguchi co-chaired ICNND commission released their final 231 page final report titled “Eliminated Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers” to give folks some light reading over the holidays. The report is filled with recommendations that will be applauded by some and criticized by others. One of the areas where the study breaks the most ground is the creation of two different periods, somewhat similar to the 4 Phase Global Zero action plan, on the road to zero: "minimization" from now until 2025 and then elimination which does not have a specific timetable attached. The minimization phase is broken down into a short term action plan through 2012 and a medium term action plan through 2025. Highlights of the short term plan include ratification of START follow-on, declaration of a “sole purpose” doctrine by nuclear armed states, entry into force of CTBT, conclusion of FMCT negotiations, and “satisfactory negotiated resolution of the North Korea and Iran nuclear program problems.” Extreme skepticism achieving any of those spare START before 2012 aside, efforts in the 2025 medium term agenda include 2,000 nuclear warheads in the world, full NFU declared by all nuclear states, resolution of outstanding issues including missile defense and conventional arms imbalances, and FMCT entry into force.

The reports bifurcated approach begs the fundamental question: to date or not to date? The commission justified putting dates on the two components of the minimization phase by noting:

The reason this phase can and should be pursued with a specific end target date in mind is that its feasibility does not depend on eliminating the whole range of political, security and technical barriers that make the feasibility of complete abolition of nuclear weapons so difficult to see today. We have chosen 2025 – fifteen years on from the 2010 NPT Review Conference – as the end date to aim for in this respect. This is certainly still ambitious given the scale of what has to be achieved, but not impossibly so by the standards, at least, of past nuclear and other arms control agreements, which have taken an average of less than three and a half years to negotiate and sign (albeit rather longer to implement), and not so distant as to be disheartening for those trying to energize the necessary political will.

With regards to the elimination phase, it chose not to place a date and explained:

If the Commission thought that setting a specific date for abolition would in fact create the political will to overcome the myriad political, security, and technical obstacles to getting to zero, we would do so. But quite apart from the difficulty of identifying a specific target date when there are so many variables in play that are almost impossible to quantify, we are concerned that embracing such a date may in fact make it more difficult to minimize, and then ultimately eliminate, nuclear dangers, giving critics easy opportunities to excite fears that would impede progress to minimize nuclear dangers through the steps described in this report. These steps should be debated on their own merits, not in the false terms of a leap into a dangerous unknowable world without nuclear deterrence.

Dates like 2012 and 2025 are inevitably arbitrary to a large degree, though they may represent dates such as the end of the American presidential term or a simple 15 years after the Review Conference, yet they can represent an important marker on the wall to urge governments to get the ball rolling on these issues. At the same time, a focus on short and medium term dates can also have the unintended consequences of providing critics ammunition, as was noted by the Commission's above, and reducing credibility of the effort should timeframes not be met.  Accomplishing some of the most visible and divise nuclear issues, especially when they involve the entire international community, are painstakingly difficult which makes it a relatively easy to take the over on many of these specific goals.  That said, specific dates can work to force governments to start thinking seriously about these specific proposals and decrease the ability to punt them to the out of sight, out of mind category. 

CSIS recently concluded a US-UK-French Track 2 Dialogue that produced a consensus statement, signed by nearly all of the participants, outlining an agenda for the three countries to pursue with regards to the non-proliferation regime over the next three years. A good deal of time was spent having to identify what the priorities are over the next three years as opposed to an open-ended timeframe.  For example, conclusion of FMCT negotiations was set for 2015 but the paper called on states to “immediately both halt the production of fissile material for weapons purposes and establish a formal moratorium codifying that halt.” Track 2/Track 1.5 efforts and non-governmental publications have the benefit of being able to make recommendations that may not be feasible and would likely not be adopted as official poilcy of governments which can begin to put pressure on official governments to start thinking in the context of these timeframes.  Nonetheless, it is also important for those supporting timeframe recommendations to retain a sense of pragmatism so as to prevent providing future ammunition to those oppose who will be quick to point to major reports that made date-related recommendations that do not come to fruition. 

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