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Speaking of Foreign Secretaries…

I’ve known for a while that Britain’s current incumbent, David Miliband, personally hosted a small round table on disarmament last month. Most of what I have heard has been on an off-the-record basis so I haven’t said anything here. Now, however, one of the participants has written publicly about it so it’s safe to blog.

Apparently (when he’s not stirring up trouble in the Labour Party), Britain’s relatively new Foreign Secretary likes to re-examine the fundamentals of British foreign policy. He recently focused his attention on nukes by hosting a workshop at his country residence on the disarmament initiative launched by his predecessor last year with a few think tank-types, academics and journalists as well as officials (no, not me).

I have been told not to expect any policy changes to result from the meeting (i.e. UK policy will continue to support taking disarmament seriously) but I am impressed that the Foreign Secretary appears to have a strong enough personal interest in the issue to spend an entire day on it. Coupled with his opposite number’s similar beliefs, this bodes well for the future. Expect more major speeches on this in the autumn…

I just got back from the IISS where William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, gave a speech on Preventing a New Age of Nuclear Insecurity. It is, apparently, exactly two years to the day since he last spoke on this subject to the IISS. Since then, however, the electoral prospects of the Conservative Party have brightened considerably so it had more of a buzz than last time.

I confess that I didn’t take notes and the speech isn’t online yet. When it is, I’ll assume it’ll be on the IISS website and the Tory party website.

I didn’t have the opportunity to ask a question at the event so after summarising the speech, I’ll pose two questions here instead.

First off, I thought it was an excellent speech: detailed and well-researched. I really mean that.

Many of us have been wondering for a while whether a future Conservative government would continue the high-profile initiatives on disarmament launched by the current Labour government and outlined in various recent speeches (including those I blogged about here and here).

And, it does appear it would. Mr Hague spoke, on a number of occasions, of the need to move towards disarmament if the P5 are to have the “moral authority” to curtail proliferation. Indeed, Mark Fitzpatrick observed in questions how strong the bipartisan consensus on these issues in Britain is.

In regard to non-proliferation, Hague essentially argued that what the current government was doing was right—but that it needed to go further. He launched his own eight point plan (very much in vogue these days). Many of those points are what you’d expect: universalize the Additional Protocol, fund the IAEA properly, freeze the assets of entities involved in proliferation and ‘internationalize’ the fuel cycle (by which he appeared to mean create a system of fuel banks).

All good sensible stuff. But, it will require the cooperation of non-nuclear weapon states to effect and I’m not sure he quite appreciate the challenges here. For instance, he painted the idea of fuel banks as being a way to ensure states article IV rights, which (whether they are or not) is certainly not how they are perceived at present.

So, the first of my two questions for Mr Hague, is this: How can an international consensus among nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states to strengthen non-proliferation be created? Is good diplomacy sufficient? Will serious progress toward disarmament be enough? Or, is something additional required?

The most controversial suggestion raised by Mr Hague was that India, Pakistan and Israel should be ‘brought into the non-proliferation regime’. When asked about the US-India deal, he said was an example of the kind of thing he meant. But, he didn’t provide any other examples.

So, my second question is this: What does he mean, in practical terms, by bringing India, Pakistan and Israel ‘into the non-proliferation regime’? Can he provide some examples of a policy of this sort, beyond the US-India deal?

Of course, on the off-chance that Mr Hague doesn’t read this blog then any of you who want to speculate about possible answers are welcome!

A Tuesday morning distraction for you. I meant to post this yesterday—a Monday morning distraction would be more usual after all—but then got distracted myself…

The Australian government recently announced that it would convene the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament to help build consensus ahead of the 2010 NPT Review onference.

Under its last Labor government, Australia, of course, launched another high-profile disarmament initiative in the form of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (its webpage appears to be in the process of being updated).

Of course, it’s fun to speculate who might be tapped. The chairman of the Commission has already been announced as Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister. It’s probably safe to assume that the Commission will consist of 10—20 commissioners drawn from a range of nationalities.

So, who do you think the other commissioners should be?

Or, alternatively, who do you think they will be?

Answers in the comment box. For reference, the Canberra Commission consisted of the following:

• Celso Amorim (Brazil)
• Lee Butler (USA)
• Richard Butler (Australia)
• Michael Carver (UK)
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau (France)
• Jayantha Dhanapala (Sri Lanka)
• Rolf Ekeus (Sweden)
• Nabil Elaraby (Egypt)
• Ryukichi Imai (Japan)
• Ronald McCoy (Malaysia)
• Robert McNamara (US)
• Robert O’Neill (UK)
• Qian Jiadong (China)
• Michel Rocard (France)
• Joseph Rotblat (UK)
• Roald Sagdeev (Russia)
• Maj Britt Theorin (Sweden)

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month or so on planes to disarmament conferences and planes to non-proliferation conferences, and on one of those journeys (to Geneva, in fact!) I (re)read something that made a very deep impression on me. It was from the debate in International Affairs last year about the future of the NPT. In his July rejoinder to the series of articles in the May 2007 issue, William Walker (who can hardly be described as a Bomb-lover) says this:

…the more profound difficulty is that, precisely because the NPT is a disarmament treaty, the Treaty and its Conferences can neither ascribe value to nuclear deterrence nor countenance discussion of it, irrespective of the importance that leading powers and their allies attach to it, and irrespective of the role that it might play in paving the way for deep arms reductions or disarmament. To pay open homage to nuclear deterrence is to jeopardize the non-proliferation norm and regime. Nuclear deterrence is always the ghost at the table whose presence is understood but whose contribution to regional and global security cannot openly be acknowledged or weighed. A reluctant acceptance of this presence by most states, if seldom by Israel’s neighbours, has been part of the NPT’s essential pragmatism.

This argument strikes me as being very true and deeply problematic. Here’s a recent practical illustration of this from my own experience…

One important step toward disarmament is the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe and Turkey. Might Turkey, however, not interpret this move as a signal that NATO is no longer committed to its defence and, as a result, develop its own Bomb?

Many of you have heard this question before. My aim here is not answer it (I don’t claim to be able to). What I want to say is that this argument, and ones like it, need to be taken seriously. After all, if the removal of nuclear weapons from Turkey did result in it acquiring some of its own, it would be a catastrophe for disarmament. I pick this example because on a number of recent occasions I have heard this argument simply dismissed by disarmament advocates (of which I consider myself one). It worries me as I don’t see how we can prevent proliferation and advance disarmament if we can’t even discuss this issue. Yet, as Walker points out, the discussion of deterrence is seemingly impossible within the NPT context.

Enough naval gazing… For an interesting recent take on US-Turkish relations see this recent report for the Senate on possible proliferation in the Middle East.