
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!

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