Banning the Bomb: Part 1

Andrea Berger 0:10

You're listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation. I'm Andrea Berger, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and I'm joined today by my colleague, Gaukhar Mukherjee Janava, who directs our international organization and non-proliferation program. Gaukhar, welcome to the program. Thank you. Hi. Hi. So, Gaukhar and I have just spent a week in New York at the UN, where a whole bunch of countries are negotiating a legally binding treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

And I told a whole bunch of people that when we came back, and I got a lot of confused faces from friends who don't follow disarmament laws. And who thought that sounded like a pretty strange proposition. On this podcast, we talk a lot about how the North Koreans are threatening to basically nuke everyone and how Donald Trump is tweeting that we need to strengthen and expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal and how P5 countries are modernizing their nuclear forces.

So in the context of all that, it can seem kind of odd that there's 120 some countries that have been pushing to ban nuclear weapons, even if the nuclear states and their allies don't join in. And actually, that's kind of the whole point of the initiative, as we'll get to. But it does mystify a lot of people that I've spoken with.

How can you intentionally launch negotiations on a treaty that you know the key players aren't going to sign? How can you control those weapons without the participation of nuclear-armed states? So it's an issue that's really worth talking about and a fascinating one from a disarmament diplomacy perspective. But before we talk about the negotiations that we've just been sitting in on, maybe we can go back and kind of do a quick review of how all of this started.

So, Gaukhar, tell us a little bit about the background to this and the thinking underlying the push to ban nuclear weapons.

Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova 2:22

Well, I think the movement that got us to where we are began roughly around 2010. Before even the 2010 NPT Review Conference, there was a strong statement from the International Red Cross about the need for sort of understanding, examination of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. And that led also to the questions of their legality. So at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, The final document included a language where states expressed their grave concern about the humanitarian consequences of any nuclear weapon use.

And at the time, nuclear weapon states let that language in because they were focused on a number of other things. But that became the basis for a number of other activities subsequently. And the humanitarian movement continued. As we call it now, developed along two parallel tracks. One was a series of conferences, which were focused more on the fact-based discussion about the impact of nuclear weapon use, the risk of use, response needs, response capacity, etc.

And the other track was more political, and it started with a joint statement by 16 countries on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at the 2012 meeting of the NPT Preparatory Committee. And then that grew, that snowballed into more and more countries signing on to the joint statements, culminating in the one that was supported by 159 countries at the 2015 NPT Review Conference.

And the message in those statements was this. And it says, feeding off of the discussion in the conferences about humanitarian impact and underscoring that the impact would be transnational, the impact go beyond the countries actually involved in the nuclear weapon use, that there is no response capacity in the world, no adequate response capacity. And that the use of nuclear weapons is not compatible with international humanitarian law, and eventually that the nuclear weapons should be prohibited.

The strong message in there was that they should not be used again under any circumstances.

Andrea 4:28

Yeah, that's right. So the political background to a lot of this was really frustration, countries say, with the slow pace of disarmament that they perceive, especially in the last decade and a half or so. And the feeling that in NPT meetings and whatnot that... That nuclear weapon states are being more obstructive than they are forward looking and that non-nuclear weapon states are being disenfranchised from that disarmament discussion.

So there's this kind of like bubbling undertone of frustration behind the whole movement in addition to the humanitarian concerns that you outline there.

Gaukhar 5:08

Yes, the frustration certainly fed into the generation of that momentum. And nuclear weapon states helped, in a sense, by boycotting the first humanitarian impact conference in Oslo and issuing a rather strong statement that they believed this was a distraction, unhelpful activity, potentially undermining the NPT. And they also sort of ignored those joint statements. And that, I think, added energy To the movement and energy to the added food to the perception that they're being obstructive more than anything on nuclear disarmament.

Andrea 5:45

So when we got kind of to the end of 2015 review conference, we didn't have a final document at that review conference, which left a number of people feeling quite upset about the way things had turned out. Now that was for a different reason. That was for lack of progress on the creation of a WMD free zone in The Middle East, which is a whole separate issue that we won't get into.

But that kind of then dovetailed into discussions in an open-ended working group that had been mandated by the General Assembly to start looking at some of the issues around the perceived legal gaps which existed because nuclear weapons hadn't been banned like other weapons of mass destruction had been. There was no legal prohibition against these weapons. Talk us through what happened.

This was last summer. So talk us kind of what happened there.

Gaukhar 6:37

Well, I'll have to take you actually three years back first, because the first open-ended working group on nuclear disarmament negotiations worked in 2013. So it was established pursuant to a resolution adopted in 2012. And that was an initiative that To try to have a substantive discussion about how to take forward nuclear disarmament, and more specifically nuclear disarmament negotiations.

It wasn't tied to the agenda of the Conference on Disarmament. It was an open membership, so any UN state could participate. And that's where states had a very interesting dialogue, a series of interesting debates about nuclear disarmament and approaches to implementing Article 6 of the NPT, And that's where the New Agenda Coalition started formulating the approach that became known in shorthand as effective legal measures.

And that's language from the Article 6 of the NPT.

Andrea 7:34

You might have to explain to our listeners what the New Agenda Coalition is.

Gaukhar 7:39

New Agenda Coalition is a cross-regional grouping of countries that formed in 1998. And they were particularly active and important in 2000 at the NPT Review Conference because they were directly negotiating with the nuclear-arbon states on what became known as the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These countries at the time were seven. They're now six. They are New Zealand, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa...

Okay, Egypt. I was missing Egypt.

Andrea 8:11

Good question. No, that's all right. Those are the same countries we'll get to actually in a little bit because they're some of the key driving forces within the negotiations over the actual ban that we were discussing last week.

Gaukhar 8:28

Yeah, so after the success of 2000, there was a period where NAC wasn't as active. There were all kinds of jokes around about no agenda coalition, etc. But then they lost one member. Sweden used to be a member of NAC. And then they left NAC under the Swedish previous government. And then NAC became more active now. At the time of the Open Ended Working Group in 2013.

And they focused their work in particular on this question of what do effective legal measures under Article 6 of the NPT mean? What formulas, what approaches are out there that States can pursue to implement the commitment under Article 6 to pursue, you know, good faith negotiations towards legal measures on nuclear disarmament. Prohibition Treaty was part of that.

That's right. Advocacy groups, ICANN chiefly, were promoting already the approach that nuclear weapons should be banned on humanitarian grounds with or without the participation of nuclear weapon states, that you don't have to negotiate a comprehensive convention that would include disarmament provisions and verification provisions, but you can start with just prohibiting nuclear weapons, and then elimination will follow.

Andrea 9:53

Just putting down the legal marker there. And that's where we got to more definitively last summer when the 2016 iteration of the open-ended working group Took place and came up with kind of a recommendation that advocated taking that particular approach forward.

Gaukhar 10:13

Yeah, the 2016 Open End Working Group was much more focused on specifically the next instrument. And lots and lots of countries there spoke in support of the Prohibition Treaty. Several working papers were submitted in support of the Prohibition Treaty versus the so-called progressive countries Measures approach that was advocated primarily by the U.S. allies. And so they were outnumbered.

And nuclear weapon states, again, did not participate in the Open End Working Group in 2016. So the report that was adopted in the end had clear recommendations that there should be negotiations on the Nuclear Weapon Prohibition Treaty starting in 2017. And so that became the centerpiece of the resolution L41 at the first committee in October that created the mandate for those negotiations that started last week.

Andrea 11:05

So the mandate for negotiations as laid out in the General Assembly was that there's going to be negotiations basically in two parts. There would be a week of scoping and laying out general positions on a number of issues that would take place in March, which is what we've just finished. And there would be a longer negotiating session in November.

June and July, which will come after the next NPT preparatory committee meeting. So there's an NPT meeting kind of sandwiched in between these two events. But that segues nicely for us to talk about what happened actually last week. We had these countries come here with a completely different vision of what the road to a world free of nuclear weapons looked like, rather than having A whole bunch of steps that improve the security situation, that undermine the need for countries to have nuclear weapons.

And that road ends with a prohibition on nuclear weapons. That's kind of the vision outlined by Nuclear Weapon State. These countries are advocating starting with the legal prohibition and then working further along the road in kind of the reverse fashion, really. So that's what discussions in last week were all about. Who was there?

Gaukhar 12:26

Well, very obviously, the nuclear possessor states were not there. All of the nuclear weapon states were recognized in the NPT, plus none of the states that are known to have nuclear weapons were outside the NPT. China sort of held the suspense until the last minute, but they issued a statement before the negotiations started, they're not coming. All of the NATO allies, except for the Netherlands, also skipped the negotiations.

Other US allies, Japan, Australia, Japan showed up and explained why it cannot participate in the negotiations and then left for the rest of the week. Australia, South Korea did not show up. Some of the Russian allies, like Belarus. It's not entirely clear in Central Asia. Kazakhstan was there, clearly. But the other Central Asians, I didn't see them.

And I would imagine they skipped as well.

Andrea 13:26

There's a large number of countries missing from Africa as well, which is something that we noted, but that may be less for political reasons and probably more about kind of limited capacity for diplomacy in those missions.

Gaukhar 13:41

I would say it's entirely the capacity issue because the one country in Africa that I think abstained on the resolution was Morocco. And they were present at the negotiations. Moreover, they were elected one of the vice presidents from the African group.

Andrea 13:58

So we had, I think on the first day, we estimated that 115 countries had registered to attend and participate. Whether or not all those were actually in the room on day one is a bigger question, but we saw numbers over the course of the week start to decline as negotiations got underway.

Gaukhar 14:19

Well, none of what happened last week constituted negotiations as such, as you said. This was the time to lay out countries' positions. And they started off with general statements, which were, you know, your usual boring kind. But then when they got into more specifics and the way the sessions were divided, there was a session or two on politics.

Preamble and principles and objectives. There was a discussion on core prohibitions, and in the end, a discussion on institutional arrangements. So in those more specific sections, countries did provide their suggestions on what should be in the treaty and what shouldn't be. So that was really, really more substantive and very interesting.

Andrea 15:02

That's right. Before we get into some of that stuff, I think it's worth talking about the absolutely bizarre press conference that started off the whole week, which was held by the US with a small posse of Allies in the background to explain why they were not going to participate in this initiative. And it was very oddly stage-managed, in my view.

I don't know what you thought.

Gaukhar 15:30

Yeah, the press conference, also known as free publicity for the ban negotiations, was indeed rather strange. And as far as explaining why they weren't there, it didn't seem very effective either, because... The major objection or criticism leveled against the negotiations is that they're going to be irrelevant because the nuclear weapon states are not there. And then if you listen to them further, nuclear states are not there because the negotiations are irrelevant.

Andrea 16:00

Yeah, it was a very curious way to go about it.

Gaukhar 16:03

Yeah, a bit of a circular logic. And then I think Ambassador Haley also questioned if the treaty would be effective considering that North Korea would never join that, sort of suggesting that that's why the U.S. shouldn't be there either, which I didn't think was a very effective way to go about it either.

Andrea 16:21

It's also amazing because North Korea put out a statement a few days in saying that they wouldn't attend because the U.S. wasn't attending, which I thought was just made a great farce of some of the logic in that press conference to begin with.

Gaukhar 16:35

Yeah, absolutely. The optics of this, so to say, were a little bizarre even before the negotiations began. There was a statement that we were going to – I think the language you used was that they're going to picket outside the negotiations, outside the hall. But that just turned into a press conference, which was all right. But you mentioned that there were supporters standing behind.

And there as well, it's curious who wasn't standing behind in its countries like, well, Japan wasn't there. Germany wasn't there. A number of old NATO allies were not standing behind the US, UK and France at that press conference.

Andrea 17:21

That's right. It was an odd way to start the week. We'll get to the fact that the chair did her own press conference later in the week, which had a very different tone to it. But in terms of laying out the nuclear weapons state position, I thought they really did themselves a disservice. The arguments that the nuclear weapons states traditionally put out against this are that it's designed to put pressure, but is not going to actually...

Tangibly advance disarmament in any way because it doesn't have the key possessor state on board. It doesn't address key security concerns that motivate countries to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons. It's going to distract from the nonproliferation treaty. And those arguments weren't sewn together in a very coherent fashion in that press conference. That kind of kicked off day one and drew some attention to what was happening inside the room.

We also had some small fireworks in the form of discussions over procedural issues, which I think highlighted what some of the dynamics with certain countries who maybe are left keen on the idea of a nuclear weapons ban, but want to Nevertheless be a part of it might be. So we're talking about the Iranians and the Syrians, for example.

Fill us in on what happened with that discussion on procedure.

Gaukhar 18:44

Well, the discussion on procedure was mostly happening behind the scenes and rules of procedure were not adopted until the afternoon session of the first day. And up until the last day, I think there were some Backdoor discussions about how to resolve the issue of the participation of Palestine and the Holy See. And also there was some pushback on the no consensus requirement.

On the Palestine and Holy See, it's just the way the resolution was drafted. It said that the negotiation is open to UN member states. And Palestine and the Holy See wanted to participate fully with the right to vote. So they had to amend the rule of procedure to allow for that, but also make it very clear that it's not a precedent.

So it's not like every other negotiation the UN can now have Palestine and the Holy See participating in voting. On the consensus rule, so because this was established by UN General Assembly resolution, The sort of default rule of procedure and the one that was preferred by the sponsors of the resolution was that you don't have to have consensus to make a decision to adopt the treaty, for example.

Consensus is encouraged always in the UN setting, but it's not a requirement. And some countries, just like Iran, still wanted to go for the consensus-based decision-making.

Andrea 20:09

And pushed for it quite hard and fought with the chair a decent amount, even into that first day when they deferred decision-making over the rules of procedure. And I think that's really interesting because to me it highlights the probable fact that the Iranians really might not want a ban on nuclear weapons, especially one that invites any additional obligations on their part.

And for that reason, advocating for a consensus-oriented approach, and then, as we'll get to in a second, also pushing for this prohibition to include everything you can possibly imagine. Means that it's unlikely that a prohibition would happen at all, which, in my view, probably suits the Iranians quite well.

Gaukhar 20:59

The Iranians have been raising eyebrows about this since 2015, actually, because they tried to table a competing resolution for the establishment of the open-ended working group, Where it would have consensus as decision-making rule. And then when they failed to get unequivocal support from the nuclear weapon states, but also knowing that a lot of the non-aligned movement didn't support them, they pulled the resolution.

So this time they tried to push for consensus in the negotiations. It's funny because sometimes you catch statements from nuclear weapon states and others suggesting that this prohibition treaty would be very convenient for Iran, they're going to use it. There's a perception that Iranians are leading this effort, when in fact, when you look at their behavior vis-a-vis the Open End Working Group, vis-a-vis this negotiation, it looks like they're doing whatever they can to delay it.

To keep the status quo as well. And protract, yes. I think they enjoy the status quo enough, and negotiating yet another instrument that declares weapons unacceptable is not necessarily in their immediate interest. At the very least, they want nuclear weapon states involved. And so that's why they... They're pushing for a more comprehensive instrument, and they want elimination included, and they want strict verification.

They want to establish an organization for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and all these things you cannot possibly do without the participation of nuclear weapons states. So if they press hard for that and protract the negotiations, they can always say that this was done out of true belief. And it's really not nuclear states' fault that this didn't happen because they were not there.

But there's not a lot of buy-in to that approach right now. And that's been the significant development with respect to the positions of many non-aligned countries who have traditionally for many years pushed for a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention. But in the past two years, two, three years, they've come around to the idea of pursuing a more limited prohibition treaty first.

Andrea 23:10

That's actually a really good jumping off point to talk about substance, because one of the things that struck me most, actually, in the first few days of the session was how little the General Assembly resolution mandating discussions on a nuclear weapons ban had actually settled the question of whether this should just be a treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons or whether it should also prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.

And there were a lot of countries that came and spent the first few days talking about how they really wanted to see some sort of elimination framework for that would be relevant if nuclear weapon states wanted to join. And that was kind of not the idea of the treaty to begin with. There was the idea that you would carve out just the prohibition bit because that's what was feasible and achievable as kind of a first step, not to use the tainted step-by-step language, but as an achievable first step in the near term.

And so many countries came back and said, we really don't Quite want something that looks like a comprehensive convention. They softened over the course of the week, but that was where much of the starting point seemed to be that debate was still being had just now in this chamber.

Gaukhar 24:28

Well, the resolution language is clear enough, I think. It says negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination. So they had to put it in the context of eventual elimination, but the mandate is a prohibition treaty. That said... Elimination is an ultimate aspiration and a number of countries, I think, wanted to emphasize that that remains the big ultimate goal.

And they were perfectly prepared to then step back and negotiate the prohibition instrument. Again, with some exceptions probably, but you could see how from the opening statement that was like, okay, we want elimination, et cetera, you get to the specifics in the subsections and they talk about, yeah, okay, well, we can talk about desire and then joy, and we can talk about joy and then desire.

And clearly they were not shooting for an all-settling comprehensive convention anymore.

Andrea 25:27

That's right. I think we got to a softening of position by most at the end, with the exception of the guys we were talking about, like the Iranians and the Cubans and the Syrians. Even Venezuela started to move towards the middle a little bit at the end. But there was still a little bit of a divide there on what people thought this was all about.

Gaukhar 25:49

You know, Syrians are said to have participated in the procedural debates, mostly behind the scenes, but they were fairly absent during the week. There were no strong pronouncements from Syria on the conference floor. So Iran was left with Cuba and Venezuela, and Venezuela definitely was open for discussion as the week unfolded.

Andrea 26:13

I'd be interested in your thoughts on what were the areas of agreement that actually came out in terms of substance by the end of the week. For me, it seemed like countries Broadly agreed on the fact that we should ban use of nuclear weapons, possession, stockpiling, deployment, development, and there was some idea about threat of use and testing, but actually even those started to become disputed for different reasons.

Did you see any other prohibitions that looked like they could garner consensus?

Gaukhar 26:49

Well, first, I think before we get to the co-prohibitions, there was strong and overwhelming consensus about including in the preamble endorsement of the NPT and making sure that the treaty does not undermine the NPT, that the new treaty actually builds on the NPT and is meant to support it. I think it's significant and it's worth noting, considering that one of the main criticisms from outside has been that this is all done to create an instrument as an alternative to the NPT, something to replace it, to weaken it, etc.

So the... Statement after statement in the section on preamble and principles and objectives started off with underlining how this should be seen in the context of the entirety of the regime and that this is supporting the NPT. Then a number of countries also said that they should support other elements of the regime, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, for example.

Some highlighted the role of the IEA in implementing safeguards. And so that was, I think, remarkable, and there's definitely a strong consensus around that. On the core prohibitions, I think you named all the ones that do enjoy broad support. The testing issue is interesting precisely because countries underline that they should not contradict the CTPT. And that including a testing prohibition in the new treaty would not be helpful to the CTBT.

So opinions still differ on that. And on the threat of use, that was an interesting argument that it should already be covered by the UN Charter. And I think a number of state parties to the nuclear weapon free zones don't quite agree with that.

Andrea 28:37

Yeah, that's right. Actually, it was an argument that I hadn't heard being made quite as often before. So it was interesting that that Really became a sort of fault line on whether or not we should include threat of use in a nuclear weapons prohibition. There were a whole bunch of other issues that I thought were quite divisive as well in terms of possible core prohibitions.

Transit was one of them, or transport. And that's an issue, basically, when we say transit or transport, we're referring to whether or not countries can allow... Aircraft or vessels to transit their territory if those vessels or aircraft might have nuclear weapons on board. And it's an issue that's divided nuclear weapons free zones before. It's an issue that divides or divided a lot in the room actually last week because it's one that comes partly to NATO burden sharing arrangements and nuclear alliances.

And there's political question for countries negotiating a nuclear weapons ban about how directly they want to put those nuclear alliances into the crosshairs, so to speak. Do they really want to aim to delegitimize those security arrangements specifically?

Gaukhar 30:05

And for some of them, it's also an issue of implementation. It's interesting that Mexico in particular has said several times that they want to emphasize implementable activities, implementable prohibitions under the treaty. They don't see necessarily transit as something that's so straightforward to implement. And the Southeast Asian nuclear weapon-free zone parties seem to be disagreeing about this as well amongst themselves.

We have Indonesia including transit and prohibitions, for example, and Malaysia questioning that. Singapore, interestingly, didn't really say anything at all on the subject. And I did not get a perception that countries that suggest transit necessarily target it at the U.S., And allies, but that's certainly how it comes out effectively if you do think of who it will affect the most of the nuclear open possessors.

Andrea 31:01

Indeed, but the point made by Mexico is an interesting one too about the extent to which certain prohibitions are implementable because That's something worth bearing in mind with a number of other provisions that were suggested, too. We had financing was one of the big ones. And as someone who works a lot on counterproliferation financing, I was really quite jittery when that suggestion started to come up regularly that countries should prohibit the financing of other prohibited activities.

Because actually that involves, from a practical sense, doing a lot of homework on indirect relationships between your financial sector and companies who might be in supply chains for nuclear weapons, etc. This has been a big focus of advocacy organizations who have been trying to get financial institutions unilaterally to come to the conclusion that they should not be financing activity related to WMD programs, even legal WMD programs.

So it's not totally surprising.

Gaukhar 32:05

The idea is going to be that that could be legal, the lunacy programs.

Andrea 32:08

Of course. And that's the idea around a ban, but there's been an earlier conversation already between advocacy organizations and financial institutions at a time when a prohibition doesn't yet exist about how they should be stopping that activity.

Gaukhar 32:26

Norway, I think, did some work on divesting the ban Its pension fund, I believe, was divesting from anything that's nuclear weapon related. Some countries had questions about exactly how to implement this and also to verify. And verification was one of those big issues where there was no agreement. And in fact, it seemed that states didn't think through very much the different aspects of verification that the treaty can or cannot cover.

Andrea 32:56

You made a really good point about the differences in verifying Core prohibitions and verifying any arrangement that would be made for nuclear weapons state if they wanted to join. The two verification discussions are quite different. And I think it was good that you drew that out because a lot of countries were using the language quite loosely.

Gaukhar 33:17

Yes. So In the run-up to the negotiations, so much emphasis was put on the fact that this is not going to be an elimination treaty, and therefore we don't need to deal with the extremely complex issue of disarmament verification, that people kind of forgot about verifying the core prohibitions. So it became very confusing when countries started talking about having a verifiable ban, and others were saying, well, no, we don't need verification.

And again, the criticism from outside being if you negotiate an elimination treaty without the possessors, what do you do with verification? So when on Thursday the president organized the interactive debate, she asked NGO representatives to speak on two panels and comment on the proceedings, comment on what's already been discussed, and also raise issues that they think are important but haven't been covered.

So because I was invited to speak in the afternoon panel, I used that time to discuss To highlight that you need to distinguish between verification of core prohibitions where you can probably rely on the existing safeguard system and specifically ask the IEA to do that versus disarmament verification that you cannot possibly negotiate at this point and you will have to To leave that for the future time.

And that's directly, of course, tied to the issue of how do you deal with the elimination of nuclear weapons and accession of nuclear weapon states down the road.

Andrea 34:51

It brought everyone back to Earth. I hope so. I think it did. Yeah, and a lot of the discussion had before, I thought, been quite unrealistic about what verification could be achieved for some of the more ambitious projects Suggestions about operative clauses. So like you say, focusing on the simpler core prohibitions means you can fall back to a certain extent on existing verification arrangement, whether that's the IAEA for some of the provisions, or if testing is included, can fall back on the international monitoring system, even perhaps though the CTPTO isn't actually in force.

Gaukhar 35:33

Yeah, so that gave states some food for thought. And I was very encouraged to find that when they came back the next day, they had actually processed some of the things that the NGOs said the previous day and commented on them and said, okay, well, this seems practical, this seems less so. Some things are acceptable, some things are not.

And you can start finding countries speaking in favor of, okay, we can allow nuclear possessors to join as long as they attach a protocol on the elimination of nuclear weapons and we'd like to see a deadline there, we'd like to see a time-bound framework, versus others saying, well, maybe it's more practical to have... And safeguards provisions under the new treaty that would include the additional protocol and have nuclear weapon possessors disarm in whichever way they arrange that and then join the treaty and come under the same safeguards obligations as everybody else.

So I think it's something they'll discuss going forward.

Andrea 36:36

Yeah, that's something worth talking about for a minute, maybe, the additional protocol point, because it was one of the proposals that I think you and I actually quite liked. There was a suggestion from Sweden and from Switzerland, I believe, that part of the verification arrangements for core prohibitions under the treaty should be that states party to the treaty have an additional protocol in force.

Now, Getting that through is going to be really tough for them. And indeed, I don't know how much further they'll take the suggestion, but it was one that I thought would actually make a positive impact from the treaty in a demonstrable fashion. But again, you know, we had, I think on the day that the suggestion was made, we had a count of about 70 countries in the room and, and almost exactly a third of them didn't have a additional protocol in force.

So just from a, A political perspective of getting that suggestion through, it would be difficult, not least because some of the countries that don't have them in force are key proponents of the ban in the first place, like Brazil.

Gaukhar 37:52

Yeah, I see Brazil and Egypt, Iran, I guess, as the major problems in terms of getting that requirement through. Even though it does make logically perfect sense to have the highest available verification standards be applied to the core prohibitions. But Brazil is in the core group. I cannot imagine them going for something in the treaty that Brazil unequivocally opposes.

It was interesting that neither Brazil nor Egypt reacted strongly to that suggestion on the conference floor. I guess they're keeping their... Whatever, fire dry for the June session, June, July. I expected a bit more pushback from them at that stage, which didn't really come.

Andrea 38:41

No, it didn't. And, you know, looking at the fact that the additional protocol suggestion probably still won't get taken up, even though there wasn't a strong reaction from those countries. It seems like over the course of the week, there was a slow gravitation towards this idea that a treaty needs to be simple, but perhaps express future aspiration to have some of the more detailed protocols or measures that...

Countries who were using the kind of comprehensive language may have wanted. Is that your sense as well?

Gaukhar 39:17

The interesting question was raised by Venezuela actually towards the end and they were asking if the envisioned treaty Would leave space for another instrument like the Comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Convention, or if it's going to sort of grow organically into a comprehensive instrument with the addition of protocols, etc., with the accession of nuclear weapons possessors. So they clearly do separate the currently negotiated instrument from the big comprehensive one.

Andrea 39:49

I wasn't there on the last day, but I'd love to hear your readout of what happened then and especially where things were left and what the next steps are for the chair, for the delegations, and maybe some of the arguments that came out about institutional arrangement as well. Yeah.

Gaukhar 40:11

They did speak about institutional arrangements on Friday morning, and there was another broad area of agreement. Most states would like to have regular meetings of state parties under the prohibition treaty. Some say annual, some say biannual, but generally they do want meetings of state parties regularly. To talk about universalizing the treaty, talk about its implementation, etc. And then several countries also suggested five-year periodic review conferences for the prohibition treaty.

There was a lot less agreement on whether the treaty needs a permanent secretariat, whether that secretariat should be established now, what it should do, Or whether the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs can serve as the secretariat, much as it does for the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And there Iran, of course, went the further, saying we have to have an organization for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, whereas many other states said, well, it would be nice to have an implementation support unit, but again, things like verification of core prohibitions can be done by the IEA, and some even quoted the IEA statute to suggest that even when it comes to disarmament verification, the IEA should be doing that as well.

So, Broadly, they want to meet periodically and discuss issues and implementation of the treaty. They're not too sure about establishing a special body for it, especially since somebody will have to pay for that new body. And the countries in the room were not necessarily prepared to do that. No major fights there, just expressing their aspirations, very practical approach by and large.

And where we left things off was... That between now and mid-May, I guess, the chair is going to work on all the submitted suggestions and the statements, et cetera, to come up with the initial draft of the treaty. And then she's going to circulate that to the delegations immediately. On May 15, I believe, which some delegations thought, I guess, was a bit unsatisfactory.

But I think the reasoning behind submitting it, circulating it in mid-May was so that it doesn't interfere in any way with the NPT PrepComm in Vienna, which takes place the first two weeks of May.

Andrea 42:40

And that comes back to the original criticism or one of the original criticisms that's leveled by nuclear weapon states and their allies against the ban movement, which is that it will detract from the NPT. So as you say, it seems like the chair and other delegations were mindful of organizing the timeline for delivery of drafts, et cetera, in a way that would stoke that criticism rather than undercut it.

Gaukhar 43:12

Yes, I think it was a conscious decision to minimize the, you know, somebody called it cross-contamination. It's slightly negative language. But generally, yes, you don't want a situation where all the delegations are doing at the NPT prep comm is commenting the draft prohibition treaty. So I think they'll be avoiding that. On the other hand, if NPT... In the NPT context, there were a lot of other things to discuss by way of initiatives and projects and disarmament steps being implemented.

This wouldn't have been such a concern.

Andrea 43:52

That's true. In your view, so we get a draft in mid-May. We then resume with sessions on a ban treaty towards the end of June. What do you think the forecast for that is like? Is there anything that we can tell at this stage what might come out?

Gaukhar 44:12

Well, they'll have one month between May 15 and June 15 when the second session starts. I expect them to have a lot of consultations. I can't tell at this stage what is going to be in that document. You and I identified the broad areas of convergence on the core prohibitions. There's probably going to be something about a periodic meeting of state parties and the institutional arrangements.

The big question mark for me will be the accession provisions for nuclear weapon possessors and how they go about defining or not defining them. What kind of requirements they're going to be, whether the main body of the text would include an obligation to eliminate nuclear arsenals, or if that's going to be left entirely to the sort of protocols, accession protocols.

And I imagine the core group would do some consultations to try to lobby sort of their vision of the treaty a bit more with other countries, which should help the chair with the negotiations come June.

Andrea 45:16

My feeling, and this is not necessarily what the chair is going to do, but my feeling is it would probably, from a negotiation standpoint, make more sense to start with a treaty that The chair thinks would garner consensus already and then negotiate add-ons rather than... Oh yeah, absolutely. It's always easier to add something than eliminate.

Gaukhar 45:39

Yeah, I think it would be good to start with a smaller, shorter, leaner text. And then if there is overwhelming support to add something, then something that will be added. But it's definitely much harder to eliminate something that was in the initial draft. I have a schedule, sort of indicative schedule for the first week of the next session.

They're going to start with general exchange of views on the initial draft, and then they're going to read through the draft. So go, you know... Line by line. Line by line. Well, provision by provision, probably preamble, then the core prohibitions. What else? Implementation, institutional arrangements, positive obligations, etc. And they're... At least one day in the first week is reserved for consultations, so it's not going to be a readout or anything.

Just parties will consult and the president will consult with the negotiating parties.

Andrea 46:40

So we'll see if our forecast is broadly right and they're working on a majority vote system, even though they're meant to aim for consensus. It's still at the end of the day. There's an option there to put a draft for majority vote in that conference. We could be looking at the beginning of July in a world where a nuclear weapons ban is near ready to be opened for ratification.

Gaukhar 47:06

Yeah, it's definitely a preference for many countries to finish the negotiations this year because they perceive the window might be closing if they do not agree on the text. You don't want to continue debating things and just widening the areas of disagreement. The U.S. might come up with a nuclear policy by then, which might complicate the matters further for some countries.

So they are definitely pushing to conclude this by July 7, because otherwise they'd have to go back to the General Assembly and ask for an extension of the mandate.

Andrea 47:40

And the longer negotiations drag on, as you say, the less likely it becomes that there's going to be a treaty on the table at some point. And I think, as you say, a number of States are conscious of that fact, and there's a bit of a rush to get things done. So the gravitation might be towards a simple treaty, partly for that reason, too.

Gaukhar 48:01

Yeah.

Andrea 48:02

A feeling of now or never for a nuclear weapon.

Gaukhar 48:05

Yes, there is some of that for sure.

Andrea 48:07

Well, Gaukhar, thanks for joining me. It's been great to chat over this. We've got lots to talk about in the coming months as well. It's one of the big and under-discussed developments in our field. So I'm sure we'll have you back again in June to talk about what's going on at the next round of negotiations. Thank you.

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