Time to Enhance the Security of All:
International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Seizes the Moment

Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi*

Facing the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the ever more dangerous warming of the Earth’s climate, and a multitude of regional geopolitical tensions, the world has more than its fair share of troubles right now.

But as large as those dangers loom, we must not become complacent about what could still be the biggest risk of all to the peace and stability of our world: nuclear weapons arsenals still measured in the tens of thousands, the possibility that still more countries will acquire them, and the danger of their deliberate or accidental use by states or non-state terrorist actors.

Even if nuclear warhead numbers are well down from Cold War peaks there are still over 25,000 of them in existence, nearly all with destructive potential many times greater than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And thousands of them remain on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes.  Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nuclear weapon states have made only limited steps towards reducing stockpiles, notwithstanding the NPT’s ultimate goal of a nuclear weapon free world. 

The time is right to make a renewed effort to break the logjam.  Two years ago George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, in their seminal Wall Street journal article, made a hard-headed, realist case for ultimately getting to a world with zero nuclear weapons.  This call captured global attention and was soon followed by equally significant appeals from eminent figures in the United Kingdom and Germany and elsewhere.  And now it has been echoed, crucially, by America’s new president, Barack Obama, in his pathbreaking Prague speech in April, with – in an important accompanying development – Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev pledging cooperation in a major new bilateral effort at strategic arms reduction.  

But while this leadership from the U.S. and other major nuclear-armed states is crucial if nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament momentum is to be regenerated, there has to be buy-in from many other international players as well.  The moment has to be seized by governments, and civil society activists around the world, working to a common action agenda that is both idealistic and realistically pragmatic.

It was essentially to identify such an agenda, and to energise a high-level global political debate around it, that Prime Ministers Rudd of Australia and Fukuda of Japan launched last year the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament which we have the privilege to co-chair.  The Commission is independent of governments, but its highly distinguished membership, and research support structure, is drawn from both nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states around the world.  It will address all the inter-related issues of nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and the future of civil nuclear energy, and hold commission meetings and regional consultations in many capitals.  And it aims to produce a handbook of practical – and clearly written – recommendations as a guide to policy makers in the run up to the May 2010 NPT Review Conference and beyond.

As Co-Chairs of the Commission we are honoured to be joined in this endeavour by an outstanding panel of individuals, including former heads of state and government and globally recognised specialists, who have agreed to serve as Commissioners,  and by the equally impressive group of Advisory Board members and Associated Research Centres who will be contributing to the Commission’s work.  From China, we are delighted to have Ambassador Wang Yingfan on the Commission, and Tsinghua University as an Associated Research Centre. 

While the Commission’s immediate focus will be on the May 2010 conference that will review the architecture of the world’s key defence against the spread of nuclear weapons – the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – it will have a two-year lifespan, and look beyond just the NPT Conference and NPT members. It will grapple with the pressing issue of the engagement of those countries who have never joined the Treaty (India, Pakistan and Israel), and those who have either purported to walk away from it or whose commitment to it remains uncertain: all of them critical if the path to the elimination of nuclear weapons globally is to be maintained. 

While no final decisions have yet been taken by the Commission about any of its detailed recommendations, the general approach is to identify a three-layer action plan.  The first task is to spell out all the steps which can and should be taken in the short term, to around 2012, to build initial momentum: including not only making a success of next year’s NPT review conference, but also bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force, negotiating a convention to ban the further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons purposes, achieving significant reductions in actual weapons numbers, and achieving broad consensus on the future course of disarmament negotiations.  The second part of the action plan will involve identifying a series of steps, through to around 2025, by which nuclear weapons would be reduced to truly minimal numbers, the dangers of their accidental use would be effectively eliminated, and nuclear doctrine would be agreed and applied dramatically limiting occasions for their deliberate use.  The third task is to identify how the final step could then be taken, of moving from such a ‘minimalist vantage point’ to a world without any nuclear weapons at all.

China has a long history of supporting nuclear disarmament and has undertaken to use its nuclear weapons only in retaliation against a nuclear strike.  The world hopes that it will, accordingly, assume a real leadership role as the new momentum for disarmament gathers pace, being willing in due course to join other nuclear armed states in direct arms reduction efforts, while working meanwhile to increase mutual confidence, including for example by improving transparency in relation to nuclear arsenals and deployment.

Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are all the more important given recent developments on the Korean Peninsula, which are not at all helpful to the region's security and stability.  China's role in the Six Party Talks has been vital thus far, and will become even more significant with the DPRK's recent walking away from the Six Party process and its threat to conduct a further nuclear test: these are provocations which must be resisted in a measured, but firm and united, way by the five other parties.

In recognition of China’s pivotal regional and global role in matters of international security, the Commission will meet in Beijing this month, at a conference held in consultation with Tsinghua University, to consult with North East Asian nuclear and strategic experts from government, academia and industry.  We have invited representatives from key regional states – Japan, the two Koreas and Mongolia – and look forward greatly to hearing regional perspectives on the full range of issues on which the Commission is working.

We hope and expect that this will be a very productive event, which will make its own significant contribution to the movement for a safer and saner nuclear future that is now at last – after so many years of inaction – starting to emerge right around the world.

* Gareth Evans is former Foreign Minister of Australia and President of the International Crisis Group. Yoriko Kawaguchi is former Foreign Minister of Japan and member of the Upper House of Parliament.  They are Co-Chairs of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.