Horizontal Proliferation and the US Non-Proliferation Policy


Bart van der Sijde

The subject of this presentation is horizontal proliferation, which immediately raises the first question: To what extent can horizontal proliferation be distinguished from vertical proliferation? In other words, how far a strong mutual dependency between the two exists? This question will be discussed later.

Within the NPT, horizontal and vertical proliferation can be clearly distinguished. The NPT differentiates between the five acknowledged Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) on the one hand, and the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) on the other, irrespective of whether they are signatories to the NPT or not. This differentiation is based on the state of the art in nuclear testing in 1967 and 1968. Thus, when China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964 it became the fifth member of the club, while India, when conducting its first nuclear explosion in 1974, did not become the sixth! For a country such as India - which chooses more or less to stay below the nuclear threshold by calling its test symbolically a peaceful one - the 1967-1968 demarcation line is arbitrary, particularly because India was much less involved in the NPT negotiations during the Sixties than, for example, West Germany was.

From a US perspective, all developments since July/August 1945 are, in principle, examples of horizontal proliferation, starting with the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949. After the collapse of the United States' Baruch Plan in 1946 - which, in fact, was the first and most radical non-proliferation proposal ever issued - the United States halted the export of all nuclear knowledge to any country, in accordance with the MacMahon Law of 1946.

Some Historical Developments

From a contemporary perspective, this situation was short-lived - from 1946 until 1953-1955, less than ten years. It ended with President Eisenhower's now-famous "Atoms for Peace" address, and with the large scientific conference on atomic and nuclear physics and nuclear energy held in Geneva in 1955. Also, between 1953 and 1955 a fundamental choice was made to divide the nuclear capacity into two distinctly separate applications: a peaceful, civil one and a military one. After the Geneva Conference, the way was cleared for "unlimited" energy production - a kind of sacrifice to the "Spirit of Times".

In fact, the first wave of proliferation dates back to the Fifties, with nuclear tests by the Soviet Union in 1949, by the United Kingdom in 1952, followed by France in 1960, and China in 1964. The United States must have realized already in the early Fifties that, despite the McMahon Law, it would be unable to successfully prevent military projects from developing in other countries. The United States probably had the illusion that by offering civil nuclear technology it could persuade countries to forego the development of nuclear weapons. It will be clear that, from a political perspective, developments in the Soviet Union were cause for more concern than those in the United Kingdom. It is, however, of interest to note that despite good relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, the latter could not be persuaded to refrain from developing its own nuclear bomb. We must keep in mind, however, that the UK, at that time, was still a world power, especially in its own eyes.

From our 1995 perspective, we can say that the decisions the United States made in the 1953-1955 period were wrong in the sense that hardly any appropriate system of safeguards and inspections existed; this is particularly so when compared to those that were later put in place. We can conclude that a total lack of safeguards existed in the period 1955-1970, until the NPT came into force. The second wave of proliferation, with examples such as South Africa, India, Pakistan, and Israel, can be explained as a result of this period. It would not have been impossible for these countries to obtain nuclear-weapons technology, even if a strong system of safeguards and inspections had been in place, but it would have been much more difficult and it would have taken much more time.

It is clear that the United States has not been the only proliferating country. French-Israeli cooperation is a plain example of purely military proliferation; Canadian reactors built in India and Pakistan played negative roles in this respect; and South Africa received German help in becoming a nuclear state.

In any event, it has long been my opinion that today's most important threshold countries are, for the most part, products of this relatively wild and unsafeguarded period between 1955 and 1970 and that they have been aided by several countries, including the United States. It has also been shown that, depending on the political situation, the power and influence of the United States is great but not unlimited. For example, the United States has had and continues to have strong, friendly relations with Pakistan, but it has not succeeded in stopping Pakistan on its proliferation path. The United States has had and continues to have very cool relations with India, and the result has been the same.

From this it can be concluded - a conclusion that may be extended to other cases - that hostile relations between two countries can have greater impact than moderating influences from outside the conflict. A recent example may help illustrate this. In the days that preceded the NPT Extension Conference in New York, enormous pressure was brought to bear on Israel and Pakistan to sign the Treaty. The answer from Pakistan was that if Pakistan signed the Treaty the Pakistani government would be committing a kind of political suicide, because the subscription to the Treaty would mean its downfall. In a case such as this, there is only one option: simultaneous accession by both India and Pakistan to the NPT, or no accession at all.

Some Special Cases

Israel

In the case of Israel, the decisive role played by France - especially during the early years - has been already mentioned. Israel's Dimona reactor was supplied by the French; Israel obtained results from the first French nuclear test of 1960; and Israel received a French reprocessing plant. With respect to the United States and Israel, the situation has been even more complicated. The United States' policy changed from time to time, ranging from rather strong opposition to looking the other way. It is important to mention in the context of my topic, that although the US administration attempted to treat Israel as it did other countries, US presidential policy toward Israel remained quite liberal. This policy may have been influenced by the existence of a strong Jewish community in the United States as well as by Israel's specific security situation - surrounded as it had been for many years by enemies sworn to destroy the new Jewish state.

President Eisenhower reacted with silence to reports concerning the construction of Dimona in 1959-1960. He apparently did not wish to take countermeasures against Israel. Nevertheless, there have been some confrontations between Israeli and US leaders in the past. In 1963, then-Undersecretary of Defence Shimon Peres denied - before Dimona started to produce plutonium - that Israel would be the first country to introduce a nuclear weapon in the Middle East. Peres, however, was one of the strongest advocates of the secret military nuclear program.

A second confrontation arose in 1968 between US Undersecretary of State Paul Warnke and Israeli Ambassador Yitzak Rabin. Rabin was quite put out by Warnke's direct questions, but President Johnson - and later, President Nixon - had chosen not to engage in a hard confrontation with Israel. CIA reports indicated that Israel had a nuclear weapon: in 1968 Israel was thought to have a uranium bomb and in 1974 a plutonium bomb was suspected. Although the United States during the Sixties and Seventies was allowed to inspect Dimona, the Israelis succeeded in hiding the reprocessing plant from them. United States-Israeli relations centered around maintaining smooth relations between the two countries. Strong suspicions over the existence of the reprocessing facility and formal Israeli denial of these activities made maintaining good relations not easy.

Today, we can say that the position of Israel - which became quite clear after Mordechai Vanunu's revelations - has been accepted by the United States as a matter of fact. This means that the solution will have to be found in the ongoing Middle East peace process, and, ultimately, in a global resolution of the nuclear weapons problem.

India and Pakistan

A second, well-known regional problem exists in South Asia, driven primarily by the hostility between India and Pakistan. Attributing this hostility to a single cause would, however, lead to protests from India, which sees its relation to China as more fundamental to the problem. India says it is only interested in a global solution, meaning it is only prepared to give up its nuclear option if the five NWS are prepared to do the same. In this way, India is blocking any possibility for a regional solution.

Furthermore, India defends its refusal to accede to the NPT by referring to the discriminatory character of the Treaty, a position in line with the one just mentioned. Thus, it is difficult to see how India might contribute to a regional solution. Or, to put it less positively, the political will to contribute anything of importance is totally lacking at present.

Pakistan, on the other hand, is unwilling to move forward without India, but has proposed mutual inspections (refused by India), mutual membership in the NPT, and the convening of a five-country conference of the US, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. India, however, refuses under any circumstances to accept China on a similar level as the United States and Russia because it believes China to be part of the regional problem. Hence, this initiative remains, for the moment, at an impasse. One can only guess whether Pakistan's willingness to advance a regional process is motivated primarily by India's unwillingness to do so, but for the moment, at least, the main political problem lies with India.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

The DPRK - more commonly known as North Korea - is the world's most recent serious proliferation case. In a recent publication on nuclear weapons and proliferation, I devote twenty pages to North Korea, a country that in 1990 received no special attention from one of the leading experts on nuclear proliferation, Leonard Spector(1). Since the fall of 1991, however, North Korea has appeared in the world's headlines, with waves of both good and bad news.

At the heart of the issue are a 25-MW (thermal) nuclear reactor that can produce up to eight kilograms of plutonium per year that is not connected to the electricity grid, and two suspicious buildings where nuclear waste is supposedly stored. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that reprocessing activities around 1989 amounted to some fifteen kilograms of plutonium. It is possible that North Korea had decided to reprocess an amount of plutonium at least sufficient for one nuclear bomb - around ten kilograms of plutonium, or a little over one year of activity. Only one conclusion can be drawn: it is possibile that North Korea possesses sufficient material for one or two nuclear weapons, and that it succeeded in building these bombs between 1989 and 1994.

For some of the political background I refer you to my book(1). I would like to emphasize here that it was only in the early Nineties that North Korea became increasingly isolated and was, in fact, forced to either opt for a completely isolated Stalinistic regime, or follow a more practical course - as China had done - which would improve future foreign relations. North Korean policy did not act consistently with its choice; perhaps it had hoped it could develop the second alternative while continuing the development of a small, secret nuclear weapon program.

As previously stated, the international press alternately reported good and bad news. In late 1991 and early 1992, considerable rapprochement was reported between North Korea and South Korea, the United States, and the IAEA. This continued until early 1993, when problems arose around inspections of the two suspect buildings, and these problems lasted until June 1994. A turning point occurred when former US President Jimmy Carter visited North Korea in 1994 and the basis was laid for an agreement later that year. This was also the beginning of a period in which Washington was the primary - and in fact the only - country that played any role of importance in stopping the ongoing nuclear proliferation in North Korea. A two-phase agreement was reached between the United States and North Korea in the second half of 1994.

First, according to the agreement, North Korea would refrain from any further construction of two North Korean-designed nuclear reactors in exchange for being supplied with two Western-designed reactors. This put fears to rest that North Korea could become a future exporter of plutonium to other threshold countries. Second, the fuel rods from the 25-MW reactor would remain under IAEA inspection for the next five years and would then be removed from North Korea. If complied with, this would further reduce fears that plutonium from the fuel rods might be used to make another eight bombs.

By the end of that five-year period, the 1989 dilemma will need to be resolved, if it has not by then disappeared in a kind of gentlemen's agreement whereby North Korea is given time to dismantle all of its past military nuclear activities. However, nothing is certain when dealing with a country like North Korea. For example, difficulties later arose over which country would supply North Korea with the two Western-designed nuclear power plants.

In my opinion, the United States has done a very good job with respect to North Korea. If nuclear proliferation had expanded in the Far East as a result of North Korea's activities, a third problematic and dangerous regional situation would almost certainly have arisen, adding to the difficult situations existing in the Middle East and South Asia. We know how extremely challenging it has been to make any progress in these two cases, and that the inability to resolve these regional stalemates may stand in the way of a global solution to the nuclear problem. From this perspective, preventing the emergence of any new nuclear region is more important than anything. My judgement is that sooner or later Japan and South Korea may change their current attitudes on the possession of nuclear weapons, notwithstanding US pressure not to do so.

One hears international criticism and skepticism over the outcome of the US-North Korean talks, calling it a bad example for the future, a kind of blackmail. I admit that the economic price is high: two 1,000-MW nuclear reactors for grant and several years of free oil supply. Sometimes, however, it is forgotten that North Korea was quite fairly advanced in the construction of its own nuclear power plants. Furthermore, these reactors would have been ready several years before the new ones will be. Should the agreement work - and I feel rather optimistic about it - the United States has done a good job.

The case of North Korea reveals an interesting aspect of international non-proliferation politics. What are the relative values of the NPT with its system of safeguards and inspections on the one hand, and direct intervention by one of the superpowers - currently, primarily the United States - on the other? Or, in more general terms, which has the greater possibility to effect nuclear non-proliferation: the NPT and the IAEA, or direct intervention by the United States? At times, both have failed. Sometimes, the United States succeeded in preventing proliferation, as is hopefully the present case with North Korea, and in the past with countries like Taiwan and South Korea. At times, the NPT is like a mysterious God who it is wise to be on good terms with, though terrestrial servants are needed to do the work.

The System of Safeguards

I will pay little attention to the many safeguard systems there have been in the past. In general, it can be said that the United States played a central role in all of these systems and, in most cases, introduced them, and has always supported the most stringent obligations possible. After the 1974 Indian nuclear explosion, the United States initiated a new system - the London-based Nuclear Suppliers' Group - which remained separate from the NPT and the IAEA. Restrictions were applied specifically to dual-use materials, although - bearing in mind the multitude of firms that supplied nuclear materials to Iraq - not always very successfully.

US legislation was clearer: no reprocessing, no fast-breeder activities, no enrichment activities abroad - all of which supplemented the requirement that receiving countries comply with the institution of full-scope IAEA safeguards of their programs. Only a few countries followed suit, and, in general, we can say that the United States was, and remains, the country with the most stringent restrictions for preventing further proliferation.

Now I will return to the current situation of the NPT Review and Extension Conference taking place in New York. The lines of vertical and horizontal proliferation are coming together in the decision over how the Treaty is to be extended. There are three options:

  1. indefinite and unconditional extension;
  2. extension for a single period of time, the length of which remains to be decided during the conference (twenty-five years is often mentioned); and
  3. extension for a number of periods of time, with both the duration and number of periods to be defined during the conference.
A variation on option 3 is the concept of rolling extensions, in which a new extension decision is made after each period, for example, every ten years.

At the time of writing this presentation, at the very beginning of the conference in New York(2), a large minority exists for the first option - which is certainly supported by the North - and a small majority may be in sight. The first option is questioned by many NGOs and non-aligned countries. They fear that too much leverage might be lost, which could be used to force implementation of Article VI - the promise of total nuclear disarmament by the NWS at some future point - and they are, therefore, supporting the second and third options. The number and length of the periods, however, remain unclear.

It is my guess that the different approaches that countries and NGOs are taking may not be rooted primarily in the indefinite extension-option itself, which in itself creates such a clear-cut situation for the nuclear club. It does make it possible to take measures in the direction of disarmament - or, to put it more prudently, to limit nuclear armament (many measures have been taken since the 1987 INF Treaty) - without facing the danger that the NPT might come to an early end.

The pressure exercised by France and the United Kingdom for unconditionality makes it much harder for the southern NNWS to subscribe to the first option. Is it not a realistic condition that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will be concluded before October 1, 1996, a key date with regard to the CTBT negotiations?(3) On the other hand, one has to admit that neither the NPT itself, nor the way the extension is formulated in the Treaty, gives a clear answer as to how to deal with conditions in the event the Treaty is extended. The conference will have to reach agreement on this.

Having said all of the above, unresolved issues remain regarding how best to deal with the difficult combination of "indefinite", "unconditional", and the lack of a clear disarmament program for the next twenty-five years, if we want to go ahead and create a Nuclear Weapons Convention by the year 2020 that is similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention. At any rate, it is more or less certain that the CTBT will be coming to the forefront in the near future. The CTBT receives strong support from the United States, although France and China, by the continuation of their nuclear testing programs, appear to be questionable supporters.

A second promise lies in the formulation of a negotiating mandate for a conference to address halting the production of fissile materials and - of lesser importance, in my opinion - the positive non-binding security assurances that were given in the week prior to the conference by the Security Council(4).

In my opinion, this is all too little, much too little. I think that the United States, in particular, is forsaking the opportunity to make clear, once and for all, that the fulfilment of Article VI remains the ultimate goal of its policy. If the United States would do this, a twenty-five-year total program - perhaps divided over five-year periods, as proposed by the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) - would provide the best support. Likewise, a minimum program for the near future would allow for minimum concessions to be made to the non-aligned countries, such as:

  • Announcing negotiations for a START III Treaty that would include France, China, and the United Kingdom, and that would reduce nuclear weapons to a ceiling of 1,000 or less for the big nuclear powers and 200 or less for the smaller nuclear powers;
  • Announcing negotiations on clear security guarantees, particularly negative security guarantees and no-first-use declarations;
  • Announcing important changes in the safeguards system, including after some time all NWS;
  • Announcing negotiations for a cut-off of new nuclear weapon systems, including warheads and delivery systems;
  • Including the three remaining threshold states in the NPT, with a so-called threshold membership for a fixed period of time, allowing them influence in exchange for meeting their obligations.

These points by no means guarantee a nuclear-free world, but they do guarantee a certain degree of commitment to that goal, and more specifically than formulated in Article VI. In my opinion the United States, now more than ever before, is in a position to take the lead.

By formulating a number of proposals - most of them addressing vertical proliferation, although this talk was meant to address horizontal proliferation - I have tried to point out that vertical and horizontal are highly interdependent. The path leading to disarmament (less vertical proliferation) defines the standard. Progress on this path will make horizontal proliferation increasingly seen as a hostile act against the world community and will make it more difficult for states to "go nuclear". Should we miss this unique opportunity, we will have to face a dreary future: not President Kennedy's fear of dozens of NWS by the year 2000, but a slow expansion of the nuclear club with a new member joining every five or ten years. I hope that, in the year 2020, we will not come to the conclusion that the nuclear club lost its way in 1995, the year the NPT was extended.

Notes

  1. Sijde, Bart, van der, "Kernwapens op hun retour?", Cahier 61, Studiecentrum voor Vredesvraagstukken, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1995.
  2. For the conclusions of the NPT Extension Conference, see the contributions of Wolfgang Liebert and Edith Ballantyne in this book.
  3. United States law prohibits the United States from nuclear testing after October 1, 1996, unless other countries resume or continue nuclear testing.
  4. Positive or negative security assurances relate to assurance of assistance to countries under nuclear threat by a nuclear weapons state (positive), or assurances to countries that have renounced nuclear weapons, that they will not be attacked by nuclear weapons (negative). The United States nuclear umbrella over Europe during the Cold War is an example of positive security assurance. Clearly negative security assurances are still not in force.

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