The Guardian 18 June, 2008
Editorial
Questions about
the PM’s Nuclear Commission
While in Japan, PM Kevin Rudd announced his decision to set up a Commission which would propose measurers to tighten the rules relating to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Once again his announcement raises as many questions as it answers.
It is not clear whether this proposed Commission, to which Rudd has already appointed Gareth Evans (former Hawke government Foreign Minister) as co-chair, is to operate inside the United Nations or whether it is intended as part of a growing network of organisations being set up by major western powers to weaken the authority of the UN. This is a trend that has arisen now that the western powers can no longer get their way even on the Security Council which only has 15 members.
The development by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea of nuclear weapons and the allegation that Iran is developing nuclear weapons seem to be the reasons justifying Rudd’s claim that the NPT is being "fragmented".
What about the nuclear weapons already developed by Israel, Pakistan and India? Doesn’t their acquisition of nuclear weapons some years ago amount to a fragmentation of the original treaty? Or is it that these countries only deserve a passing mention because they are regarded as western allies?
The NPT was originally negotiated by the United Nations and adhered to by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China — although China opposed the treaty in the first instance seeing it as a measure to limit nuclear weapons to the permanent UN members. The Treaty was concluded in 1968 and became operative in 1970. Today, 189 UN countries are signatories to the Treaty.
Kevin Rudd quotes with approval a statement by a former US Secretary of State, George Shultz that all nuclear powers be required to accept international monitoring, that a global system be established to manage the nuclear fuel cycle and that the NPT be enacted. Neither Israel nor India have signed up to the NPT.
All of this is very commendable if Rudd’s objectives are really those that are being publicly stated.
The only power to have used nuclear weapons is the US when it dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of the war against Japan. However, there have been a number of first-strike threats to use them — against the Soviet Union and now against Iran. In Bush’s Congress resolution of 2002 authorising the invasion of Iraq it sanctions the use of "all necessary means to force Iraq to comply …". It was claimed then that Iraq was building nuclear weapons but, as soon became clear, this was a charge without any foundation.
Any attack against the nuclear facilities built in Iran could only be successful if nuclear bombs were used. The most recent threat comes from Israel and it might use its own nuclear weapons that it continues to deny even exist.
But stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is not the main part of the nuclear issue. In addition to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons the Treaty also provides for the destruction of all nuclear weapon stockpiles.
It unambiguously states that "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
The world will not be safe while huge stockpiles of such weapons remain in the hands of the big powers and those with smaller stockpiles.
Earlier negotiations got nowhere. The western powers stubbornly refused to do more than limit the numbers of such weapons. Considering that the number remaining is enough to destroy the world and all life on it many times over, this is an empty measure.
Will Kevin Rudd’s Commission be agitating for this to be highlighted and pushed among all United Nations members? Future negotiations can only be successful if pursued through the United Nations and there is already a Disarmament Commission as part of the UN structure. So why is another Commission of "experts" necessary and by what authority has the Australian government already appointed a co-chairman?
These questions need to be answered.