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Nuclear Disarmament

My Lords, of all the threats and challenges that face the international community at the beginning of the 21st century, none exceeds in risk and urgency the interlinked threats from nuclear weapons and from the fraying of the regime that prevents their further spread beyond the current eight or perhaps nine countries that possess them, and none has so far in the first decade of this century received a less effective reply. The substantial reduction in nuclear arsenals that followed the end of the Cold War ground to a halt at the turn of the century, and was followed by a decade in which even existing arms control measures were dismantled. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which since the 1960s has been a pillar of international peace and security, is under challenge by North Korea and Iran. Some 23,000 nuclear warheads remain worldwide—enough to blow the world to pieces many times over, and far more than are needed to assure even the most extensive doctrines of deterrence. To the risk of a nuclear exchange between states has now been added the nightmare scenario of a nuclear weapon, or nuclear material from which a dirty bomb could be manufactured, falling into the hands of terrorists for whom the whole concept of deterrence is alien and thus inoperable. That is the justification for our debate today, and I express my gratitude to my fellow Cross-Benchers for recognising it and for choosing to devote one of our two possible debates in the remainder of this Parliament to this subject. The case for a debate is more powerful than that, however, because much has changed since we last held a debate on these issues a year ago. The momentum that began to build up with the Wall Street Journal article by Messrs Schultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn, and matched by similar statements by groups of statesmen here and in France, Germany and elsewhere, pressing for a resumption in multilateral disarmament negotiations, was given hugely added force when President Obama, in his Prague speech last spring, called for a world free of nuclear weapons and set out a detailed agenda for heading down that road. In September, the UN Security Council, under Obama’s presidency, endorsed that agenda, and the US and Russia are currently negotiating a START follow-on agreement that would reduce their holdings of strategic nuclear weapons and launchers. In 2010, we face two major multilateral conferences: in April, the Washington conference on nuclear security; and, in May, the quinquennial Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. These conferences have the potential to set the world on a completely new direction of travel and to begin to match words with action, so it is high time for us to debate what Britain can contribute to this process. The Government began this process last summer when they provided a White Paper, The Road to 2010, but, frankly, that White Paper was more of an atlas than a road map, and we now need greater precision on the objectives that are being pursued and greater top-level political will in pursuing them. Britain has a great deal to contribute: as a nuclear-weapon state, as a founding member and depository of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as one of the two nuclear-weapon states in the EU, and as a member of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, we need to steer between two extremes. The first extreme is to argue that because our nuclear arsenal is the smallest of the five recognised weapon states, and because the US and Russia hold 95 per cent of those assets, we can take a pass on the whole process until it is at a far more advanced stage. The second extreme is to overestimate our influence and argue that, by our own unilateral action, we can transform the global scene. That was always an illusion when it was widely held in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and it is even more of an illusion now. Who can seriously believe that the nuclear policies of North Korea and Iran, of China, Russia and the US, of India and Pakistan, or of Israel will be crucially affected by the decisions we take on Trident renewal? What we can do—I hope that we will—is ensure that our policies are at all times consistent with the objective of moving towards zero and use all our influence in the many international forums to which we belong to press that agenda forward. What needs to be done if the world is to move effectively towards zero is not much in doubt. Last month it was set out clearly and compellingly in the report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, entitled Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby—unfortunately she is not able to be here today—was a distinguished member. I hope that that report will come to be regarded as a kind of global White Paper on which future action could be based. My first question to the Minister is whether the Government intend to treat it as such—as, in effect, our White Paper—to sketch out the objectives we intend to pursue at this year’s two major international conferences. Of course, changing the direction of travel, vital though it is for future international peace and security, will not be easy. There is just too much ingrained distrust: for example, distrust between the two Cold War superpowers, which are now unbalanced in conventional weapons and in economic power, but still have matching numbers of nuclear weapons; distrust between disputing parties in south Asia and the Middle East; and distrust between developed and developing countries—the latter determined to secure their access to civil nuclear power, which is all the more so given its importance to achieving environmental targets. There are also too many technical complexities, and too many vital interests and national interests at stake, for that essential change of direction to be easily achieved. The first test we face is under way in the ongoing US-Russian negotiations. The second will come in April with President Obama’s nuclear security conference summit, which will deal with an important part—but only a part—of the overall problem. The need for more effective nuclear security in a period of expanding new civil nuclear capacity, and with terrorists determined to lay their hands on weapons-grade material, is obvious but not straightforward. I hope that the Minister will say something about the Government’s objectives at this important conference, given that it was called only after the Government produced their White Paper, The Road to 2010. The third test will come with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May. This will need to cover all three main objectives of that treaty in a balanced way if it is to get anywhere and to avoid repeating the fiasco of the last review conference in 2005. The first of those is the commitments by the nuclear weapon states to move towards disarmament. The second is the strengthening of machinery to prevent proliferation and the third is the right of all states which desire it and which fulfil their obligations under the treaty to have access to civil nuclear energy. On the first objective, the 13 steps agreed to by the nuclear weapon states at the 2000 review conference, which remained thereafter a dead letter, will need extensive updating, revision and amplification if they are to regain credibility. Will the Government be ready to work on the basis of the Australia-Japanese commission’s report, to which I referred a few minutes ago? It put forward 20 proposals which are now in the public domain. Are they giving active consideration to updating and strengthening the negative security assurances by nuclear weapon states towards non-nuclear states, which was first endorsed by the Security Council in 1995? Are they also considering how to move towards a "no first use" commitment or at least to a statement that the sole purpose of our holding nuclear weapons is to deter others who have them? The second objective—strengthening the non-proliferation machinery—will surely require significant action too. The additional protocol to the IAEA’s safeguards agreement, giving the agency much wider and more intrusive powers, clearly needs to become universal and may even need further strengthening in the light of recent experiences of evasion. How is this universality to be achieved? Is it by consensus and rapid implementation? We have been trying that for years and there are still a significant number of laggers. Is it by mandatory UN Security Council decision or by making it a condition for the supply of nuclear material by members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group? Also, surely it is high time that withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty was made a costly and not a cost-free option. The International Atomic Energy Agency needs adequate resources, a matter where I fear that the recent cuts have left our record far from spotless. Reducing the proliferation risk from the expansion of civil nuclear energy while ensuring its availability—the third objective—also needs some rethinking after the setback at the June meeting of the IAEA board of governors. A plethora of proposals is on the table for guaranteeing the supply of enriched uranium and reprocessing services. It is now urgent to begin implementing one or several of these in a way that will give confidence to developing countries that these multinational instruments are not devices designed to put them at a disadvantage or to deny them anything to which they have a right. How do the Government see the way ahead in this area? Parallel to those two conferences, two other international instruments urgently need to be moved ahead. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will in due course go back to the US Senate for ratification, and US ratification could bring on board a significant number of other ratifiers. So I hope that we will give what advice we can, without interfering in US domestic politics, to explain why we regard this as an essential building block of the international nuclear architecture. The other instrument is a fissile material cut-off treaty, long languishing in the Conference on Disarmament, even though it enjoys broad support from the main nuclear weapons states. There was some hope this summer that that agenda was being freed up, but it seems to be fading. Should we not be moving towards agreement on at least a moratorium on producing fissile material until the treaty is negotiated and comes into force? This was an approach which worked quite well on the CTBT. May we not have eventually to contemplate a negotiation between five recognised nuclear weapons states if others continue to block negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament? The wider importance of these two instruments is that they offer scope for bringing within their ambit the three de facto nuclear states that are not recognised under the treaty. That could be an important objective since it is most unlikely that they will ever sign the treaty. Some will ask whether this ambitious agenda makes any sense so long as North Korea and Iran are seeking to break out of their NPT disciplines and to obtain weapons capability. I would argue that it does. First, it will demonstrate clearly how those two countries are now swimming against the tide and thus risk intensifying their isolation. Secondly, however successful North Korea and Iran may prove to be, and it is clear that we must do all in our power to ensure that they are not, it will be many years, if ever, before they are in a position to match the extended deterrent capacity of the existing nuclear weapons states, even if the latter do decide to reduce substantially their nuclear arsenals. I am only too well aware that many will greet the concept of a world free of nuclear weapons as a utopian pipe dream or with a cynical shrug, and some will argue that during the Cold War, nuclear weapons were a factor of stability. The second consideration may have some historical validity, but we are no longer living in a bipolar, Cold War framework, and what worked then could well not work in a wider, global and multi-polar framework. We only have to be wrong once for untold misery and destruction to be unleashed, perhaps inadvertently. As for the matter of moving towards zero, the important thing to remember is that the road towards achieving a balance of a much lower level of nuclear weapons than currently and the road towards zero are identical for a considerable part of the way and for a considerable period of time. There is no need, therefore, for the protagonists of these two different concepts to get at cross purposes in the immediate or near future. In conclusion, I hope that this debate will play a small part in the emergence in this country of a cross-party or non-party consensus on the twin issues of multilateral nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and that this will enable whoever forms the next Government to move ahead actively and imaginatively, and with broad support, to secure our national interests.