BW Plan and Plane B

Confusion rather than clarity has been generated by recent diplomatic moves in the international arena to start negotiations for a treaty banning the production of bomb making nuclear material. The UN’s Conference on Disarmament (CD) is the world’s sole multilateral negotiating body on disarmament. It is in this 65-nation forum where discussions for a Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty (FMCT) have been going on inconclusively for decades.

The Obama Administration has been trying to force the pace on this issue. But its recent efforts, rather than bring it any nearer the goal of getting negotiations started have instead prompted activity on multiple diplomatic tracks. This has held out the risk of the process spinning out of Washington’s control.

Faced with a stalemate in the CD due to Pakistan’s insistence that the proposed treaty cover fissile material stockpiles and not just future production, which is supported by many countries, Washington has tried to intensify pressure on Islamabad by threatening to take the negotiations outside the CD – in what some call a Plan B. In a speech to the CD in February Secretary of State Hilary Clinton indicated that the US would consider finding a different venue for the FMCT talks. In April, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon issued a similar warning.

Several efforts to test the ground in this regard were launched, albeit indirectly. Last year UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon was encouraged to convene a High Level Meeting on the FMCT in New York to mobilise a consensus outside the CD. This did not make headway. The meeting ended up reinforcing rather than resolving the discord within the CD. In February this year Washington’s allies convened an ‘Experts Side Event on FMCT Definitions’ in Geneva to initiate informal discussions on aspects of the treaty. This too got nowhere, as Pakistan, China and several other countries stayed away.

The viability of a Plan B was cast in doubt by these rather modest opening moves. The thinly veiled threats to shift the FMCT talks to an alternate venue hardly persuaded Pakistan to change its principled position on the proposed treaty. Meanwhile the unintended effects of these US-sponsored moves was that other nations got in on the act and began to launch their own efforts – most notably in the UN General Assembly last month – aimed at breaking the deadlock in the CD. This confronted Washington with the prospect of the FMCT process slipping out of its control.

The CD’s consensus rule allows member countries to protect their interests, as agreement is required by all states. Any process outside that forum has no such safeguard and makes talks a risky proposition for the US as for other nuclear weapon states.

Thus when a group of European countries joined by South Africa, Chile and others launched an effort for a plenary debate in the UN General Assembly on the CD’s working, this evoked a mixed response from Washington. The plenary debate on 24-27 July in New York was a follow up to the High Level Meeting last year and concerned itself with how to “revitalise the CD” in Geneva.

The overall refrain during the debate about breaking the CD deadlock may have been helpful for the US, but other aspects of the discussion posed dilemmas. Proposals for ad hoc committees in the GA or a UN conference on all four issues before the CD – Nuclear Disarmament, Negative Security Assurances, Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space and FMCT – raised the prospect of the process broadening, minus the consensus rule, to issues on which the US and its allies have blocked progress in the CD. This also renewed the possibility of a resolution being moved in the GA similar to one in 2005, which called for action on all four issues on the CD agenda. Strongly opposed by the US at the time this had failed to be adopted.

Having unintendedly triggered parallel moves on the FMCT that the US feared it would not be able to steer, Washington appeared to switch course and signal a return to Plan A. US officials began to say that the Obama Administration opposed attempts to move negotiations outside the CD. A senior American official told Global Security Newswire last week “as a forum that makes decisions based on consensus, the Conference on Disarmament is the only appropriate venue for fissile material cutoff talks because any such ban must be global and comprehensive.” “Forum-stopping is not a good idea”, he added.

Whether this reaffirmation of the CD was an acknowledgement of the unfeasibility of Plan B, or indicated that Washington regarded Plan B as a ploy rather than a goal, is not clear. What is evident is that the US has returned to Plan A.

But that doesn’t mean addressing the issue in the CD itself. Washington now seeks to pursue Plan A by ‘other means’. This involves a renewed effort to evolve a common position among the Five Permanent members of the Security Council (P-5) on an FMCT – to pre-cook a consensus via so-called ‘technical discussions’ and impose it in the CD. In a meeting of the P-5 in Paris that ended on July 1, the US tried to push this and proposed creating a P-5 Contact Group to negotiate an FMCT. The idea floated was that once this had been done it could be expanded to include the other three nuclear weapon states and countries with nuclear energy capacity.

However the Contact Group proposal was opposed by China. Apart from rejecting any move to take the FMCT negotiations to another venue, Beijing bilaterally counselled Washington to address Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns in view of the nuclear exceptionalism accorded by the US to India.

During the UN GA Plenary in July, France suggested that the summary of the P-5 Paris meeting be used as the basis for advocating the Contact Group idea. China again disagreed, stating that only the press statement issued after the Paris meeting contained acceptable language. This omitted any mention of a P-5 Contact Group. The Russians too backed this position.

The aim of the various diplomatic manoeuvres undertaken by the US and other nations has been to find a way of overcoming the stalemate in the CD rather than deal with the roots of that impasse. And Washington has continued to urge Pakistan to modify its position on the commencement of talks. It has also offered separate consultations to Islamabad on the FMCT. Pakistan has rejected this on the ground that a multilateral issue should not be turned into a bilateral one.

The answer to the present impasse in the CD is not to dance around the established multilateral disarmament process but insure that the FMCT negotiations take into account the security concerns of all states and not just the priorities of the powerful few. The problem does not lie in the CD’s rule of consensus being criticized by some. It lies squarely in the ongoing effort to push through a proposed treaty that undermines the security of a member state – Pakistan.

In its present form the FMCT is unacceptable to Pakistan, which will continue to press its objections against what it sees as a discriminatory instrument. Without the treaty taking into account the asymmetry in existing fissile material stocks the imbalance between Pakistan and India would be frozen, leaving Pakistan at a permanent strategic disadvantage. As currently envisaged the FMCT obliges Pakistan to accept a limit on its deterrent capability, which does not apply to India because of the preferential treatment it has received.

Unless Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns are addressed it will not succumb to diplomatic pressure or maneuvers. Countries sign up to international agreements when their fundamental interests are accommodated. This is why the US itself and its Western allies have opposed negotiations on nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances and PAROS – the other three of the four core issues on the CD’s agenda. That principle also forms the basis of Pakistan’s position.