N-Tests by India and Pakistan Could Dismantle Arms Control Regime
The United Nations' pointman for disarmament has warned that the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan could lead to the unravelling of global arms control norms.
Jayantha Dhanapala, Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs, said external dangers to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), like the tests by India and Pakistan, "are real" and pose threats to the global norms of non-proliferation and disarmament, primarily through their potential demonstration effect.
In an address to the Seventh Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, organised here by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- a leading think tank -- Dhanapala said, "If countries are perceived to derive certain benefits from ignoring such fundamental global norms, the risk could grow that others will either follow suit or seek various forms of compensation for continued participation in the regime."
Dhanapala, a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the U.S. who presided over the permanent extension of the NPT five years ago, acknowledged that while "this is admittedly a hypothetical danger," it "nevertheless deserves to be taken seriously." "It is a danger that applies to the goals of both non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament," he said.
Dhanapala said other such external threats "include criticisms of the NPT by non-parties which are preventing it from achieving full universality."
Taking a swipe at Russia and China for their respective assistance to India and Pakistan, Dhanapala declared: "The fact that certain NPT parties are engaging in civil nuclear cooperation in South Asia without any requirement for full-scope IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards may -- over time -- unleash commercial pressures to abandon that responsible global standard."
However, he noted that South Asia was not the only region in which nuclear weapons have been acquired or detonated in the name of disarmament and world peace. He recalled the declaration by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson who, on August 6, 1946 -- the day of the Hiroshima bombing -- spoke of how "every effort is being bent towards assuring that this weapon and the new field of science that stands behind it will be employed wisely in the interests of the security of peace-loving nations and the well-being of the world."
Dhanapala also pointed to the statement by President Charles De Gaulle after the first French nuclear test on February 13, 1960. De Gaulle had declared that the detonation would place France at "an even better position to further its action towards the conclusion of agreements among the atomic powers with a view to achieving nuclear disarmament."
China was not immune to such declarations either, Dhanapala noted. He recalled how Beijing's leaders, who had long condemned nuclear weapons as a "paper tiger," after their nuclear test on October 16, 1964, spoke of how China was developing them "not because we believe in the omnipotence of nuclear weapons" but "to break the monopoly" of the nuclear powers.
Thus, he said, statements from South Asia about the value of nuclear weapons for purposes of both deterrence and disarmament, about how each new nuclear nation can be trusted, about how all the new weapons are products of native genius, were nothing new.
But he asserted that the five tests by India and the six by Pakistan last May "amount to eleven steps backward in history --they symbolise a retreat by the rulers of a significant fraction of humanity from a collective global effort to devalue and delegitimise nuclear weapons and they come at a time when so many compelling human needs in this region remain unfulfilled."
According to Dhanapala, nuclear weapons "do not level North-South disparities." He said "only economic development and reform of the international economic system can do that."
Taking yet another dig at New Delhi and Islamabad, Dhanapala said, "The prospect of nuclear war also does little to inspire investor confidence in any region of the globe. Nor do such weapons automatically confer great power status, enhanced national security, or electoral popularity." "Nuclear weapons are not the proverbial 'great equaliser' -- they are instead the 'great destabiliser'," he said.
- India Abroad News Service
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