A Hopeful Path on Nukes

After more than a decade in the doldrums, nuclear arms control could make a comeback this year with a thorough review of the size, structure and mission of US nuclear forces, a new Russia-US strategic treaty, a nuclear summit in Washington in April and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in May. A compelling roadmap for all four has been provided by the international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, chaired by former foreign ministers Gareth Evans of Australia and Yoriko Kawaguchi of Japan and including Brajesh Mishra from India.

The commission faced two hurdles even before its work was completed. First, Australia and Japan are long-standing allies that have sheltered under the US nuclear umbrella. Second, between the commission's setting up in mid-2008 and the publication of its report on December 15, 2009, the nuclear agenda had been dramatically transformed with US president Barack Obama's commitment to nuclear abolition. The first risk was one of credibility, the second of irrelevance as the commission's deliberations were overtaken by events in the real world.

In the event, its report, entitled 'Eliminating Nuclear Threats', responds to both. The unexpected opening has been seized to outline an action-oriented agenda on when and how to realise the dream; and there is a good discussion of extended deterrence and the need to reassure allies that their security needs will not be compromised en route.
The report's major strength is that it tackles four critical dichotomous policy choices and helps us navigate our way through them to sensible decisions between the world as it is and as it ought to be.

First, marrying realism to idealism, it combines the non-proliferation and disarmament agenda by skilfully integrating minimisation in the short and medium term with elimination in the long but not indefinite term. The case for elimination is updated from the report of the Canberra Commission, which Evans had set up in the mid-1990s, and many passages echo elegant phrases from the earlier report. As long as any country has nuclear weapons, others will want them. As long as they exist, they will be used one day again, by design, accident or miscalculation.