Review of treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons

Press, 27 August 1980, Page 20

Review of treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons

From the “Economist,” London

Too often, as Voltaire noted, the best is the enemy of the good. A few miles from his retreat at Ferney, a three-week conference began on August 11 which will show once again how right he was. The 113 parties to the 1968 nuclear nonproliferation treaty are hold; ing their second review conference. Geneva will resound with complaints that the non-proliferation treaty is ineffective, discriminatory, an obstacle to technical progress, and likely to die an early death. There is some truth in each of these complaints. But without the treaty the world would be a more perilous place than it is. There are now 235 power reactors (in 22 countries) in operation, and a similar number being built. These reactors produce plutonium — so far, about 100 tonnes of it, enough to make 20,000 bombs. Under the treaty, the 200 inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (1.A.E.A.) now have access to 117 power reactors, including all but 10 of those outside the territory of the five nuclear-armed powers. The 68 countries that now have full I.A.E.A, safeguards agreements in force include all those (apart from the five powers) which are already operating power reactors except Argentina, India, Pakistan, Spain and Taiwan. The value of having the safeguards system in place will be enhanced as the f

j years roll on and nuclear r power generation increases. 5 By the year 2000 it is fecki oned that reactors, in more 1 than 30 different countries, 1 will be producing some 250 t tonnes of plutonium a year. ) The amounts being moved around, the world will also be multiplied: hence the par1 ticular importance of the i new I.A.E.A. convention on » the physical protection of > nuclear materials which was , completed last October and opened for signature in i March. Without the non- • proliferation treaty safeguards system and the new • convention, there would be i every prospect of seeing, within the next decade or two, such widespread diver- , sion of “peaceful” nuclear i materials into weapons as to . make the chances of avert- ( ing nuclear war, or nuclear t terrorism, negligible. i The chances are, in any l case, not bright. But the » treaty’s mere existence has ■ helped to inhibit govem- ' ments from initiating nuclear > arms programmes. Since • it was concluded, none of ’ them has done so openly.- ’ Those tempted to take the 1 nuclear arms road secretly ; have found it harder, cost- , lier, and thus less tempting, i And if the treaty’s adherents had invariably fulfilled all i their obligations under it, in • spirit as well as in letter, , those states which are now I regarded as dangerously “near-nuclear” would have . found the road even more , difficult. ' Argentina, Brazil, India,

Iraq, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa — the countries whose actions and apparent ambitions have been causing most concern — have all, at various times and in various ways, obtained help which, even if not specifically forbidden in the treaty’s text, could not be justified in terms of the treaty’s aims. This had in? eluded American, British, Canadian, German, Soviet and Swiss help — and help from France, which, although it has not adhered to the non-proliferation treaty, has repeatedly promised to behave exactly as if it had. At the present Geneva conference, as at the first non-proliferation treaty review held in 1975, the. loudest noise will be the demand that the nucleararmed powers should “save the treaty” by fulfilling the pledges given in its sixth article about halting their own arms race. In particular, they will be urged once again to speed we conclusion of a treaty banning all nuclear test blasts. (In 1979 there were 53 of these — 28 Soviet, 15 American, nine French, one British.) These demands are wholly understandable, and a curbing of the nuclear powers’ ■“vertical proliferation” would undoubtedly improve the prospects of limiting the horizontal kind. But the belief that failure to achieve such a curbing must doom the non-proliferation treaty, and that nothing else can be done to save it, is false and dangerous.

! The treaty’s (and mankind’s) chances of surviving could be much improved if those parties that export nuclear materials and equipment (and the only significant exporting non-party, France) exercised more actively their responsibility to discourage proliferation in every way. This means more than just barely complying with the letter of the treaty (while seeking loopholes in it to excuse deals that look commercially or diplomatically rewarding). It means more than ceasing to help n o n-proliferation treaty states to achieve more positive encouragement for adherence to the treaty and for wholehearted compliance with its terms and purposes. At present, states .which adhere still see non-adhe-rents getting help which they should not be getting: and' they still see some of the exporting parties bending the rules in ways which hardly encourage loyal compliance by all other parties. They may well ask what they stand to gain by belonging to a club. that is run in such a way. There is, of course, the basic argument that a world containing 20 or 30 nuclear-armed states would be much more dangerous than one that contains only five. But there will be much less force in this kind of argument if the present half-dozen “near-nu-clear” states achieve their suspected ambitions and bring the number of nucleararmed powers up into double figures.