The 9th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)[1], which has taken place every five years since 1975, began, under a dark cloud, on 27 April 2015 at the UN Headquarters in New York. Nuclear disarmament has been blocked due to the Ukraine crisis, among other things, and the 2012 conference on a Middle Eastern Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (MENWFZ), agreed upon at the previous conference in 2010, did not take place. Only the current negotiations on the nuclear dispute with Iran and the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria gave reason to hope for further developments on disarmament. What is counted as success is when a final consensus statement is accepted. This succeeded in 1975, 1985, 1995, 2000 and 2010.
The fundamental goal of the NPT Review Conferences is twofold. On the one hand, compliance with treaty provisions should be discussed and reviewed. On the other hand, a forward-looking recommendation for strengthening the NPT should be decided upon. The four-week conference was led by the Algerian Ambassador, Taous Feroukhi, who had declared from the beginning that she would personally see to the NWFZ in the Middle East and to nuclear disarmament. These two topics dominated the conference and the work in the committees. Apart from the problem, prevailing since 1995, of establishing a NWFZ in the Middle East, the conference had three further focal points: striving for further nuclear disarmament, strengthening non-proliferation and securing and strengthening peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The 24 page draft of a concluding document presented by the President the night before the final ple-nary session only included a minimal consensus.
The adoption of a final document in consensus failed at the last minute on May 22 due to the conditions for the continuation of negotiations on the NWFZ in the Middle East. The Egyptian delegation had suggested that a conference of the states should take place even without the agreement of all the states and without an agenda, should further consultations fail. In the end, the USA, Great Britain and Canada used their veto because the direction of the conference was to have been forced by the UN Secretary General by March 2016 at the latest. The NPT depositories, the USA, Russia and Great Britain, would possibly have lost their central role and Israel, as a non-member of the NPT, would not have taken part without a consensual agenda. This contradicts the already-accepted obligations arising from the NPT or the previous conferences. From the international law of the UN Charter it follows (among other things) that the decisions about calling UN Conferences must protect the basis of sovereign equality of all UN members. What can be noted positively is that an Israeli delegation with observer status took part in the conference and that the depository states, the USA, Russia and Great Britain, made active efforts to find a solution. Negative is, that little about the background discussion on the envisaged zone came through in the plenary and that the process begun in 2010 is finished for now formally.
The Egyptian suggestions for maintaining the process through the establishment of working groups are basically sensible and should definitely be followed up.
Important actors were the five official nuclear powers (China, France, Great Britain, Russia and the USA), the 120 states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the “New Agenda” Coa-lition (NAC) and the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI), a coalition of important mid-sized powers to which Germany also belongs[2]. The positions and recom-mendations of these states and coalitions left clear traces in the draft of the closing document. The “humanitarian initiative” [3] got a strong boost again. Under the leadership of Austria and also New Zealand, many states sharply criticized not only the lack of progress in disarmament. Over 100 states aligned themselves with the so-called “humanitarian pledge”[4]. This is the majority of all UN states. Thus, this can no longer be ignored by the official nu-clear weapons holders. But in the future, this fact could also lead to an amplified polarization and a further moralization of the debate.
The rejected draft of a final document had both elements of the supporters of the “humanitarian initiative” as well as the demand for further concrete disarmament steps in the nuclear weapons states. Especially in the areas of reporting and transparency, the nuclear weapons states must finally present concrete and verifiable results[5]. Hope for further initiatives at the UN level is possibly growing out of the suggestion to create an “open-ended working group”, to identify and develop effective measures for the full implementation of the NPT-Disarmament Article VI. The legal aspects connected with this should be implemented in various ways such as, for example, through a yet-to-be-negotiated outline agreement. Decisive here will be whether the P5 participate in this and allow or block creative ideas.
On the positive side, it should be noted that the nuclear weapons states did not block this minimal consensus. Thus there still is a common ceiling for further nuclear disarmament. For most of the non-governmental organizations, however, these are only cosmetic corrections. Their complaint is that the goal of complete and global disarmament of all nuclear weapons – Global Zero – is still miles away. This criticism is quite justified since the long section in the draft of the conclusion neither articulates new measures nor does it satisfy the concerns of the “humanitarian initiative”. Nevertheless, some of the points in the draft document can be built upon – such as, for instance, in the technical, legal and political aspects of disarmament verification.
Over all, it is clear that:
1. The process of creating a WMDFZ in the Middle East has now been called into question completely. Now what matters is finding a viable process for continuing. In addition, the depositary states must engage more strongly, perhaps with the help of the UN and a “facilitator”[6]. Israel must show more flexibility. An agreement with Iran could also lead to a revival of the process. Technical working groups on verification or the threat level in the region could be initiated, be steadily continued and be “sponsored” by individual states. The UN General Assembly could also take up the process again in the context of their consultations in the fall of 2016 and permit a continuation of the WMDWF zone process to be worked out in a modified form.
2. The broad support for the “humanitarian initiative” can no longer be ignored by the nuclear weapons states. It makes very clear that the taboo against employing nuclear weapons is shared by a large percentage of the world’s states and that further disarmament steps must follow, especially from the USA and Russia. For many supporters of the “humanitarian initiative”, this is not about a step-by-step increase in security, but about the fundamental questioning of deterrence. If the nuclear weapons states are serious about their “step-by-step ap-proach” (that is, gradual nuclear disarmament, depending on the international security situation) then they must verifiably and irreversibly implement the 22 disarmament actions agreed upon at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, despite the absence of a concluding document. The trilateral “Deep Cuts Commission” worked out concrete recommendations for this in its two reports[7]. In further follow-up conferences, the “humanitarian initiative” movement could strengthen humanitarian law and a possible prohibition against employing nuclear weapons. However, this also applies to clearly identifying the existing legal and security gaps with nuclear weapons and formulating recommendations for the implementation of far-reaching disarmament steps.
3. The negotiating procedure for the review conference should also be questioned. Over four long weeks, a barely acceptable (certainly not revolutionary) compromise was worked out, which only represents the lowest common denominator. This failed at the midnight hour due to the almost insoluble conflicts in the Middle East. The formal division of the conference into a backward-looking review process and a forward-looking elaboration of innovative recommendations for improving the NPT must be more clearly separated.
[1] The NPT is the most important, multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation treaty for nuclear weapons. It includes 190 member states. The only non-members are North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel. Since the treaty came into effect in 1970, the NPT has rested on three complementary pillars: nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy. In the main committees and the subordinated sub-committees these topics are negotiated over a period of four weeks.
[2] Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
[3] The HI is a coalition of states which have organized three conferences on the topic of the humanitarian consequences of employing nuclear weapons and demand the prohibition in international law of using and possessing nuclear weapons.
[4] In this declaration, initiated by Austria, the signatory states emphasize, among other things, the stigmatization, the prohibition and the elimination of nuclear weapons, due to their „unacceptable humanitarian consequences and the risks connected with them“ See http://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussenpolitik/Abruestung/HINW14/HINW14vienna_Pledge_Document.pdf.
[5] With reference to concrete disarmament, the “concrete benchmarks and timelines”, “rap-id reductions” and “urgency to efforts by all states leading to a world without nuclear weap-ons” are spoken of. The terms “strategic stability”, “non-strategic weapons” and the devel-opment of “nuclear disarmament capabilities” were included in the draft.
[6] The zone process, begun in 2010, was led by the “facilitator”, the Finnish Ambassador Ljaava.
[7] See www.deepcuts.org/publications/reports.