Non-Proliferation Archives - Page 2 of 2

ASEAN community-building efforts need Australia’s strong support

27 August 2013/in Strategist Article

Rising strategic tensions in the Asia-Pacific could derail ASEAN’s security-building efforts, despite the concrete progress that ASEAN members have made in addressing mutual challenges. The consequences could be serious for Australia, which has benefitted from a long period of strategic stability and efforts to improve security standards in its near neighbourhood.

About 10 years ago, the UN secretariat realised that regional mechanisms could be effectively utilised to address security challenges, many of which are transnational. Scholars, including me (PDF), have argued that this approach should be a particular priority in Southeast Asia, where insurgency, terrorism, and high levels of corruption and transnational crime combine with porous borders, busy ports and major transhipment hubs to create a potent cocktail of threats and vulnerabilities. The strain this places on the region’s developing states is overwhelming, highlighting the importance of ASEAN’s goal of developing a regional security community. Read more

The next step in nuclear arms control

5 August 2013/in Strategist Article

From the late 1940s until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the two superpowers engaged in a standoff whereby each threatened the very existence of the other with tens of thousands of strategic nuclear warheads. This perilous situation created powerful incentives on both sides to exercise control over their nuclear arsenals, and to cooperate on agreed areas of mutual interest in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

If we compare the Cold War situation to what exists today, we can see that nuclear dynamics are now far more complex. No longer is it two nations of comparable size squaring off over the same geography. Today’s nuclear relationships consist of both the traditional P5 nuclear-weapon states (US, Russia, UK, France, China) as well as newer and emerging nuclear powers (Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) that are locked in bitter and unbalanced strategic rivalries with neighbours. Read more

Australia’s 2013 Defence White Paper: shrinking the nuclear genie?

3 May 2013/in Strategist Article

The role that US nuclear weapons play in Australian strategic policy is given far less emphasis in the new Defence White Paper. While the 2009 document contained five paragraphs that directly addressed the issue of extended nuclear deterrence and extended nuclear reassurance in the Australian context, this White Paper has only one.

It’s an interesting paragraph, though, because it specifically limits Australian reliance on US nuclear weapons to circumstances in which Australia is threatened with a nuclear attack. This is a change from 2009, when US extended deterrence and security assurance was described in much broader terms as ‘the best defence against WMD proliferation’.

This paper’s reference to the ‘continuing viability of extended deterrence under the alliance’ reflects a more subtle but equally significant shift. The 2009 document spoke of the ‘stable and reliable sense of assurance’ that US nuclear weapons have provided Australia over the years, removing ‘the need for Australia to consider more significant and expensive defence options’. It also explained that the viability of extended nuclear deterrence was dependent upon ‘stable’ nuclear deterrence remaining a feature of the international system. These references to ‘stable nuclear deterrence’ in the broader international context have gone, replaced with a much more precisely worded, Australia-specific exposition of the role of nuclear deterrence. Read more

Position Vacant: Non-proliferation and Disarmament Leader, Asia

5 December 2012/in Strategist Article

During the past few weeks there have been some striking discussions in the international media about the future strategic order. One of the most interesting is an article by Ralph Cossa and David Santoro, which was originally published by the CSIS think tank and was then picked up by the Japan Times. Two short sentences half way through the piece particularly caught my eye: ‘The United States has limited power and influence to shape the major power agenda in the Asia–Pacific. The future of this agenda will be determined by decisions made in Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad—not in Washington.’

This is probably true over the longer-term, and the implications are very significant for world order. It brings to mind William Walker’s new book, A Perpetual Menace, which raises concerns about the weakly-defined Asia-centric system of military engagement that is likely to replace the Eurocentric one. The big questions are: how will peace and stability be achieved as US preeminence wanes, and what values will underpin the new Asia-centric system?

This discussion is becoming more urgent, including in the nuclear context. A potential problem is that the existing non-proliferation regime has been largely shaped by the Eurocentric system that is currently in decline. At the heart of this regime, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) has expanded and deepened its original role, achieved almost universal membership and withstood serious challenges, primarily because its strategic and political value has been recognised by the states that have dominated the Eurocentric system (the Western powers and the Soviet Union/Russia). Of these, the US has had the most significant impact on the Treaty’s success: when it has offered pro-active support, great strides have been possible; when it has dropped the ball, as it did most dramatically during the George W. Bush years, the consequences have been serious. Read more

Fasten your seatbelts: nuke talks are about to get very bumpy

19 November 2012/in Strategist Article

Diplomats at the UN in New York have revealed that a long-awaited conference on establishing a WMD free zone in the Middle East has been cancelled. The meeting was due to take place in Finland next month, and was supposed to bring together representatives from across the Middle East—including Israel and Iran—to begin discussions on ridding their region of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery.

The cancellation of an international conference might not sound like ground-breaking news, but it’s far more significant than many people will realise. Its roots go all the way back to 1990, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of the zone, primarily as a way to deal with Israel’s nuclear weapons program. In 1995, the goal of creating the zone became embedded in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) review process when negotiators struck a series of political bargains to help drum up support for the NPT’s indefinite extension. A number of states in the Middle East had been reluctant to support the treaty’s extension, because their commitment not to develop nuclear weapons and to remain within the treaty would put them at a permanent disadvantage unless Israel, which has never joined the treaty and is widely known to be an undeclared nuclear weapons state, disarmed. Eventually, they were persuaded to drop their reservations. In return, all NPT parties pledged to ‘exert their utmost efforts’ to ensure that a ‘zone free of all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems’ was established in the Middle East. Read more

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