2012 Conference on Disarmament Pakistan’s Approach towards FMCT

CD Agenda for the 2012 session

The 2012 CD agenda, adopted on January 24, 2012, remains unchanged from previous years, and contains following eight items:

1.    Cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament;
2.    Prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters;
3.    Prevention of an arms race in outer space;
4.    Effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons;
5.    New types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons; radiological weapons;
6.    Comprehensive program of disarmament;
7.    Transparency in armaments;
8.    Consideration and adoption of the annual report and any other report, as appropriate, to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
 
The preceding points have been divided into core and non-core items. The following four core issues have been receiving more attention of the CD delegates:

1.    Nuclear disarmament;
2.    A treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices;
3.    The prevention of an arms race to outer space; and
4.    Negative security assurances.      

Deadlock at Conference on Disarmament: The CD Presidency Working Paper (CD/1929) acknowledged on January 30, 2012 that “during the informal consultations held by the President based, first, on informal bilateral contacts with certain members, and secondly, on the non-paper submitted to all members for reflection, it has become clear that there is no agreement to move forward with the items on the Conference’s agenda.”  This is not a positive development for the CD, which has deadlocked for fifteen years. The CD’s chronic lack of productivity endangers its credibility and existence.
 
The comprehensive review of arms control and disarmament treaties/agreements reveals that a few items of the CD agenda were already addressed by various treaties. For instance, the problems regarding the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament were addressed in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons indirectly addressed in the Article VI of the NPT—provided this article is executed sincerely by the nuclear weapon states. This article also obliges the nuclear weapon states to denuclearize themselves. During the 2010 review conference of the NPT, the nuclear weapon states reiterated to implement the Article VI of the NPT. Interestingly, Washington and Moscow present their new START Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011, as a disarmament initiative, which, in reality, is a mere arms control treaty between the two leading nuclear weapon states.

Importantly, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) has not been receiving a serious attention of the delegates at the Conference. The United States has been endeavoring to place missile-space beds in the outer space for its missile-interceptor batteries deployment. That is why the United States and its close allies Israel and India had vetoed PAROS in 2005. Furthermore, the U.S rejected the joint sponsored treaty of Russia and China mainly because it believes that missile defense systems could only perform effectively, if they are capable of developing and deploying missile interceptors in the outer space. The United States tested X 37 B satellite, which is a missile bed in space and it could provide Pentagon with a capability of deploying its missile-interceptor batteries in the outer space.
 
In realistic terms, the Nuclear Disarmament seems impossible because the nuclear weapon states are disinclined to compromise on their nuclear arsenals. They are not even capping their nuclear weapons modernization programs. For instance, the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) Trident Commission Discussion Paper 1, published in November 2011, highlighted that nuclear weapon states maintain ‘long-term nuclear force modernization or up-gradation programs. The United States 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Report, released on April 6, 2010, called for making investment to rebuild America’s aging nuclear infrastructure.  The trend is that the old nuclear weapon states have been lowering their nuclear arsenals quantitatively while improving qualitatively, whereas new members of the nuclear club—India, Pakistan and North Korea—have been improving both quantitatively and qualitatively. Such trends also make the execution of the Article VI of the NPT impossible. Thus, Nuclear Disarmament would remain a wishful thinking in the prevailing global strategic environment.