Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
10/10/2014
While negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty have been deadlocked in the U.N. Conference on Disarmament (CD) since 2011, nuclear expert and Princeton professor Zia Mian said this week that U.S. Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty could initiate a path forward for a future agreement. “It would encourage many other countries because, as part of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty conferences, it was agreed that the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty should be completed and entered into force, and so other countries worry that if we negotiate a treaty with the United States, will it end up like the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty?” Mian said on the sidelines of an Oct. 7 disarmament event in Washington. “We all sign it and ratify it, and the United States doesn’t? Then what was the point? So in that sense, ratification by the Senate of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty proves the United States will keep its word.”
The U.S. failure to ratify CTBT after signing it in 1996 has caused other heads of state to question the United States’ ability to deliver on other agreements, Mian said. “It becomes a matter of the United States’ standing in the international community when it comes to these issues,” Mian said. “So that’s why it makes a difference.”
Expert: U.S. Hasn’t Pushed Hard Enough For FMCT
At the 2011 CD in Geneva, Pakistan blocked the adoption of a treaty agenda, effectively stopping a path forward for the proposed FMCT, which seeks to ban the production of further fissile material for nuclear weapons or other explosive devices. Mian charged that the U.S. and its allies enabled the treaty’s impasse, which occurred while the U.S. was at war in Afghanistan and engaged in anti-terrorist activities in Pakistan. “The idea that Pakistan, by itself, could fend off the entire international community from negotiating an international treaty that the community wants is a laughable argument. I mean, really?” he said. “The fact of the matter is that, for the United States and its allies, fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda was so much more important than production of fissile material and nuclear weapons in Pakistan or India or anywhere else, that it wasn’t an issue, so Pakistan could get away with it—because it was at no cost.”
Mian claimed that the proposed treaty’s dormancy is rooted in the U.S. and European priorities, and their diplomacy decisions with Pakistan. “We could have progress on FMCT,” Mian said. “It’s not that hard to do.”
Treaty Would Just Formalize ‘Status Quo,’ Expert Says
Most nuclear weapon states, including the U.S., no longer produce weapons-grade fissile materials anymore, so the treaty should align with many nations’ interests, even though many nations have henceforth given the issue a low priority, Mian said. “All [the FMCT would be] doing is formalizing the status quo,” he said. “So nuclear weapons states are not losing anything by doing it. … It’s just a question of people wanting to give enough priority to this issue to decide that this is now the top of the heap and we want to do something about it, so that’s all there is to it.”
