Building a Road to Nuclear Disarmament: Bridging the Gap between Competing Approaches

The book “Building a Road to Nuclear Disarmament: Bridging the Gap between Competing Approaches” while comprehending the contemporary global security environment, offers a new roadmap for nuclear disarmament by creating a balance between deterrence supporters and disarmament advocates. The book identifies the divide between competing approaches such as traditional security-centric aspects and humanity-centered disarmament perspectives and tackles the complex question of how to balance the ostensible compulsion of states for effective nuclear deterrence with the idea of a nuclear free world. The book argues that contemporary challenges of global and regional asymmetries, advent of new technologies, discriminatory approaches towards access of nuclear technology, export controls cartels and the failure to acknowledge the linkages between conventional balance and strategic stability continue to hinder global nuclear disarmament. The effective deterrent compulsions of states in the international system, in the backdrop of renewed great power competition, resurgence in global conflicts and reinvigoration of states’ has meant that the contemporary security landscapes, both international and regional, offer little prospects for any meaningful move towards nuclear disarmament. Consequently, the intensity of the contemporary security situation and growing conventional asymmetries in certain conflict regions such as Asia-Pacific, South Asia, Middle East and Korean peninsula will continue to present security dilemma-driven arms-race problems between states. As a result states’ reliance on deterrent force modernization has increased and will continue to increase while their emphasis on arms control and disarmament has decreased. The book further highlights that the contemporary global power shift seems to be challenging the relevance of the western-centric non-proliferation treaties. Most of the existing mechanisms, (discussed in this book) directed to promote arms control and disarmament, are in despair. The book further argues that the breakdown of arms control and non-proliferation agreements between the leading nuclear states, and their competition to maximize national security through arms race and dominance, has weakened the norms on arms control and restraint, which has consequently resulting in greater risk prone behaviors at the regional levels without the fear of international reprimand. The discriminatory practices for export control regimes has bestowed a sense of entitlement on some states and their sidestepping of non-proliferation norms has undermined the credibility of the non-proliferation regime as a whole which is exploited as a justification for arms race and other risk-prone behaviors. The contemporary security environment has witnessed the emergence of new technologies such as biotechnology, quantum computing and cryptograph, nuclear hypersonic weapons, including hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs), global prompt strikes (GPS), dominance in space, anti-satellite, surveillance, cyber warfare tools, high energy lasers, artificial intelligence and Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), low yield nuclear warheads. The book contends that this recent development along with the blurring of distinction between low yield nuclear weapons and high-precision advanced conventional munition has lowered the threshold for use of nuclear weapons thereby introducing serious stability challenges for international security in general and disarmament in particular. The book further argues that states leading the military-centered technological advancement, are disinclined to discuss any framework for the regulation of the above highlighted technologies. Resultantly, the nuclear-possessor states, who are competing against regional adversaries, in turn become more resistant to the idea of giving up their nuclear options to hedge against the emerging technologies. Besides their potential use for degrading an adversaries’ nuclear deterrence, new technologies can provide a decisive conventional edge to the holders of these technologies – this implies more reliance on nuclear weapons by those lacking such technologies. The South Asian security environment continues to reinforce this argument. India is undergoing an increasing upgradation of existing asymmetries in conventional forces. India is also acquiring new non-nuclear technologies such as missile defense, anti-satellite weapons and conventional counterforce modernization in order to accomplish status-driven ambitions. India’s modernization of nuclear platforms has enabled it to create a destabilizing military advantage in Asia. These modernization efforts include the upgradation in weapon grade fissile material stockpile, high-technology hardware induction, ballistic missile and force structure, induction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs) technologies and surveillance means such as ISR satellites, advanced and smarter air platforms, maritime-based Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAVs), Cruise missile, aircraft carriers and Global Prompt Strikes (GPS), hypersonic and biotechnologies. These arms-racing trends have created dangerous risks of accidental war, miscalculations, problems of strategic instability and disarmament crisis in the absence of regulatory frameworks. Based on the aforementioned, the book seeks to justify Pakistan’s position on issues such as strategic stability in South Asia, fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT), comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and other disarmament related instruments. In suggesting a way forward based on these elements, the book implicitly reinforces, the elements of Pakistan’s response for Strategic Restraint Regime in South Asia. The book critically examines the humanitarian approach to global zero and argues that advocates of the humanitarian approach have further divided rather than united the international community on nuclear disarmament. Civil society and states-sponsored disarmament advocates of The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), myopically focus on the humanitarian impact of the treaty, but they potentially fail to address the novel challenges posed by the emergence of advanced technologies for nuclear weapons policies and doctrines, and their resultant impact on nuclear arms race and disarmament. The TPNW itself was perceived by the civil society groups and the public alike as a major leap forward to a world without nuclear weapons; although, this treaty will create irreconcilable political cleavage between those who advocate it and those who hold monopoly on nuclear weapons. The TPNW will not be able to bridge the gap between nuclear weapon states (NWS) and non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) unless it addresses and incorporates current debates on emerging tensions at the regional levels. The book further argues that the humanitarian-centered groups have remained unsuccessful in building strong correlations between states’ security needs and progress on disarmament. The strong linkage between security and progress on disarmament has also been acknowledged by the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament (SSOD-I, 1978). The emergent consensus among members of the international community was that disarmament has to be non-discriminatory and proportional with leading nuclear weapons holders taking the lead. Moreover, they agreed that at every step of the disarmament process, it needs to be ensured that no state or a group of states, acquires a military advantage over the others and that equal and undiminished security for all states has to be guaranteed. It is imperative, thus to bridge the gap between NWS and NNWS by creating a balance between states’ security needs and disarmament. A serious question consequently arises; how should we maintain balance between some states’ aspirations for disarmament and other states’ need for an effective nuclear deterrent for their national security? The study argues that the divide between these competing approaches can be bridged by creating a new security environment. The norm against nuclear weapons is improbable to lead to a practical ban on nuclear weapons until certain new conditions prevail leading to the creation of a new security environment designed to address states’ disparities and differences. Thus, without serious and meaningful work in the UN system for proactive security mechanism, which provides guarantees to states against arbitrary action by militarily powerful states, it will remain cumbersome to convince states to give up nuclear weapons. For that purpose, the revival of conference on disarmament (CD) to negotiate nuclear disarmament as part of a comprehensive program of work, which provides for simultaneous effort to address non-nuclear military asymmetries, militarization of nuclear technologies, prevention of arms race in outer space by using the framework offered by the SSOD-I, will assist in creation of a new security environment to build a new road to disarmament.

About the Author

Dr. Rizwana Abbasi

The author is an Associate Professor at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan.

This is a book summary of Building a Road to Nuclear Disarmament Bridging the Gap Between Competing Approaches, a monograph published by Routledge and is available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003131205/building-road-nuclear-disarmament-rizwana-abbasi