Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

The future of the nuclear non-proliferation regime: the 2010 NPT review conference
ment agenda, and prefer direct negotiations between the P-5. These
negotiations should initially take place at bilateral level between the United
States and Russia and later be extended to the rest of the nuclear states
within a restricted multilateral framework.
The main criticism levelled by the non-nuclear countries is that the
nuclear powers have not done enough to meet the objectives established
in the action plan adopted in 2000. The former point out that the P-5 have
systematically attempted to disassociate themselves and reinterpret the
list of the «13 practical steps», claiming that what matters is not the issues
relating to article VI of the NPT, but violations of the Treaty. Another example
of the different perceptions of the priorities is the French-US alliance
forged at the 2004 NPT Preparatory Committee in which references to the
2000 document were minimal and, what is more, not even a document
with recommendations for the 2005 conference was adopted (42).
The US has traditionally been at the centre of the criticisms of failure to
comply with disarmament commitments, beginning with former president
Bush’s refusal to ratify the CTBT, failure to support the adoption of an
FMCT (regarded as not effectively verifiable) and the doctrine on the use of
nuclear weapons (in favour of negative security assurances for the States
Parties to the NPT, but without relinquishing the use of nuclear weapons
against a state possessing chemical and/or biological weapons) (43).
In turn, the US decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty (following
its unilateral denunciation) on 13 June 2002 drove a wedge into bilateral
relations between Washington and Moscow in disarmament and armaments
control issues. Moscow viewed the ABM Treaty as the cornerstone
of disarmament and retaliated to the US withdrawal by declaring itself no
longer bound by the (Nuclear) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II)
the following day, 14 June. The ABM Treaty was based on the principle
of nuclear deterrence, according to which a country would abstain from
using its nuclear weapons if it knew that the target state would respond
with its own nuclear weapons. Under the Treaty the number of weapons
and radars permitted was limited and it was agreed to use missiles only
in the national territories. Both countries agreed not to manufacture any
(42) For a summary of the results of the 2004 PrepCom see «Laying Substantive Groundwork
for 2010: Report of the 2009 NPT PrepCom», Disarmament Diplomacy, No. 91, summer
2009, http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd91/91npt.htm.
(43) SCHEINMAN, Lawrence, «Disarmament: Have the five nuclear powers done enough?»,
Arms Control Today, January-February 2005, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_01-
02/Scheinman.
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