Trust but verify. That’s what former US president Ronald Reagan said when he began the process of normalising relations with the USSR in the 1980s. Ultimately, Reagan succeeded in weaning Gorbachev away from the communist model and this, in turn, lead to the breaking up of the USSR.
Almost three decades later, Washington’s energetic new chief executive Barack Obama has embarked on a similar expedition. At the recently-concluded G-20 meeting, he had several side-meetings — with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and China’s President Hu Jintao — to address major global security and economic challenges.
The US-Russia meeting focused largely on how to kick-start the negotiations on new (nuclear) weapons-counting rules, a variation of what is known as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) talks. Other important issues, like stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb also figured during the two-hour meeting.
Obama followed-up the London meeting with a visit to the Czech Republic where he gave a ‘historic’ address, calling for a world free of nuclear weapons or ‘getting to zero’. He also signaled Washington’s commitment to kick-start the stalled negotiations on Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) that bans production of fissile material, and to start the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Though Obama was unable to prevail upon his trans-Atlantic allies like Germany and France to get an agreement on a global stimulus package, he can claim credit for preparing the ground for a global dialogue on how to arrive at a new nuclear and disarmament paradigm.
It is a different story that North Korea chose to cock a snook at the US by launching a long-range inter-continental ballistic missile hours before Obama spoke about his nuclear-free vision in Prague. In many ways, the North Korean defiance has shocked the US and its western allies who are no longer able to call the shots in the global security order.
But disarmament negotiators are unsure whether Washington is truly committed to complete universal disarmament despite what Obama signaled in London and, subsequently, in Prague. They say Washington must give up its hard-line stance on key security and nuclear issues at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) for any meaningful negotiations on all global security issues.
For almost 13 years, the CD, which is the multilateral negotiating forum to finalise rules on disarmament treaties, has been paralysed because of the wide gap in positions between the US and other key actors like Russia and China as well as others. Differences over the FMCT and the prevention of an arms race in the outer space have blocked any forward movement till now. The United States and Russia are united on the need for the FMCT and are prepared to work together on a legally-binding treaty to ban future production of fissile material while keeping their current stocks unaffected. Washington is, however, dead opposed to disciplines that call for ‘effective verification’. The US repeatedly argued that that extensive verification mechanisms and provisions in the FMCT would scupper ‘the core national security interests of key signatories’.
Several developing countries, including India, also want the FMCT without any further delay. But they are demanding that it provide equal treatment for all its signatories. The treaty has to be non-discriminatory and ‘stipulate the same obligations and responsibilities for all States’. It should incorporate a verification mechanism ‘in order to provide an assurance that all States party to it are complying with their obligations under the treaty’.
Russia and China, which is now a claimant to super power status, say they will agree to an FMCT provided Washington starts discussing a ‘balanced and comprehensive work program’ on all issues, including the prevention of an arms race in outer space. Unless Washington acknowledges that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, President Obama is unlikely to make much headway in his cherished dream of a nuclear-free world — in even his grandchildren’s lifetime!
