The Art of Negotiation

It has never been easy to achieve agreement, either of procedure or substance, on disarmament issues. The difficulties, however, increased gradually and became ostensibly insurmountable from the mid-1990s onward. It is somewhat ironic that the end of the Cold War did not facilitate a narrowing of differences among the international disarmament community but instead seems to have exacerbated rivalry and disagreement on many disarmament questions.

To a certain extent, the present impasse on disarmament stems from institutionalized 1950s power dynamics. Structures that functioned reasonably well in the few decades after the end of World War II—despite deep rivalry, mistrust, and arms buildup between the two superpowers proclaimed, ushering in a new and highly complex era of regional interdependence and multipolarity. In short, the current international panorama bears little resemblance to the one that prevailed well into the 1980s.

The end of extreme East-West confrontation and North-South divisions gave rise to new and different security interests and agendas. At the same time, emerging centers of regional power find little, if any, recognition in the current international structures. The most glaring example of this is the composition of the Security Council, virtually unchanged since 1945 and so far impervious to reform.

Nuclear-weapon states and some of their allies, as well as a few other significant players, still adhere to the logic of confrontation and parochial security perceptions rather than to a committed search for common solutions that would increase the security of all. It appears that refusing to join in efforts to forge a general consensus is more expedient than trying to work out differences.

Despite an ostensible commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, nuclear-weapon states demonstrate no inclination to accept legally binding, irreversible, and multilaterally verifiable constraints on their nuclear arsenals. They continue to argue that multilateral disarmament negotiations are “premature” and refuse to engage in a debate on a nuclear-weapons convention, even if little, if any, justification can be found for the permanence of their huge arsenals.

Conversely, states that have already given up the option of possessing nuclear arms appear unwilling to enter into new multilateral agreements for fear they will curtail the right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities, and hence prospects for development, under the pretext of preventing proliferation.

Nations seem to have forgotten the ancient art of negotiation through enlightened compromise. Diplomats continue to talk past each other without troubling themselves to search for merit in proposals other than their own. For example, proponents of banning the future production of fissionable material for weapons purposes do not want to include their own stocks in the negotiations. In that case, most non-nuclear-weapon states contend, the ban would simply be redundant, because such production is already prohibited for them under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Yet, if an agreement to include stocks were reached, it could open the way for substantive progress on other issues in the conference’s agenda. The two sides, however, do not seem willing to negotiate.

The suggestion by many UN member states, particularly those in the Nonaligned Movement, to convene a new special session on disarmament in the General Assembly to assess the whole issue and make appropriate decisions is a constructive one. The convening of the fourth special session on disarmament (over twenty years after the failure of its most recent predecessor) could provide the impetus many consider essential to reach meaningful disarmament agreements. At the same time, it could address the realities of the twenty-first century that others deem intrinsically necessary.

States must realize that negotiation implies giving something in exchange for something else—it is not about imposing one set of views as the only possible way to solve a problem. In the post–Cold War world, the provision of credible qualification-free negative security assurances (as an interim measure, pending the achievement of nuclear disarmament) would help strengthen existing nonproliferation commitments and could provide an incentive for non-nuclear-weapon states to accept further controls on their peaceful nuclear activities. In order to make progress on disarmament issues, both nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states must seek out ways to find common ground in their agendas.

Contagious Acceptance

Just as intransigence in the major disarmament bodies has increased, the interest of large sections of civil society in nuclear disarmament issues has waned—reducing political pressure for the elimination of such weapons.

In nuclear-weapon states, citizens seem reconciled to the existence of nuclear weapons—as long as the status quo remains intact. The doctrine of deterrence, which the secretary general of the United Nations has called “contagious,” seems a chronic and accepted condition in countries whose security is based on weapons belonging to another state. There is also the risk that some non-nuclear-weapon states will be victims of the “contagion” and decide they too must acquire nuclear means of deterring perceived threats.

In some nuclear-weapon states, officials appear more concerned with the possibility that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of nonstate actors than with the threat posed by the mere existence of the weapons themselves.

In many developing non-nuclear-weapon states, global issues such as unfair trade practices, economic and social development, the environment, urban violence, civil rights, and drugs and organized crime are the foremost preoccupations. For many people in these countries, the threat of catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences stemming from the intentional or accidental use of nuclear weapons seems a very distant possibility that does not raise much concern.

Accordingly, in many nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states, demands for new multilateral efforts toward nuclear disarmament are largely not reflected in broad public opinion, despite the efforts of civil society organizations dedicated to disarmament. Citizens in all states, both those possessing and those without nuclear weapons, must wake up to the real threats of global nuclear arsenals and put pressure on their governments to pursue a disarmament agenda. After all, people worldwide are increasingly skeptical about the size of current military expenditures in the face of an economic crisis that generates rising unemployment and cutbacks in social spending.

In Good Faith

The disarmament impasse is in part a reflection of the growing lack of trust among members of the international community. Simply engaging in procedural gimmicks will not help to overcome the fundamental and substantive discord between the concerns, objectives, and expectations of nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states. Experience since the inception of the Ten-Nation Committee on Disarmament suggests that ad hoc changes in disarmament institutions will have little chance of alleviating the current impasse.

If international disarmament bodies are to work properly, there must be broad-based consensus on all disarmament issues. Each nation has to perceive that its security interests are duly protected and recognize that by engaging in concrete disarmament negotiations it stands to gain more than it will lose. States should muster the necessary political will to take a constructive look at proposals that have been made to begin concrete nuclear disarmament negotiations, which nuclear-weapon states have thus far refused to do.

In the meantime, UN member states can engage in one essential, if obvious, measure—they can faithfully carry out their commitments and fully abide by their obligations under existing multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation agreements. If states fulfilled their responsibilities, the current disarmament climate would certainly improve and would provide the indispensable basis of confidence upon which progress must build.

The indefinite permanence of the current impasse is alarming, for it risks unraveling positive results painstakingly achieved over the past several decades. It is high time that the international community start to confront the real need to increase security for all—rather than perpetuate the outdated concept of undiminished security for a few.