Multilateral measures needed to rid of nuclear shadow

• Source: Global Times
• [22:46 April 13 2010]
• Comments

GT: Most nuclear countries claim they need the nuclear deterrence. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a statement recently that Russia would reserve the right to withdraw from the new START treaty if it felt that the US missile defense became a strategic threat. How would Obama convince the other nuclear countries to abandon suspicion and work together while the US still possesses one-quarter of the world's warheads?

Gill: The process of building greater trust among states is a big challenge and will take time and vision. The US and Russia have proven that with time, careful negotiations, verifiable agreements and serious diplomacy, even once-sworn enemies can become cooperative partners with broad common purpose.

So it is certainly not impossible to build such trust. It can be built, in part, through action.

American action is seen with the release of the NPR, with convening the nuclear summit, and with concluding the new START agreement. More work is needed to build trust further, but these are positive steps in the right direction, and reciprocal steps will be expected from others as we move ahead.

GT: The US is expected to call for a reduction in warheads at the summit, but the possession of warheads varies greatly from country to country. According to the statistics for 2010 on your website (www.sipri.org), Russia has 4,500 deployed warheads while the US has 2,600, France has 300, China has 186 while India has 60 to 70. How should a fair warhead-cut proposal be reached among the 40 participating countries?

Gill: It is too early to start official multilateral negotiations on nuclear warhead disarmament.

An important next step to expect will be continued bilateral disarmament by Russia and the US.

If the two can reduce their deployed warheads to less than 1,000, and if they are also able to verifiably dismantle and destroy other nuclear warhead stockpiles, then there will be expectations in Moscow and Washington that other nuclear weapons powers should be engaged in arms control and disarmament talks.

But the process will involve complicated factors and will not be easy. Unofficial discussions among non-governmental experts and researchers should begin now, including people from the US, Russia, China, France, the UK and others, about the conditions which would be necessary to start multilateral arms control and disarmament negotiations in the future.