Nuclear-Free Zones

David Pitt, Gordon Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000199888
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

There is growing interest world wide in nuclear-free zones. Originally published in 1987, this book explores the question of what constitutes a nuclear-free zone and charts the progress of the movement to establish them. The book shows how definitions of nuclear-free zones vary from those intended to exclude everything nuclear (including nuclear power installations and the dumping of nuclear waste) to those aiming to exclude nuclear weapons in a limited way. Special attention is paid to the three treaties which have established major international nuclear-free zones, (Latin America, South Pacific, Antarctica) examining their strengths and weaknesses as well as areas where the idea has been proposed (Balkans, Africa). The book concludes with a review of problems and prospects for the future.

Chapter One
NUCLEAR-FREE ZONES : AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME

David Pitt

In 1985 there was a story going round the Press Bar in the Palais des Nations in Geneva just after the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, the RAINBOW WARRIOR in Auckland. At a diplomatic cocktail party the New Zealanders were lamenting to their French colleagues about the incident. ‘At least’ said the French diplomat ‘everybody knows now where New Zealand is’. Nuclear-free zones (NFZ) are probably in the same category and partly for the same reason. Nuclear-free zones have become not only a political issue but also part of the public consciousness to the extent that people put NFZ stickers on their houses, cars and even their toilets. But what is a nuclear-free zone? Some people want no contact with any form of nuclear energy. The usage in international relations as adopted by the United Nations is not nearly so comprehensive. Nuclear-free zones are areas of the world where most of the countries of a given region want to be free of nuclear weapons, whilst not interfering with existing treaties or international legal freedoms and with the support of existing nuclear powers. But what a nuclear weapon is, has not been clearly defined nor are peaceful uses (likewise not defined) necessarily prohibited at all. Some countries allow the passage of nuclear weapons and others go further than weapons in prohibiting, for example, the dumping of radioactive wastes. This book is concerned with nuclear-weapons-free zones, in this limited sense.

The idea of nuclear-weapon-free zones is as old as nuclear weapons. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced an instant reaction. The very first resolution of the United Nations made recommendations for the international control of atomic energy and its use for peaceful purposes. There has long been a particular fear amongst those nations which were not part of the nuclear club. In the 1950s when the idea was widely discussed an initial impetus came from the Central European nations. Adam Rapacki from Poland, a country often overrun by bellicose neighbours, produced a plan for an ‘atomic free’ Central Europe involving the removal of nuclear weapons from East and West Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

There were early moves too in the Baltic, where there was a strong neutral current. Finland proclaimed itself nuclear-free as early as 1947. In 1961, at the United Nations, Sweden tabled the Unden Plan calling for, inter alia, the establishment of nuclear-free zones. Elsewhere there were similar suggestions in the 1950s and 60s - Balkans, Mediterranean, China, Indian Ocean, Ireland, Antarctica and Latin America. In the last 2 areas treaties were produced (1959, 1967). The Latin American Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967) was a particularly significant document. The contracting parties undertook to prohibit testing, manufacture or storage of any kind of nuclear weapon or devices for launching them and direct or indirect acquisition. By 1985 there are still many problems and deficiencies - Cuba has not signed (and will not until the USA returns Guatanamo) nor some Carribean Countries, nor Guyana (because of a border dispute with Venezuela). Argentina has not ratified the treaty and Brazil and Chile, though ratifying have not fulfilled the conditions for entry into force. Nonetheless, Tlatelolco was the first, and until the Rarotonga Treaty in 1985, the only treaty covering a populated area.

However it was initially not only smaller countries but also superpowers who sought nuclear-free zones. The nuclear club (initially the USA, USSR, and UK, later joined by France and China) was and remains most anxious to prevent ‘horizontal’ proliferation to other powers. From 1962 there were long running discussions in the 18-nation (later enlarged) Committee on Disarmament, under the permanent co-chairmanship of the USA and USSR, from which emerged a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (1968). By 1985, one hundred and thirty countries had become party to that treaty which encouraged (in Article VII) groups of states to conclude treaties which would assure the total absence of nuclear weapons from their region.

The NPT has been a ‘curate’s egg’ - good in parts. It has not prevented so-called ‘vertical proliferation’, the accumulation of more weapons by members of the nuclear club. The number of such weapons in the American and Soviet arsenals has risen from approximately 6,000 in 1970 to 20,000 in 1985. China and France have not signed. Other powers almost certainly have nuclear devices (India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel) and a number of others are on, and can easily pass over, the threshold (Argentina, Brazil, Iraq, South Korea, Taiwan). In short, perhaps three quarters of the world’s population live in nuclear or near nuclear states. Adding to the process of horizontal proliferation have been the increasing deployment of superpower weaponry in friendly states and the transfer of nuclear technology generally. The civil use of nuclear energy is considered a relatively easy route to an eventual acquisition. Groups of schoolboys have even been designing devices. In a 1985 briefing document on the NPT, Greenpeace has therefore concluded that by the end of the 1980s ‘all but the poorest third world countries will have some sort of nuclear plant and technology’.

Despite, probably because of, the troubles of the NPT and NFZs the NFZ movement has taken on a fresh vigour and vitality in the 1980s. There has been a great upsurge of popular antipathy to things nuclear. In Australia and New Zealand local authorities and communities began to declare themselves nuclear-free. According to the Nuclear Free Zone Registry there were by mid-1984 over 1,600 cities in the world which were NFZs, many in Britain and over 80 in the USA, totalling over 10 million people in that country alone. Of course the degree to which these cities were, or could be ‘free’ varied and some were only able to restrict transport of materials etc., or simply make the protest.

Nonetheless the mushrooming of such NFZs was a sign of a strong public opinion. In one country (New Zealand) nearly two thirds of the population lived in areas which had declared themselves NFZs. These people in fact voted in a Labour Government in 1984 on a nuclear-free platform. In 1985 a new treaty in the South Pacific emerged, initiated not only by Australia and New Zealand but by many small island nations who were regularly confronted by French nuclear tests on the coral island of Mururoa. Trade unions in the Pacific banded together to prohibit nuclear ships and cargoes from ports.

The nuclear club reaction to the recent emergence of NFZs has been mixed and in some cases hostile, as in the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. The USA has reacted strongly to the prohibition of its nuclear ships in New Zealand and the Pacific and has even purportedly ‘invaded’ a former Pacific territory (Palau) which has established a nuclear-free constitution. There is a fear of a domino effect among US allies in Asia and the Pacific. At the NPT Review Conference in 1985 the USA and the UK were most reluctant to see any curtailing of their nuclear prerogatives, thus allowing the USSR, which has espoused the NFZ idea, to curry favour with the non-aligned bloc. More generally perhaps, there is a fear and suspicion amongst power elites that ideas of NFZs supported by ‘green’ parties and movements, especially amongst young people and women, represent a political threat. This book represents a first attempt to provide some kind of analysis of this important area by looking at the international aspect - first the treaties that have been concluded involving terrestrial areas (Antarctica, Tlatelolco, Rarotonga). We have not included a discussion of the sea-bed, outer space or, subnational nuclear-free zones, though we hope to treat these in later volumes. We have however included a number of essays that discuss regions where nuclear-free zones have been suggested (Europe, Balkans and Africa) and where treaties may emerge in the future, especially after the Rarotonga publicity. The NPT discussions in Geneva in 1985 after all showed that the group of non-aligned nations are closing ranks on this as well as economic issues through the Group of 77. This Southern Coalition is also finding an ally in Northern nations outside the superpower complex. There is an increasing momentum behind discussions in both Western (and especially Northern) Europe and the Balkans. The superpowers themselves may be, albeit grudgingly, recognising a global situation where there is no one power bloc or superpower domination.

The book then, we hope, is part of a wave of the future. Significantly, most of our contributors come from small countries, though this may be more by accident than design, since in the Soviet Union at least, nuclear-free zones have been studied for a long time. More important perhaps, our contributors come from a wide range of disciplines and from academic, activist and political backgrounds. There is a little doubt that we are witnessing a reshuffling of academic boundaries as well as a crossing of the line between the pure and the applied. A new interdisciplinary, action-oriented kind of peace research is emerging, based on rational analysis, legal argument and solid scientific study, far removed from ideological rhetoric. We hope this book will be of value to the growing numbers of peace studies courses that are being mounted in not only the universities but also a wide range of schools and educational institutions. We hope our audience will be wider still. Peace, once the most important part of the United Nations work until overshadowed by the emphasis on development, may again become central, if only because the success of peace and development are inextricably intertwined. In the labyrinth of arms negotiations, clearly written analyses are desperately needed by those directly involved, as well as by the journalists who relay the deliberations and results on to the wider public. We hope this book will be useful to all these people.

We have adopted a chronological approach. We begin with Thakur and Gold’s brief analysis of the first nuclear-free zone treaty in Antarctica. In many ways this treaty was exceptional, applying to a largely uninhabited area where national claims were (in one area) either non-existent or at least initially without significant exploitation. In this sense the Antarctic Treaty belongs with later negotiations over the sea-bed and outer space. But the idea begun in Antarctica generated a momentum from the late sixties onward, noticeably in those areas that were contiguous to it, that is Latin America and the South Pacific.

We continue therefore with Garcia Robles’ discussion and defence of the Tlatelolco Treaty. Robles is important amongst our authors in that he was an active negotiator, if not the father of a treaty. Whatever the critics have said about Tlatelolco it was for nearly 20 years a unique institution in itself. Not until the mid-1980s do we find a new treaty - different and more comprehensive even if it also had an exotic, albeit more easily pronounced name - Rarotonga. We present two complementary views of the Rarotonga Treaty from New Zealand (Thakur) and Australia (Fry). Both are concerned to show what the Rarotonga Treaty can and cannot do in a situation of superpower indifference or hostility.

The second half of our book is concerned with ‘treaties yet to be’, with proposals and movements, particularly in three areas, Western Europe, the Balkans and Africa. Of these, the earliest moves were in Europe. Coates’ paper is a plea for a nuclear-free zone in Europe, continuing the important ideas of statesmen like Rapacki, and more recently, Palme. We then continue with Pamir and the Balkans where there is also a long history of attempts to move towards a nuclear-free zone, dating back to at least the Roumanian initiative of 1957. Then follows an essay from Epstein on Africa, a continent which has suffered in recent years both severe development crises and many of the 300 or more conventional wars which have plagued mankind since World War II. Proposals for a nuclear-free zone in Africa were not much behind Europe, following the French tests in the Sahara in 1960. We conclude the essays from our contributors with Coates looking at the general problems and prospects for nuclear-free zones.

Our conclusions can only be interim. Whilst the number of nuclear weapons continues daily to escalate and horizontal proliferation seems impossible to prevent, the idea of the nuclear-free zone has a greater urgency and potential application (e.g. conservation zones). But the idea has itself no teeth and indeed there are those who say, that the treaties that exist are not enforceable or respected or have never been put to the test. The history of international relations is regrettably littered with treaties whose provisions have been broken, sometimes before the ink is dry on them. Will this be the fate of the nuclear-free zones treaties or will the growing weight of public opinion press on governments who seem either not to want arms reduction, or to be unable to achieve it? Nuclear-free zones may in the ultimate analysis be successful precisely because they are a concrete and tangible way for people to show their aspirations for peace. There can no longer be the ‘lambs and dragons’ situation that David Low (originally from New Zealand, a country where sheep outnumbered people twenty times over) portrayed in a famous cartoon now displayed in a glass case in the League of Nations Museum in Geneva. The cartoon, drawn after a disarmament conference in the 1930s, showed a stage on which a nasty assortment of animals, dragons and even a crocodile, weeping crocodile tears, were talking to an audience of peaceful looking sheep. ‘We regret to say’ said the chief dragon ‘that we have been unable to control your warlike passions’. Through the nuclear-free passion the sheep may yet strike back.

Postscript

Since this book was written the quorum of 8 local nations and two superpowers, the People’s Republic of China and the USSR, have signed the Rarotonga Treaty; the last with some reservations. Moreover, Mr Gorbatchev, as part of sweeping reforms in Soviet foreign, as well as domestic, policy has proposed a nuclear-weapon-free world by the year 2000. Even if the chances of achieving this utopia seem remote, given the refusal of the USA and France to acknowledge nuclear-weapon-free zones and indeed their active policies to increase nuclear weaponary, we may be entering a new phase of international relations where the small nuclear-free champions are joined more actively by some of the big boys.

Chapter Two
ANTARCTICA AS A NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE

Ramesh Thakur and Hyam Gold

The Antarctic Treaty is of great historical significance in the movement towards establishing and extending nuclear-free zones: it was the first such zone to be created in the world. After the adoption of the Antarctic Treaty at a conference in Washington on 1 December 1959, commentators hailed it as a model of international cooperation. Indeed some speculated on the relevance of the model for talks on disarmament, demilitarising other regions of the world, and even the possibility of a regime for outer space.

Signed by all twelve participating governments at the conclusion of the Washington Conference, the Antarctic Treaty has been in force since 23 June 1961. There are now 16 Antarctic Treaty consultative parties. Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, USA and the USSR are the twelve original signatories. Poland became a consultative party in 1977, West Germany in 1981, and Brazil and India in 1983. In addition there are 12 ‘acceding’ states which have signed the treaty but are yet to undertake the substantial scientific activity necessary for admission to consultative status; they are: Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Rumania, Spain and Uruguay.

The many substantive and continuing achievements of the Antarctic Treaty owe much to the fact that the regime consists of both static and dynamic elements. The treaty seeks to demilitarise and denuclearise Antarctica and provide freedom of scientific research while holding in perpetual abeyance both claims to sovereignty and disputes about such claims. The static elements of demilitarisation and denuclearisation are complemented by the dynamic element of cooperative arrangements in research, exploration and environmental protection. The instrument which gives practical effect to the system is the periodic consultative meeting held under Article IX of the treaty. Membership in the Antarctic Club is open; any UN member can become a party to the treaty. Moreover, any country engaged in substantive scientific research in Antarctica can become a consultative party, and would find it in its interests to do so.

The basic rules of the Antarctic Treaty aim at demilitarising the continent and opening it for free scientific research. The demilitarisation and denuclearisation provisions are contained in Articles I and V. Participants at the Washington Conference had agreed on the need to reserve Antarctica exclusively for peaceful purposes, but differed on the wording of the clauses. The final phrasing of Article I emerged from a Soviet draft. After declaring that Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only, Article I prohibits any measures of a military nature, e.g. military bases, fortifications and manoeuvres, and weapons testing. Military personnel and equipment may however be used for research or other peaceful purposes. Not all countries at the 1959 Conference were happy with this significant exception to the demilitarisation principle, but accepted it as a concession to practical reality. Article V prohibits any nuclear explosions and the disposal of radioactive waste materials in Antarctica, the latter provision being subject to the possibility of being overtaken by a future multilateral agreement. In 1959, it was the nuclear powers who favoured allowing peaceful nuclear explosions with appropriate safeguards. The argument failed to impress the non-nuclear parties, who remained firm in having the treaty impose a total ban on all nuclear explosions.

The Antarctic Treaty ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• New Foreword 2020
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Nuclear-Free Zones: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
• 2. Antarctica as a Nuclear-Free Zone
• 3. The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America
• 4. The Treaty of Rarotonga: The South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone
• 5. Regional Arms Control in the South Pacific
• 6. For a Nuclear-Free Europe
• 7. The Quest for a Balkan Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone
• 8. A Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Africa?
• 9. Nuclear-Free Zones: Problems and Prospects
• Conclusion
• About the Editors and Contributors
• About the Sponsoring Organisations
• Index