Paths forward for the Nuclear Suppliers Group

Nuclear technology has always been a contentious issue. The countries that originally took the lead in developing and acquiring nuclear technology understood very clearly the dangers that the technology posed, and have often sought to prevent nuclear know-how from spreading further. Other nations, conscious of the ways in which nuclear technology could benefit them, are often eager to acquire that know-how.

This fraught situation is further complicated by misperceptions and mistrust. Countries that possess nuclear technology can be perceived as wanting to keep technology for themselves so that they can enjoy unfair advantages over everyone else. Countries that attempt to develop nuclear technology, meanwhile, can be suspected of harboring non-peaceful motives.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty assures all states' inherent right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology; at the same time, proliferation of technology and material for weapons production is to be prevented, and nations that already possess nuclear weapons are to disarm. These are the treaty's three pillars, and together they represent the single idea around which the nonproliferation regime has been structured. But some would argue that this idea has remained just that: only an idea, and that none of the three pillars has been fully transformed into reality. The regime's incomplete success explains the "proliferation" of global, multilateral, regional, and subregional efforts to prevent weapons proliferation, promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology, and encourage disarmament. The progress that the treaty has achieved, though very limited in the eyes of some observers, must be acknowledged. The value of various multilateral, regional, and subregional efforts should be acknowledged as well.

Even though the issues that surround state acquisition of nuclear technology have not been settled yet, the threat of non-state actors' gaining access to nuclear technology and material has increasingly come to the fore. This has prompted the world community, which already focused considerable attention on nuclear safety and safeguards, to devote greater attention to nuclear security. Complicating this issue is the risk that nations might provide non-state actors with technology or material — whether directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally. But international mechanisms to address the possibility of non-state actors' gaining nuclear technology or material are still in their nascent stages. And if the mechanisms that have long been in place to address illicit state acquisition of nuclear technology and material have not fully succeeded, why should embryonic mechanisms to deal with non-state actors prove more effective?

Supply and demand. Given all this, if the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is to formulate a more effective set of policies for addressing nuclear proliferation, it must contend with several fundamental issues. First, states that embark on nuclear programs for legitimate purposes must not be made to feel that the policies, programs, and efforts of the NSG are meant to constrain and constrict them. Admittedly, this is not an easy task: Export controls are a realm in which differences in perception can be serious stumbling blocks. Proponents of export controls, such as the United States, often emphasize that export controls are not meant to restrict trade of dual-use items (though the NSG itself requires that facilities or activities for which dual-use items are intended must be placed under safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency). But among customer nations, the perception that export controls restrict trade unnecessarily is nonetheless strong. This perception makes it difficult, especially in countries with democratically elected legislatures, to pass export-control laws intended to prevent the re-export or transshipment of dual-use items.

These issues come into play in my own region of Southeast Asia, which is sometimes said to be undergoing a "nuclear renaissance." That is, the number of nations exploring nuclear power as an additional energy source to sustain their economic development is expected to increase over the coming years. Vietnam may bring a nuclear power plant online by 2020, and Indonesia and Malaysia are also seriously considering the adoption of nuclear energy. Amid this activity, it is important that the NSG not be perceived as unduly restricting Southeast Asian nations' energy ambitions.

A second fundamental issue for the NSG is that it must devise better mechanisms for ensuring that the technology and material provided to states for legitimate peaceful purposes are not diverted to states with nuclear ambitions that are not entirely peaceful. (In East Asia, North Korea is often considered a state with sinister nuclear ambitions; it has engaged in illicit deals as a purchaser and perhaps as a provider as well.) The governments with which the NSG deals may not be likely to transfer technology and material directly to states with less benign nuclear motives. But diversion could nonetheless occur.

Third, and relatedly, the NSG must factor in the possibility that states judged to be developing a legitimate nuclear capacity could provide technology and material to non-state actors. In Southeast Asia, this represents a difficult issue. No Southeast Asian state is known to tolerate terrorist groups that have attempted to acquire nuclear materials, but the porousness of borders in the region, along with minimal capacity in nuclear security, makes it difficult to ensure that no illicit shipment or transshipment of nuclear material can take place.

Greater or lesser. The dilemma therefore for the NSG is whether to conduct business with an increasing or decreasing number of states. Dealing with a greater number of states would ensure that the group's stringent nonproliferation standards are enforced in more places, but would also increase the number of avenues through which proliferating states and malicious non-state actors could gain access to technology. Transacting business with fewer states would decrease the number of access points but would also mean that NSG standards were applied in fewer countries. (In any event, states with which the NSG chooses not to conduct business could always turn into states that seek nuclear technology through illicit means.)

The spread of nuclear technology involves complicated dynamics and the interplay of competing forces. But since nuclear technology has already been developed and cannot be undeveloped, the global community — including the Nuclear Suppliers Group — must continue to grapple with how best to control the technology's spread.

Answering the question that this Roundtable poses — How could the policies of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) be improved to better take into account the needs and perspectives of developing countries? — requires understanding to what extent the NSG has been able to strike a balance between the obligations it imposes on developing nations and the benefits it provides them in return. In other words, do the NSG's policies advance the goals expressed in its guidelines, essentially that nuclear trade should not contribute to proliferation but that international trade and cooperation in the nuclear field should not be unduly hindered? It is no trivial point that the nuclear trade allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must not be hindered: Such trade is a key element of the nonproliferation regime, and the principles that underlie the regime must not be sacrificed due to the policies of a few countries.

The NSG has taken a number of nonproliferation actions over the decades that have been in line with the objectives of the treaty. But at the same time, the group has imposed constraints on developing countries that only seek to develop peaceful nuclear energy programs for the sake of their sustainable development and economic growth. These constraints, I believe, are not unrelated to the national interests of the United States and France, two countries that enjoy strong commercial positions in the nuclear market and would like to retain those positions.

Overzealousness, discrimination. Electricity demand in developing countries is growing quickly, and this is stimulating interest in nuclear energy. Unfortunately, overzealousness about nonproliferation and global nuclear security — though these concerns are legitimate — is inhibiting nuclear progress in developing countries. Some argue that global expansion of nuclear power is risky because it spreads technologies for making nuclear fuel, something that might give more states the ability to develop nuclear weapons. This argument ignores the very foundations of the treaty. The treaty is designed after all to ensure nonproliferation while at the same time making technology for civilian nuclear power programs widely available. The argument also tends to negate any role for developing countries in the nuclear energy market.

If the guidelines of the NSG had been carefully followed in the past, there would have been little room for discriminatory measures such as imposing excessive restrictions on an NPT signatory like Iran. Nor would the NSG in 2008 have granted an exemption allowing India, which is not a treaty signatory, to participate in nuclear trade. Somewhat similarly, prominent NSG members including the United States have remained largely silent on Israel's nuclear program.

In 1998 the members of the Non-Aligned Movement urged that all signatories to the treaty should "prohibit the transfer of all nuclear-related equipment, information, material and facilities, resources or devices, and the extension of know-how or any kind of assistance in the nuclear, scientific, or technological fields" to Israel, due to its not being a party to the treaty and its not having placed its nuclear activities under full IAEA safeguards. A decade later, the Non-Aligned Movement might have urged the same thing regarding India — but India was granted its waiver. This amounts to nuclear discrimination. The NSG enforces a double standard, focusing too much on proliferation issues in some developing countries while engaging in double standards when it comes to a country like India. This weakens the credibility of the group.

Balance and cooperation. The NSG's main challenge today is deciding how to balance the economic and proliferation aspects of nuclear transfers, all the while without violating its own guidelines or running afoul of its own objectives. It should be noted that developing countries, when they joined the treaty regime, placed great stock in the prospect of benefitting from peaceful nuclear transfers for the sake of their sustainable development and also placed great stock in comprehensive disarmament that would enhance their security. Therefore, the NSG should balance its proliferation focus with increased focus on the other two pillars of the NPT — comprehensive disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The NSG could promote disarmament by providing nuclear weapon states with technical assistance and promoting cooperation among them. Such an initiative would help dispel distrust in developing nations. Today, however, significant suspicion exists that the NSG has promoted the interests of certain Western countries in order to preserve those countries' preponderance of legal, technical, and political power within the NPT regime. Pursuing policies that have this effect can only lead to increased frustration in developing countries, which could ultimately result in the collapse of the NPT.

The NSG should make greater efforts to foster regional cooperation in nuclear energy. Developing countries, many of them reaching the conclusion that sustainable development depends on diversified sources of energy, are increasingly interested in nuclear power. Good examples of this exist in the Middle East. In this region, where political and ideological differences among states inhibit cooperation, the NSG could make a valuable contribution by facilitating nuclear energy cooperation, instead of focusing so intently on proliferation issues. In this way, the Nuclear Suppliers Group could help foster peace and stability in the region.

In the years since it was established in 1975, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has emerged as a comprehensive multilateral export-control regime for nuclear materials and technology. Another regime, the Zangger Committee, held its first meeting four years before the NSG came into existence, but it is the NSG that has demonstrated greater dynamism and has emerged as more relevant since the end of the Cold War.

The Zangger Committee was established to help signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) understand the technical issues related to transfers of nuclear materials and technology. But the committee did not include countries that were not signatories to the treaty; one such nation was France. The NSG, established as a complement to the committee, brought nations like France into the control regime. (France would accede to the treaty and also join the Zangger Committee in 1992).

In my own country of India, many people believed that the entire idea of bringing France into the nuclear control framework was to neutralize the power of Gaullism in France's economic and technology policies abroad. That is, France had often resisted the policies toward the developing world of other Western nations, and Paris's Gaullist impulses could be co-opted by bringing France into the NSG. In India, the Zangger Committee and the NSG were both understood as regimes for denying technology to the developing world — as undesirable barricades that blocked the flow of goods and technology to countries pursuing economic development through peaceful nuclear energy programs. A segment of Indian government and civil society continues to understand the systems in this fashion.

In the club. The nature of any organization's membership reflects that organization's value system. And for any body or organizational entity — whether national or international, formal or informal, large or small — the nature of its membership is important to its effectiveness and efficacy. When an organization is international, not to mention informal like the NSG, the group's objectives must be internationally acceptable. Therefore, in order for the NSG's decision making to gain international acceptance, the regime's membership must be representative of the world community.

Interestingly, though the NSG was barely active if not dormant during much of the Cold War, its membership grew. By 1991, membership had grown to 27 from the original seven, with some Eastern European countries among the new additions. Today, the NSG has 46 members, but it nonetheless needs to diversify its stakeholders. The group's membership manifests a distinct bias toward the developed world in general and Europe in particular. Well over 30 members are European: Not all of these belong to the European Union, but only a few of them are classified as developing by the World Bank. Beyond Europe, the developed world gains further representation from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Among Asia's four NSG members — China, Japan, Kazakhstan, and South Korea — only two are developing nations. Meanwhile, Latin America is represented only by Argentina and Brazil, and Africa by South Africa alone.

Many observers have predicted that the 21st century will prove to be the Asian century. Though only a few Asian countries qualify as developed today, Asia, with its rising powers, is the continent that promises to shape a new global order. Moreover, Asia is a continent with large, fast-growing economies that will demand a great deal of energy — including nuclear energy.

Since the 1990s, nuclear energy's expansion has been noticeable in Asia and developing countries elsewhere. A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notes that "of the 29 countries considering or planning for nuclear power in 2012, 10 are from the Asia and the Pacific region, 10 are from the Africa region, seven are in Europe (mostly Eastern Europe), and two are in Latin America." Another IAEA publication, from 2008, reports that "a total of 20 of the 35 plants under construction are in Asia, while 28 of the last 39 plants connected to the grid are also in Asia." Since 2008, Asian countries have ordered additional reactors and connected a few more to the grid. All this clearly argues for greater Asian participation in the nuclear export-control regime.

Old battles, new challenges. In the early days of the NSG's membership expansion, the countries that produced nuclear goods and services, and the countries that decided which nations gained access to those goods and services, were one and the same. But many countries with a limited role in nuclear commerce have since gained membership in the group. Meanwhile, several countries that are capable of contributing to the objectives of the NSG have been left out of the group and even subjected to stringent rules for nuclear transactions. Today, several countries that have mastered the nuclear fuel cycle are not members of the group. And certain other countries, which may not have mastered the entire nuclear fuel cycle but still possess resources or expertise valuable to one or more stages of the fuel cycle, have not gained membership either.

Going forward, the NSG will have to reflect emerging trends in the global nuclear power industry. New producers will have to become controllers: Otherwise, the group might be undermined, and its ability to accomplish its objectives will be severely constrained. The NSG will have to make a decision about what it wants to be in the 21st century. Does it want to fight old battles, or meet new challenges?

Developing countries have long complained that multilateral export control regimes stunt their economic development. Today, the NSG's control list has become almost universal. Much of the international community has developed an understanding that peaceful nuclear development and responsible control of nuclear technology and materials must go hand in hand; any imbalance between these two imperatives will imperil the development of civilian nuclear energy. The NSG would also do well to start striking a better balance between economic development and nuclear controls. The group should send a signal that it does not oppose development of peaceful nuclear energy, even as it remains strongly opposed to proliferation and proliferation networks.

The NSG will have to identify which countries are its partners, and which are the focuses of its nonproliferation efforts. In 2004, the group made a mistake by extending membership to China. True, China is a rising economic power that has grand plans for expanding its nuclear energy capability, and Beijing has joined all the key nonproliferation arrangements. But China's nonproliferation record is dubious: It is suspected by many of exporting technologies related to weapons to mass destruction. Meanwhile, and unfortunately, the NSG has not partnered with certain countries, such as India, that share its objectives, abide by international nonproliferation norms, and possess strong capabilities in civilian nuclear energy.