Banning WMD from the Middle East

In the fall of 2011, everything seemed to be in place to convene a 2012 conference on establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. The meeting was to be sponsored by the United Nations as well as by the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Finland had emerged as host country for the conference, which was envisioned for December 2012. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon named Finnish Ambassador Jaakko Laajava as facilitator of the process. The long delay in naming a facilitator was due to an extensive consultation process — but perhaps also to political transformations in many Middle Eastern countries. In any event, with Laajava's appointment the path toward a conference seemed relatively clear. But in the months that followed, no meeting agenda was announced. The precise date of the conference was not set.

A strong indication that the conference might not occur in 2012 emerged in September of last year when the head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission made clear in a statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Israel would not attend. Israel is the only nuclear-armed country in the region, and the only Middle Eastern nation that has not joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); without Israel's participation, the relevance of the conference would obviously be diminished. But official notice that the conference would not occur only came in December, with a statement from the US State Department. The statement was very puzzling, not making it entirely clear whether the conference was to be postponed or simply cancelled. And because the statement spoke of a "deep conceptual gap persisting in the region," wording that bore similarities to earlier statements by Israeli officials, some analysts concluded that the meeting had been cancelled in order to preserve Israeli interests.

The unilateral nature of the statement also seemed to reveal that little coordination existed among the conference's sponsors — an impression intensified when other sponsors subsequently issued contradictory statements (Russia, for example, said that the December conference should not have been postponed without the parties' having agreed to a new date). An alarming lack of coordination between the sponsors and the facilitator was also revealed. Laajava's office issued a single statement after the meeting was suspended and otherwise maintained a deathly silence, giving little indication that the facilitator's mission was ongoing.

Still, the process toward establishing a WMD-free zone has not entirely collapsed. Indeed, the term "process" is used because the idea behind the planned conference was to create an ongoing initiative to establish a zone in the Middle East free from all WMD. A single meeting was never the point.

The facilitator's mandate runs in principle until 2015, when he is expected to submit his final conclusions to the NPT Review Conference. And according to a statement that Ambassador Laajava made in April at the preparatory committee meeting for the 2015 Review Conference, he is still committed to pursuing quiet, shuttle diplomacy. Still, Laajava has conducted more than 300 discussions with regional and international parties regarding the WMD-free zone, and all those consultations have not yet produced any tangible results.

The failure to organize the Helsinki conference represents a serious setback for nonproliferation efforts in the region — partly because, amid the Arab Spring, decision makers are under pressure to demonstrate to their citizens that Arab diplomacy will be passive no longer. Egypt walked out of the 2013 preparatory committee meeting for the 2015 Review Conference, and other states may take similar steps in the future. Already there is talk in the Arab world about reconsidering the indefinite extension of the NPT.

What can be done. Ambassador Laajava, of course, is not solely responsible for the failure of the conference. That is the combined responsibility of the facilitator, the conveners, states in the region, and multilateral bodies.

A few months ago, the Arab Institute for Security Studies was involved in producing a study that highlighted the role that civil society and multilateral organizations might play in the Helsinki process. The IAEA, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and other multilateral entities could all play important roles. Nongovernmental organizations might be able to shape public opinion and influence governments — notably Israel's government. Indeed, if the deadlock is to be resolved, Israel must commit itself to the process. But for that to happen, decision makers in Tel Aviv must come to understand that possessing nuclear weapons is not the way to ensure their country's survival.

In November of last year, when efforts to organize a Middle East WMD-Free Zone Conference collapsed, the US State Department chalked up the failure to “present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference.” That assessment was frustratingly general but remains basically accurate. Since the statement was issued, conditions in the region have not become more conducive for discussions of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction: The United Nations has launched an investigation into alleged chemical weapons use in an imploding Syria, the Iranian nuclear standoff persists, revolution and political unrest continue to unsettle the region, and dashed Arab-Israeli peace initiatives remain bitter memories.

After more than 300 rounds of discussion with relevant parties inside and outside the region, Jaakko Laajava, the UN-appointed diplomat charged with facilitating the Middle East conference, has so far failed to arrange even a preliminary multilateral consultation to discuss modalities. Arab states are only willing to participate in a preliminary meeting with states that are on board to attend a WMD-Free Zone Conference—and Israel is reserving judgment about participating in the proposed conference until an agenda and procedures are agreed upon.

Unfortunately, the stalemate concerns much more than conference modalities. Israel views arms control as a process that can only begin after political relationships in the region improve; in its view, arms negotiations won’t bring about better relations. As a country that bases its security in part on its regional nuclear monopoly, Israel places discussions of nuclear disarmament at the very bottom of its agenda. Nonproliferation and regional security are its chief concerns. Further, as a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel does not feel bound by mandates issuing from the treaty’s review conferences and is wary of engaging in a process that is linked to the NPT. Leading Arab states, as well as Iran, take precisely the opposite view, arguing that Israel’s nuclear disarmament and its accession to the treaty should be first steps on the path toward regional peace and security.

Consequences of failure. The failure to convene a conference in 2012 provoked deep frustration in the region, particularly among Arab League states. In these countries, diplomats are quick to recall that the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 hinged on an agreement to work toward the establishment of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.

This frustration is certain to reverberate through the NPT review process. At the recent NPT preparatory meeting in Geneva, Egypt staged a walkout in protest of “unacceptable and continuous failure” to make progress on the issue. The Arab League has demanded that the postponed conference be held in 2013 and has directly linked the success of the 2015 NPT Review Conference with “perceptible success through the initiation of a negotiation process [on a WMD-free zone] within a specific time frame.”

Failure to convene a conference will also register beyond NPT meetings. It will strengthen the position of nonproliferation obstructionists, who will point to the persistence of double standards surrounding the regime and of discrimination within it. It will deepen the rift between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states. It will weaken efforts by the United States and like-minded nations to promote new nonproliferation initiatives. And the Obama administration will have a harder time mobilizing the resources and authority needed to strengthen the safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency and toughen consequences for those who violate their safeguards commitments—elements of the agenda that the president outlined in Prague four years ago.

But if efforts to convene a conference come to nothing, perhaps the most significant consequence will be the opportunities foregone. Holding a Middle East conference on WMD is far more than symbolic. No region-wide institutions exist in the Middle East today. A cooperative process for discussing regional security is important not because of what it might produce this year or next, but because of the foundation it might provide for regional problem-solving in years to come.

Reviving the process. It is not too late to get the process back on track. Despite their differences, all the region’s states in principle favor the creation of a WMD-free zone. No party has unequivocally ruled out the possibility that a valuable arms control process might still be initiated. All relevant states have engaged in cooperative discussions with Ambassador Laajava.

The conference cosponsors—the United States, Russia, and Great Britain—must offer greater support to Laajava by pushing the parties in the region to hold face-to-face consultations on an agenda and procedures for a conference. The United States in particular must more energetically encourage Israel to commit to participating in a conference in 2013.

The cosponsors must also press the Arab states and Iran to agree to follow-on discussions, convened under a regional umbrella not directly tied to the NPT, covering a broad range of regional security issues. A regional security forum could serve as a coordinating body for ongoing discussions of WMD issues; an umbrella group for discussions of regional security cooperation; a host for information exchanges, technical meetings, and other transparency measures; and a site for the negotiation of confidence-building measures.

Even if all these steps were implemented, prospects for success in establishing a WMD-free zone would remain highly uncertain. But the stakes are too high to allow the effort to fail. Creativity, courage, flexibility, and goodwill—all of which are abundant among the people of the Middle East—are especially needed now for policy making on this issue.

Nearly 40 years ago, the UN General Assembly first adopted a resolution endorsing the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. At the 2010 Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), specific measures to advance this vision were agreed upon. In the years after the 2010 conference, more than at any other time over the course of four decades, international players took concrete steps toward implementing the vision of a WMD-free zone.

In 2011, the UN secretary-general and the NPT’s depository states appointed Jaakko Laajava, Finland’s able undersecretary of state, as facilitator of the process. Laajava's team met with all key players and developed an in-depth understanding of the issues. All relevant international actors, including the United States, offered their support. Despite these efforts, plans to move the initiative forward with a Middle East WMD-Free Zone Conference, envisioned for Helsinki in 2012, failed.

For those who subscribe to a realist view of international relations, the explanation is clear: Holding a conference was not aligned with the interests of significant players, namely Israel and Iran. Israel enjoys nuclear superiority in the Middle East, though it has never formally admitted its capabilities, and Iran is getting closer to developing a nuclear device. Both of these countries obscure details of their nuclear programs. Both countries, it seems, share a pessimistic view about international norms’ ability to safeguard security. Israel has never joined the NPT; Iran is a treaty signatory but many argue that it is in violation of its treaty commitments.

But if the initiative to establish a WMD-free zone were reorganized in three fundamental ways, it might find greater acceptance. First, the project to this point has followed a liberal vision of trying to introduce a global norm into the region; a realist and interest-based approach might be more appropriate. Open conversations about the parties’ realist motives, though they could be acrimonious, could also prove constructive. As Israel’s peace accords with Egypt and Jordan demonstrate, stable agreements between former foes can result from concrete discussions about security concerns.

Second, the top-down structure of the project—it was initiated by an international body rather than by actors on the ground—could be replaced with a bottom-up structure. This could allow parties, through regional dialogue, to identify and address current, specific concerns. A major hurdle to such an approach is the lack of a regional agency that could facilitate the conversation, but perhaps the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could encourage the parties to create a regional forum modeled on the working group for arms control and regional security that was active in the 1990s.

Third, the initiative toward a WMD-free zone should be tailored to the current security environment. That is, the state-versus-state outlook that usually underlies arms control negotiations should be expanded to address conflicts involving governments and their own citizens (as in Syria) or governments versus non-state actors (as in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict).

I understand that this approach might meet resistance, notably from some Arab states that, I suspect, would prefer that the WMD-free zone project remain primarily focused on the nuclear issue. This resistance could be addressed by ensuring that the long-term goal of establishing a WMD-free zone remains in place—after all, Israel supports it too—while also giving increased prominence to immediate security concerns. This might mean setting a less ambitious but more attainable initial goal. One such goal might be to address fears about the spread of chemical weapons in the region, their use against civilians in internal conflicts, and their transfer to non-state actors. It would be better to succeed with these immediate concerns than try and fail to build a brave new region.

No disaster. The seeming failure of the WMD-free zone initiative carries negative but not disastrous consequences for the nonproliferation regime. Some Arab parties might be motivated to punish the broader NPT framework for the failure, as has already been seen in a threat made by Arab League members (with Egypt leading) not to participate in the recently concluded preparatory committee meeting for the 2015 NPT Review Conference, and in Egypt’s ultimate withdrawal from the conference at the halfway point. Similarly, Arab parties might advance a resolution critical of Israel at the IAEA general conference set for this fall. But the region has in the past witnessed challenges to the nonproliferation regime from Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and failure to establish a new arms control regime will not wreak more havoc than has noncompliance with an existing regime.

Moreover, while the WMD-free zone has attracted interest among the small community of officials and scholars who focus on arms control, it has made no significant mark on the region’s broader policy community or media. For example, the issue was not mentioned once during a Tel Aviv conference in April hosted by the Institute for National Security Studies—and this annual conference is Israel’s most significant public gathering on security matters. Considering the initiative’s light footprint, its failure might not hinder future efforts to establish a WMD-free zone.

The failure’s effect on global arms control might be similar. The indefinite postponement of the Helsinki conference does not help, and may hinder, new nonproliferation and disarmament efforts such as the Global Zero campaign. But these efforts have not in any case ushered in a new era in nonproliferation and disarmament affairs. The failure of the initiative should be seen within the context of slower-than-expected progress in global nonproliferation and disarmament.
 

The cancellation of the 2012 Middle East WMD-Free Zone Conference is not the end of the world. But it could have poisonous effects on policy at the national, regional, and international levels.

Failure to organize the conference is a blow to the integrity of international agreements — above all, to the consensus decision made at the 2010 Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that concrete steps should be taken toward establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. With the failure to follow through on that decision, prospects are darkened for the 2015 NPT Review Conference. Additional delays would jeopardize the entire process of denuclearizing the Middle East, deprive the region of its only specifically designed and internationally supported mechanism for consolidating security through disarmament, and cause regional polarization to grow yet more intense.

Long, slow. In the history of nuclear arms control since 1946, when the United Nations devoted its very first resolution to nuclear issues, two main approaches have dominated: nonproliferation and disarmament. The nonproliferation approach tends to be favored by nuclear weapon states; they wish to prevent additional countries from joining their club. The disarmament approach is usually favored by non-nuclear weapon states. They want to ensure that the distinction between those with and without nuclear weapons does not become permanent.

The difference between the two approaches is plainly visible when one compares the NPT regime to processes for establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones. The NPT, though it is also meant to promote general disarmament and facilitate the spread of peaceful nuclear energy, mainly functions as a nonproliferation mechanism whose most enthusiastic supporters are nuclear weapon states. Nuclear-weapon-free zones, on the other hand, tend to receive their greatest support from developing nations. The 1974 UN General Assembly resolution in favor of establishing a Middle Eastern nuclear-weapon-free zone, for instance, was based on an Iranian proposal.

When the General Assembly passed its resolution, establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone seemed a timely and perhaps promising project. Just a few years before, in 1969, the Treaty of Tlatelolco had come into force, establishing a zone free of nuclear weapons in Latin America and providing a durable model for similar zones elsewhere. And only a few months before the resolution was adopted, India had conducted its first nuclear test, raising awareness of the risks of proliferation in volatile regions.

But little progress was made toward banning nuclear weapons in the Middle East until the 1995 NPT Review Conference, which produced a resolution encouraging states in the region to take practical steps toward establishing a zone free of WMD. Still later, at the 2010 Review Conference, hopes were raised again when participants agreed on specific measures that might facilitate the creation of a WMD-free zone — including the initiative to organize the 2012 conference. But that initiative has run aground, and all past achievements are called into question.

Still alive? The process still might be revived if a few key steps were taken. The first involves the structure of the initiative itself. Efforts to establish a zone free of WMD in the Middle East are subsidiary to the NPT review conference and are technically under its supervision. This requires that negotiations be conducted only in the framework of the review conferences. But it might be possible to move the process forward if other elements of the UN's disarmament machinery were brought into play. For example, the Disarmament Commission could deliberate on the WMD-free zone under its current agenda and conduct a deep examination of the topic, as it did with nuclear weapon-free zones in 1999. The First Committee of the General Assembly, which also focuses on disarmament and related issues, could do likewise. These steps could increase international awareness of the issue and, in the limited time that remains before the 2015 NPT Review Conference, create political momentum.

Second, in order to moderate the excessive emphasis on nonproliferation that often characterizes the NPT regime, greater emphasis could be placed on Article VII of the treaty — which stipulates that groups of states retain the right to conclude regional treaties assuring the absence of nuclear weapons in their territories. If high-level meetings were organized that used Article VII as an explicit backdrop, regional players might gain breathing space and common denominators might be discovered. In any event, it is necessary at all times to maintain balance among disarmament, nonproliferation, and cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

Third, civil society organizations, and particularly disarmament-related nongovernmental organizations, could make an important contribution to the process. A majority of the NPT's member states are represented in negotiations such as those over the WMD-free zone by diplomats who circulate from posting to posting, and who may have limited knowledge about the history of the negotiations in which they are involved. Diplomats are constantly at risk of devoting time to issues that their predecessors have already covered exhaustively. So civil society organizations could play a simple but critical role by acting as a sort of organizational memory.

But a more fundamental issue needs to be kept in mind as well — that Israel's position among Middle Eastern states is unique insofar as it has not acceded to the NPT. This simple fact goes to the very core of the initiative to establish a WMD-free zone, and if security is to be promoted for all, Israel's status as the only treaty outlier in the region must be resolved. But this project must be approached in a spirit of patience and collaboration.