An Alternative to Another Set of Unkept NPT Review Conference Promises – Collective Withdrawal

Posted: April 19, 2015 | Author: Dan Joyner | Filed under: Nuclear | 4 Comments

I don’t attend the annual Carnegie nuclear policy conference. Lots of reasons. But I did take a look at the video of one of the panels tonight – the one on the prospects for the upcoming 2015 RevCon. You can find it here.

I had a number of reactions watching the panel. One was simply a reminder of how much I hate listening to politicians talk. They never say anything interesting. Just endless platitudinous twaddle.

Another reaction was to remember, and identify strongly, with a previous post I did here a couple of years ago entitled “Should the Entire NAM Collectively Withdraw from the NPT?” I guess I was put so much into mind of that post because, as I listened to the various diplomats talk about the upcoming NPT RevCon and its “challenges,” I was struck once again by how useless a thing the NPT itself is. I wrote about this already in the post I referred to.

Think about it. The original idea of the NPT from the superpowers’ perspective, was to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons from spreading outside the five that had already tested at the time. This clearly didn’t work out well. At least five other states have manufactured nuclear weapons since 1968 (I’m counting South Africa), and four of these still have them. And I think one would be hard pressed to show that the NPT itself has actually proven to be a meaningful independent variable in stopping any country from developing nuclear weapons when they wanted to do so. This is going to be a difficult experiment without a control case, of course. But I think the “proliferation success stories” that are usually pointed to, including South Africa and Brazil, would probably have happened in much the same way they did without the NPT in place, but rather simply with an international norm having been expressed in General Assembly resolutions and elsewhere against nuclear weapons proliferation. These success stories, as well as the failure stories (e.g. North Korea), have occurred mostly due to factors outside of any direct influence of the NPT itself. They have occurred because of the particular political, historical, and economic circumstances of the state(s) involved, combined with a general international norm against nuclear proliferation, which as I said earlier could have been accomplished without the conclusion of the NPT.

As an international lawyer I know how complicated the whole idea of international law as an independent variable in influencing state behavior is. I suppose I just see the track record in this area as being pretty low on cases where respect for the law, or even incentives/disincentives specifically built into and made a part of the treaty structure, themselves played a meaningful role in influencing any state’s behavior with regard to the decision to acquire nuclear weapons.

From the developing states’ perspective, while they generally supported the nonproliferation objectives of the NPT, they also saw the treaty as their way to get quid pro quo concessions from the superpowers and other nuclear supplier states, in exchange for the obligation not to acquire nuclear weapons. These concessions are of course in Articles IV and VI of the treaty respectively.

So how are those going? I would say the current climate of international trade in nuclear materials and technologies doesn’t betray any sort of real meaningful effect of the Article IV right and obligation on supplier states. Nuclear supplier states trade with whomever they want to trade. And if they don’t want to trade with a state, or allow their private parties to trade with that state, they simply won’t, with very little regard for the Article IV(2) obligation that they are presumably under. Trade in nuclear materials and technologies is, again, all about politics and economics. And again, I think that in the absence of the NPT, the landscape of international trade in nuclear technologies would look very much the same as it does now.

And what about Article VI? Well I think it’s pretty clear that no nuclear weapons possessing state has ever been significantly influenced by the obligation in Article VI to move towards disarmament in good faith. After more than 45 years the nuclear weapons states do just exactly what they want to do with regard to nuclear disarmament and no more. All of the changes that have been made would, I think, have been made in the absence of the NPT. The Cold War ramp up, the efforts of arms control during and after it, cuts over the past 25 years – none of these would have been any different had the NPT not been in place I suspect.

So if the NPT has failed in the ways I have described, why does every diplomat, from Russia to Nigeria, still pay lip service to the NPT as the cornerstone of the nonproliferation regime, and speak of it in hallowed terms? For the nuclear weapons states I think its clear why. They still benefit from having a treaty that allows them and no one else to have nuclear weapons, and that doesn’t seriously constrain them in any way. A treaty they can use as a normative cudgel against their enemies, but which carries very few costs for them and their friends.

But what about for developing non-nuclear weapon states? What do they get out of NPT membership? Again, the concessions they wanted out of the NPT have not been granted to them in the systematic and meaningful way they were promised in the NPT. They get nuclear supplies if and when they are on good enough political terms with supplier states. If not, they don’t. And 45+ years of waiting for the nuclear weapon states to disarm has yielded not one disarmed state among the NWS – and in fact it has produced a net addition of four more nuclear armed states outside of the treaty.

And yet in return for these promised but undelivered benefits, NNWS continue to submit to IAEA safeguards on their nuclear facilities, and to hypocritical critiques by nuclear weapon states of their failure to live up to their NPT and IAEA commitments. So I ask again, what are they getting out of NPT membership?

The answer that many will give is that NPT membership is, kind of like human rights treaties, one way that you signify as a developing state that you are among the “responsible members of the international community,” and that its simply not worth making a fuss about the non-functional NPT and rocking the boat, resulting in having your country placed on the “bad actors” list with regard to economic cooperation, and possibly even becoming the next target of the UN Security Council (kind of like the eye of Sauron that is ever searching for suspicious developing countries).

That’s where my previous post comes in. In it, I propose a walkout from the NPT en masse by the members of the Non-Aligned Movement. I’ll let you read my reasoning there. But I suppose I’m writing this to say that, there are in fact other options than just limping along year after year, RevCon after RevCon, with a treaty that ceased long ago to give non-nuclear weapon states any real benefit to their bargain. Maybe this year’s review conference will be the one when the NNWS finally say “enough!”

On suicide, riot control and ‘other peaceful purposes’ under the BTWC

Posted: April 11, 2015 | Author: JP Zanders | Filed under: Biological, Chemical | Tags: BTWC, CWC, international law, Riot control agent | Leave a comment

In the Greater Manchester area a 16-year old boy stands trial for having tried to buy 10 milligrams of abrin on the dark web. Abrin is a toxin found in the seeds of Abrus precatorius, otherwise known as jequirity or rosary pea.

UK authorities arrested him in February and have charged him under the Biological Weapons Act 1974 and Criminal Attempts Act 1981. In particular, the charge refers to the General Purpose Criterion (GPC) as framed in Article I of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and transposed into British criminal law. As reported in The Guardian on 19 February:

The full charge against the boy is that between 24 December 2014 and 16 February 2015 he attempted to acquire a biological toxin or agent of a type and in a quantity that has no justification or prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purpose, namely Abrin.

The maximum sentence for the offence is life imprisonment.

During the trial the boy’s defence argued that he sought to buy the toxin to commit suicide. Under those circumstances, possession of abrin could technically have been for ‘peaceful purposes’, so the defence argued to have the charges dropped.

Judge Khalid Jamil Qureshi dismissed the claim:

The question is whether suicide is peaceful. Suicide, by definition, is an act of violence, so the defence will not be applicable.

By which he opposes ‘peaceful’ to ‘violence’, rather than the idea of ‘war’ or ‘armed conflict’ more prevalent in the disarmament communities and intended by the BTWC negotiators.

This is the second recent case—the other one was Bond versus the United States, which went twice to the US Supreme Court—in which a domestic criminal trial causes a judge to interpret key terms in a national law that originated with a disarmament treaty. Especially since there has been a growing debate on the understanding of ‘compliance’ with disarmament and arms control treaties and an emphasis on national implementation of such treaties to counter terrorist threats, these domestic court cases raise questions about how domestic judgements may begin to affect common understanding of treaty obligations and expectations. Depending on the legal system, judgements may be precedent-setting. However, whichever may be the case, the interpretations apply to the country in question only. Divergencies about compliance expectations over time are therefore not beyond imagination.

The law enforcement debate

One area where domestic legal interpretation of concepts derived from multilateral disarmament treaties may have profound impact is that of law enforcement. The BTWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) proscribe the use of infective agents, toxins and toxic chemicals as methods of warfare. The CWC, however, does not consider riot control agents, toxic chemicals that by definition cease to have an impact on the target as soon as exposure stops, to be chemical weapons if used for law enforcement purposes (including domestic riot control). The BTWC contains no similar provision.

Last October I wrote a blog contribution on the use of pepper spray in new naval anti-piracy tactics. My main question then was how the authority for the release of the agent under the CWC could be determined. Under the proposed scenarios, nationals from different parties to the CWC operating outside the territory of their own country would likely be involved in any such chain of decisions. Moreover, private security companies might be in charge of safeguarding ships threatened by pirates. Some comments to the blog contribution (posted to Arms Control Law) pointed out that under different international treaties, including the Law of the Sea, authority to take action against pirates is clearer. So, the matter becomes an issue of fragmentation in international law.

In my subsidiary question I wondered whether the use of pepper spray (which involves a toxin) could fall under ‘other peaceful purposes’ in Article I of the BTWC. Indeed, the BTWC does not specifically list law enforcement as an authorised purpose. To the best of my knowledge, law enforcement has never been listed as an additional understanding of the rest category of ‘other peaceful purposes’. The issue is less clear and government officials tend to avoid answering that question.

However, in light of Judge Qureshi’s argument, the use of violence (rather than the application as a method of warfare) contradicts the ‘peaceful purpose’ criterion. So, applying a toxin to deny pirates access to a ship would amount to a violation of the BTWC. If this is the case, then what to think of the experiments in India to deploy drones armed with pepper spray for crowd control? Under the CWC, perhaps yes, but the BTWC?

Keep thinking. Keep thinking.

The future of confidence building in biological arms control

Posted: April 10, 2015 | Author: JP Zanders | Filed under: Biological | Tags: BTWC, Compliance, Disarmament, Verification | Leave a comment

By Gunnar Jeremias

[Presentation at the civil society event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the entry into force of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 30 March 2015 – Cross-posted from The Trench.]

Distinguished representatives, colleagues, let me first stress that I am very honoured to be invited to contribute to this event. May I thank the organisers and sponsors very much,

In the next 15 minutes I would like to draw a picture of possible developments of confidence building in the BWC. To that end I will briefly introduce the term confidence and its sources, and will then mainly concentrate on transparency as one of these sources. Finally I am going to consider the possible involvement of new actors and mechanisms in confidence building.

Confidence is a term that is used throughout from the level of private arrangements, via societal and economic contexts (contracts), but of course also in the field of international relations. The main function of agreements is, besides the ‘technical’ overcoming of specified problems, the fostering of mutual trust in compliance with treaty obligations. Obviously there is a central role of information, but neither will it be possible to access all relevant information, nor is the judgement of such information—the decision if it is sufficient to build confidence—a scientific exercise. This is even more evident, since many parties will have different understandings of compliance. Accordingly confidence can hardly be measured in a binary system, but will rather be perceived as gradually changing when trust in compliant behaviour is growing or decreasing.

Trying to get an idea about confidence in the BWC regime one would basically have to measure that level in every single member state. On a general level it can be stated that whenever there exists an arrangement, a contract or an international treaty there was obviously a ground level of confidence when it was agreed. On the other hand, the stakeholders must have seen the need for a mutual system to enhance confidence in compliance.

Confidence is, however, not only fostered by knowledge enabling to make qualified guesses on the level of implementation of the prohibitive obligations, but also by factors that have no direct link with the technical requirements of arms control. Among these factors are the perception of parties as being subject to a just treatment and the perception that those parties with the greatest BW-relevant capacities are really committed to the treaty obligations.

If the success of a treaty is an indicator for the level of confidence, we might face a satisfactory level of confidence in the BWC. There were offensive BW programmes before the BWC came into force; and we have then seen offensive programmes while it was in force, among them a very large one. But now we have since 25 years not witnessed a BW programme (the ricin-programme in the non-BWC member Syria can be discussed as a case, however).

That BW programmes were seldom developed after the coming into force of the BWC might rather be a result of the limited military value of BW (still we don’t know much about the scenarios in which the Soviet bio weapons could have been used). Today there are reasons to believe that there are no offensive programmes anywhere in the world. It is certainly worth learning about military defence programmes, but it is also true that few states have the means or the interest to run critical programs. Hence, biological arms control is today, as far as we know, preventive arms control. However, the idea that there are no BW programmes is based on the unorganised information gathering we have to rely on.

With the possible absence of illicit military activities, confidence building does in many cases concentrate on civil academic or commercial activities with dual-use potential and will try to identify growing misuse potentials and qualified questions about applications and actors (this touches the debate about dual-use research of concern (DURC) that others have touched upon in more detail earlier today).

The widespread dual-use phenomenon and the involvement of many civil facilities is a characteristic of biological arms control, which is probably more distinctive here than in any other arms control field. At least since a number of years, if not back to the early 1970s, the potential for misuse of civil technology and civil research is in the focus, even if the buzzwords biosafety and biosecurity popped up only in the recent years. The trend that the direction of technology diffusion is nowadays rather from civil innovation systems to the military sphere has been known in the bio field for many years.

Besides the fast development of the ground laying technology, it’s methods and scientific capabilities, the spread of capacities to ever more states is a major change to the early 1970s. Back then only in relatively few states in northern America, Western and Eastern Europe and in the USSR relevant capacities in biotechnology were present. Today biotechnology with its imminent and widely spread dual-use potential is a global multi-billion dollar business, still fast growing in many places – and still not developed in many others. This spread might be reason for concerns from an arms control perspective, but the amalgamation with economic interests can also not be rationalised away.

With a much smaller geographical spread of biotechnology and with the block confrontation of the Cold War one of the obligations of the BWC was possibly less central than it appears today: the obligation for technical cooperation under article X. However, there can’t be confidence without the perception of a just treatment of all members as partners with equal chances in the indigenous development of one of the most important industries of our time. For the development of confidence on this provision information plays again a central role, although the questions raised in this context differ from those concerning articles I and III. But here as well transparency is quintessential in helping to base the debate on empirical data.

That there is a problem with transparency in the BWC on different levels is not a secret, really. Given that transparency is main source for confidence (for both the prohibitive and obligatory provisions of the treaty) the look on confidence mainly deals with the question of how to enhance transparency.

Types and sources of transparency

One can think of transparency in different types and as being fed by different sources.

Types of transparency can be defined by its different ranges, namely greater or smaller groups of actors that have access to the information in a transparency system. Starting with the greatest possible extent, public transparency reaches the public as a whole, while in inter-state transparency systems only the parties of a treaty are provided with information. The CBM mechanism is an example for such a practice (although some states make their CBMs transparent for the public sphere). I don’t want to talk much about CBMs. We all know that the number of states participating in this mechanism is not satisfactory. I hope, however, that during this talk it will become clear why they should play a central role in the BWC’s future. A third type of transparency besides the public and inter-governmental transparency, is the exclusive access to information by just one actor (typically a state) when a phenomenon is being made transparent by (and only for) that single actor.

Since transparency is (or should be) a practical exercise, it is maybe helpful to concentrate on the different technical means that are applied in the three different transparency systems. I propose to differentiate in between national technical means (NTMs), international technical means (ITMs), and public technical means (PTMs).

First, NTMs are technical means under the exclusive ownership of single states, hence also the gathered information is exclusively with that state. Their use leads to the single actor type of transparency.

Second, ITMs (not established in the BWC regime) are those technical means that States Parties allow treaty organisations to use.

Third, PTMs are the technical means that rely on open sources and are used to the end to release the gathered information to the public sphere. Their rage has grown significantly over the past years. The digital revolution allows access to a broad range of information. For example:

Real time epidemiologic information
Information on biotechnological capacities, products, and research projects
Free (including commercial) satellite images – here is also a link to the reconnaissance revolution in the last 20 years
Patent databases
Trade data (dual-use goods and biotech end-products)
Scientific publications (PubMed and other databases)
Digital meta information about companies and research facilities
Exchanges on social media
… This list can be expanded any further;
And besides the use of this universe of existing data that can be identified and filtered from Big Data it is also thinkable that innovative ways to measure environmental data with newly developed technology can contribute to transparency.

The use of these PTMs produces no proof, but will enable actors to ask qualified questions.

Just three examples for questions that occured when working on our current project on the identification of compliance relevant parameters that can be accessed via open sources:

Why are the security perimeters of a certain facility with known dual-use character being modernised (information accessed by google.earth images)?
Why do we see certain relevant research activities at institutes that are linked to the military information accessed by PubMed or turn up in google and twitter?
How can the consumption of unusual amounts of biological growth media in a county be explained (information accessed via UN COMTRADE database)?

It is hence no verification, but it is much more than what is actually being done in the regime.

In an ideal world the mentioned information sources would be accesses at the widest possible extent as ITMs to contribute to a verification mechanism. In the BWC, however, we had to realise that ITMs will not be implemented in the foreseeable future. Since confidence building by enhancing transparency is quintessential for the function of the regime other actors will have to play the role that in other cases is allocated to International Organisations.

I would like to briefly come back to a more theoretical reasoning of transparency to answer the question which actors could/should do so. Transparency can also be described by looking at the direction of the distribution of information: Information can be provided actively by states or biotech stakeholders, or they can be extracted out of the (mostly) electronic/digital universe of information. This can be called passive transparency.

Active transparency

As parties, states would be at the forefront of stakeholders who would be asked to actively provide information to enhance confidence. In the BWC the related mechanism are the CBMs. But also other actors can contribute to active transparency building. For a look into the future it might be helpful to look into the roots of the regime: Already back in 1964 the Pugwash CBW-group had initiated a voluntary inspection mechanism. Participating were commercial and academic facilities from eastern and western European facilities (indeed only one larger non-western biotech production facility in Yugoslavia was involved). The project was later continued by the then newly founded Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The aim of the overall project was to prove that on-site verification is possible without endangering commercial secrets. A lesson that was learned but seems to have been forgotten is that commercial actors could get involved in active transparency building, also on a voluntary base.

Passive transparency

The passive extraction of relevant information is also not a new idea—neither in other contexts nor in the BWC. When the BWC was negotiated in the early 1970s the just mentioned SIPRI was also innovative in the development of passive transparency tools, and demonstrated the value of Open Source information already back then. By the application of innovative investigative tools the SIPRI researchers already showed that even non-governmental actors could gather relevant information. In 1971 the mechanism was meant as proof that these methods could contribute to a then debated verification mechanism.

And indeed, when it came to the question which would be the best confidence building mechanism, the development of a formal verification mechanism based on on-site inspections was for many years seen as the silver bullet—possibly, it still is. But there is obviously the need to identify alternatives.

In this context it has to be stated that 40 years after SIPRI’s engagement the possibilities to enhance passive transparency by the use of the above mentioned open source information has grown exponentially. Some states may have the capacities to use these information in Open-source intelligence (OSINT) procedures, but many others will not be able to do so on a global scale. This is the reason why often international organisations are installed for information gathering. This is also not to come here (please surprise me at the Review Conference).

Civil society actors should in a best case scenario be a corrective and/or undertake parallel independent control activities. NGOs could be watchdogs, but not the only actors in the production of transparency. However, there are also cases as in the landmines and cluster munition regimes where in the absence of a formal verification system civil society actors do what has been called “Quasi verification” by a number of States Parties. In biological arms control they might also be able (or be enabled) to play a more central role, as long as no information system becomes institutionalised.

The current development of capacities in applying PTMs in passive transparency building might be a “technical” environment that fosters new formats and civil society monitoring networks. With the idea that relevant information will be recognised in a regime regardless by what type of actor it was gathered, NGOs could play a greater role in confidence building in biological arms control.

However, this also means that states should do as much as they can to proof their commitment with the treaty provisions. And that means first of all, better participation in the CBM mechanism. May I add that I don’t think that any state would lose anything if its CBM submission is being made public.

If every actor—state, private, and civil society—improves confidence by enhancing transparency through the use of the specific means at its disposal and therewith contributes to an open, evidence-based debate about compliance relevant factors, I am optimistic that biological arms control will remain successfully based on the BWC for at least another 40 years.

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What future for biological disarmament?

Posted: April 10, 2015 | Author: JP Zanders | Filed under: Biological | Tags: BTWC, Compliance, Disarmament | Leave a comment

By Nicholas A. Sims

[Presentation at the civil society event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the entry into force of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 30 March 2015 – Cross-posted from The Trench]

In posing the question this way I am making two points. First, the BWC is a disarmament treaty before anything else. It has other functions, certainly, but its disarmament function is primordial. Second, it is not guaranteed a bright future. It could find itself trapped in an acceptance of immobility, an empty ritual exchange of predictable arguments but no forward movement. It risks becoming marginalised as the world moves on. Let us all resolve to make sure that does not happen.

I am conscious of a strong sense of obligation to the people who brought the BWC into being. Last year I took part in a witness seminar for an inter-university research project on the prehistory and early history of the BWC when we surviving ‘old hands’ shared our recollections of its context, the politics and personalities of the time, and this brought home to me how few of the pioneers are still living. We owe it to the pioneers to reinvigorate this disarmament treaty and steer it towards a brighter future. Some of us have been trying to do this for a long time. We used to pursue this goal under the name of clarification, then reinforcement, then strengthening. Whichever word we use, the goal is the same. It is to make the BWC work better, to build on its strengths and remedy its main weakness. I will identify its main weakness in a few minutes, but first let us examine its strengths.

The strengths of the BWC

The strengths of the BWC lie in its comprehensive scope and its essential logic. The deliberate infliction of disease, whatever the disease, is an affront to humanity which almost all governments have renounced, comprehensively, as even a distant military option. They are saying “We don’t have BW but we could be vulnerable to BW attack by other people so we want to be sure that no one else has BW either.” That is what I mean by the essential logic. I first heard it expressed in 1969 when the UK initiative which led to the BWC was gathering support. It struck me as good common sense then and it still does now. It required those who at the time still possessed BW stockpiles to renounce and destroy them and everyone else to make their renunciation permanent. What the BWC does is fix that renunciation of BW in a lasting treaty relationship of legal equality. In that treaty relationship common sense further requires the parties to reassure one another that they are honouring their obligations; and to find ways of demonstrating that fact. They owe that much to one another as treaty partners. Some would say they owe that to humanity as a whole.

In 1986 there was some worry lest there were some novel micro-organisms or toxins or bioregulators not covered by the legal scope of the Convention. But this worry was misplaced. Once the comprehensiveness of the BWC’s legal scope was reasserted, the concern shifted back – and it remains rightly a concern – to whether there might occur changes in the balance of incentives and disincentives for a State Party to break out of the BWC’s treaty constraints or for a non-party to attack. That is one reason why relevant developments in science and technology (S&T) require close and continuous scrutiny. These S&T reviews, like regular assessments of the Convention’s health more generally, are made easier by its comprehensive scope and the legal equality of obligations on all its treaty partners.

The main weakness

The main weakness of the BWC lies: where? Not so much, now, in its definitional imprecision or lack of universality or even its famous institutional deficit, because all of those are, albeit very slowly, on their way to being alleviated. No, it lies in the area of reassurance. That is the perennial gap at the heart of the BWC. It flows from the failure of the States Parties, building on the text as it stands, to derive a common understanding as to how to reassure one another and demonstrate that their shared commitment to biological disarmament governs what they are doing and what they allow to be done. Without it, doubts and suspicions persist and erode the credibility of the Convention as they stay unresolved.

Some attempts have been made to remedy this weakness. Individual States Parties have come up with concepts of an accountability framework, or peer review, or compliance assessment, or transparency measures, or a compliance framework, or fuller use of Article V. A few of these concepts have developed into joint initiatives. These initiatives are to be commended and they invite emulation. None of them makes an exclusive claim. And none of them on its own bridges the gap. But instead of calling them distractions their critics should come up with better initiatives of their own. At some stage there may be a collective decision on how to integrate these patchwork initiatives into the BWC treaty regime. But first they need to be encouraged and developed, and this can best be done in a conceptual discussion of compliance, what it is and how it can be demonstrated. Such a conceptual discussion of compliance needs to be open-ended, without preconditions. I do urge the States Parties at the Eighth Review Conference next year to revive this proposal and give its implementation high priority and a serious allocation of resources in shaping the constructive evolution of the BWC.

This is only one of several proposals which the Seventh Review Conference failed to adopt but are just as relevant now and challenge the Eighth Review Conference to shape a better future for biological disarmament. In this category I would also put the many good ideas for reshaping the CBMs into a set of measures that really do build confidence, a modest expansion of the Implementation Support Unit to match a realistic mandate, an Open-Ended Working Group to improve on the present arrangement for review of developments in S&T, and the restructuring of the whole intersessional process to make it robust and effective. If time allowed I could add more. We all have our wish-lists. But nothing is more important than the effort to find solutions to the problem of reassurance: to develop a common understanding and effective action to remedy this main weakness of the Convention.

The perspective of 1975-2015 and the next 40 years

I want to spend the remaining few minutes on the perspective of 1975-2015 and the next 40 years. I can assure you as one who was there to witness entry into force on 26 March 1975 that it had felt like a long time arriving. There had been many disagreements and obstacles to overcome in the seven years since the BWC had first been conceived.

And talking of disagreements and obstacles, those of us who took part in the 25th anniversary event at the other end of the Palais could not have imagined how much grimmer the outlook would be when we returned for the 30th. What happened between 2000 and 2005 set back the constructive evolution of the BWC by several years. The same could be said of the period 1981-1986. But neither setback was fatal. And all credit to those who kept the faith and championed the Convention in those bleak years for the BWC, when it seemed to be under attack and needed all the champions it could find. The challenge now is to reinforce the Convention so it can survive whatever may assail it in the next 40 years and remain the preferred instrument of biological disarmament, reliably effective in performing that function.

At the entry into force ceremony in London which I attended David Ennals presided. He was the UK Minister of State responsible for arms control and disarmament. The tone of his speech, and of those made by Nikolai Lunkov and Ronald Spiers on behalf of the co-depositaries sitting beside him, was forward-looking and optimistic. It was an uplifting occasion. I will quote just one sentence. David Ennals said: “From today over 40 states are parties to this Convention, and have both renounced this entire class of weapons and undertaken to prevent their future development by appropriate measures. [emphasis added]”

That’s the point. What are the “appropriate measures” to prevent BW over the next 40 years?

There has long been a fruitless argument over whether states or non-state actors present the greater risk. My answer is: no one knows. Surely everything we do to reinforce the BWC must be designed to guard against any BW threat, from whatever source it may come. That is the other side of the comprehensive scope and essential logic that I see as the strengths of the BWC.

Only constant vigilance will suffice. And it follows from this that renunciation of BW is only the beginning. The Article IV obligation to prohibit and prevent implies continual reinforcement of the defences against BW. Renunciation and prohibition on their own are not enough. The “appropriate measures” applied in both national and international implementation of the BWC must always be measured against the more stringent criterion of prevention.

Let me give a few examples. If governments really value the BWC they will be readier to restrict risky gain-of-function (GOF) experiments on dangerous pathogens and to regulate all dual-use research of concern (DURC). GOF and DURC are not banned by the BWC, but the BWC can only retain credibility if there is a parallel regime of research with an emphasis on comprehensive risk analysis and the precautionary principle. National implementation and codes of conduct must cover all government programmes so there are no suspicions of rogue agencies or individuals taking an unhealthy interest in BW. Everyone must share their latest knowledge for the S&T reviews crucial to the application of the BWC remaining up to date. And there should be a renewed emphasis on international cooperation for the prevention of disease – the only “peaceful purposes” application of scientific discoveries in biology singled out for mention in Article X – as well as on capacity-building and planning for emergency responses to outbreaks of disease when they occur. Such precautionary approaches should increase the disincentives to BW, which is why they have attracted attention under Article VII, as well as being evidently worth pursuing in their own right.

These are just a few examples. To identify and then apply “appropriate measures” and build them into the practice of every State Party, responding to fresh perceptions of BW threat and S&T developments as they emerge, offers a full agenda for the next 40 years.

Finally, a few words about trajectories for the BWC as a distinct treaty regime.

Trajectories for the BWC

In my book THE FUTURE OF BIOLOGICAL DISARMAMENT (London: Routledge, 2009), I outlined possible trajectories good and bad. I would like to outline what is now my preferred trajectory for the BWC, assuming its States Parties can overcome the temptation to fall back on what I called an acceptance of immobility, an empty ritual exchange of predictable statements. My preferred trajectory has three elements: (1) that the BWC should pursue its own programme for the reinforcement of biological disarmament, by developing “appropriate measures” and applying them; (2) that it should steer towards a functional, not legal, convergence with the CWC, especially through close cooperation in the conduct of S&T reviews, to the benefit of both as distinct treaty regimes; (3) that it should finally fit into the wider universe of disarmament treaties so long awaited, when the gaping void in that universe is eventually filled by an NWC to complement the BWC and CWC. From where I stand nuclear weapons are the glaring anomaly in the disarmament enterprise, and nuclear disarmament must be pursued by all governments with reinvigorated commitment.

Whatever our preferred trajectory, there is much that we unofficial ‘friends of the Convention’ can do: to know the history and maintain a long-term perspective, to report and analyse the current diplomacy of the BWC meeting by meeting, to feed in ideas and propose acceptable language, to track the textual intricacies of the intersessional process (hard work, I assure you), and always to encourage the States Parties to move the BWC forward. For above all we look to the States Parties to make the BWC work better. Those of you who represent them should count it a privilege to be in a position here in Geneva to engage your energies and diplomatic skills in this process. The next 40 years are bound to contain setbacks and in confronting them you should bear in mind that when the BWC was at its most unpopular in 1981-1986 and 2001-2005 it was only the determined efforts of diplomats and others that brought it through those bleak years. Those same determined efforts will be needed to overcome whatever crises the next 40 years may bring. Otherwise the answer to my question “What future for biological disarmament?” will not be a comfortable one.

Different Messages on the Lausanne Accord

Posted: April 9, 2015 | Author: Dan Joyner | Filed under: Nuclear | 19 Comments

I think this AL Monitor piece by Shahir Shahidsaless is one of the best summaries of the various statements that have been released both jointly and unilaterally by the parties to the Lausanne talks over the past week. It also very usefully discusses the differences among those statements. I think the author is correct when he says:

While enrichment, R&D and the Arak heavy-water reactor are all significant concerns, the most contentious issues that threaten the negotiations process are sanctions and inspections.

He then proceeds to explain these concerns well.

Commentary, both official and non-official, on the agreement reached in Lausanne has been a bit of a circus over the past week. Honestly, I’ve mostly tuned out from listening to the specifics of any side’s version of what was agreed, and what they think will be agreed to, and what they will accept. At this point, I think that pretty much all we are hearing from all sides is spin – the message that they want both the other parties and their own domestic constituencies to hear. To me it just reinforces the fact that there really is no agreement between the parties yet on anything approaching a full range of the important issues of contention. We really are just going to have to wait until June to know anything concrete.

What I have thought at times, and what may yet be true, is that the framework accord was purposed by the parties to be vague and yet to convey that the parties were making serious progress, and to allow all sides to basically sell their own version of the deal to their respective domestic constituencies. The hope, I’m guessing, is that each side can indeed sell its version to its domestic constituency as “the deal” or at least the broad strokes of it, which will calculatedly build positive momentum (“It’s historic! It’s better than we thought! Maybe it’s the beginning of a general detente!”, etc.) for an accord in general on all sides. So much so, I think they hope, that when June roles around and each side has to walk back from some of the strong positions they’ve taken while selling the deal to their domestic constituencies, there will be so much positive momentum built up, and so much effort invested on all sides, that there won’t be enough opposition left to overcome the inertia, and the deal will be agreed to and implemented.

Just to reiterate, I’m all for a deal, and I’m not particularly picky about its terms. So I’m not sounding any alarm bells here. Just sort of giving my thoughts on what’s going on.

Symmetry of adversary

Posted: April 3, 2015 | Author: JP Zanders | Filed under: Nuclear | 9 Comments

Yesterday evening a framework document for (yet) further technical discussions on enhancing transparency about Iran’s nuclear activities was announced. A formal group picture was issued.

Anything peculiar?

Notice how symmetrical current and historic adversaries are paired up:

China – USA
France – UK
Germany – Russia
White over black – Black over white

A deeper message or a trick of the (English) alphabet and diplomatic decorum?

JCPOA First Thoughts

Posted: April 2, 2015 | Author: Dan Joyner | Filed under: Nuclear | 71 Comments

Like everyone who reads this blog, I’ve been glued to the news, Twitter, and email today, watching developments unfold in the announcement of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1 and Iran. This is a historic development and one that I very much welcome. Much will be said here and elsewhere in the coming days about this framework agreement, and the process moving forward, but I wanted to share a few first thoughts today.

1. It is vitally important to understand that only the statement that was read in full by EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the text of which you can see here, represents an agreed statement by the P5+1 and Iran. The “Fact Sheet” that is being widely circulated and commented on by the media, is only a U.S. White House statement of facts, and was NOT AGREED TO BY IRAN OR ANY OF THE OTHER NEGOTIATING PARTIES. It is a unilateral U.S. interpretation of the facts and nothing more. So it should not be treated as a correct representation of the points of agreement between the parties.

2. Within the U.S. White House statement of facts, I think that the following paragraphs are least likely to represent what will actually be agreed to over the coming months by Iran:

Iran will be required to grant access to the IAEA to investigate suspicious sites or
allegations of a covert enrichment facility, conversion facility, centrifuge production
facility, or yellowcake production facility anywhere in the country . . .

Iran will implement an agreed set of measures to address the IAEA’s concerns regarding
the Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of its program.

I cannot see the final June comprehensive agreement including either of these provisions, at least not in any proximity to the way they are written here. For one thing, the word “suspicious” will not, I guarantee you, be a part of any language to which Iran agrees. I also think, more importantly, that the PMD issue will have to be agreed in much more detail and nuance in the months to come. I personally cannot see the Iranians agreeing to a provision that makes the entire deal hinge on the IAEA’s satisfaction in resolving its concerns over the PMD claims. As one friend put it today, that would be a poison pill for the whole agreement. So I would look for this issue to either be left out of a final agreement in June, or handled in a much different way than stated here.

3. Overall I think the framework of agreement is a very good one. Iran definitely made some very significant concessions. In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking that, with all of the specificity placed on Iranian concessions, and really only fairly vague wording on the lifting of unilateral and multilateral sanctions (i.e. regarding timing) in the joint statement, Iran showed the most diplomatic courage in agreeing to this framework. I’m sure there is much that was agreed to that we don’t know about, and I have no doubt that Zarif and his team reached a satisfactory understanding with their negotiating partners on the sanctions question from their perspective. But I suppose I just wanted to highlight that Iran is the party that made the most obvious significant concessions in this framework agreement, and I think that they should be congratulated and respected for this. Though I have zero confidence that the right wing of American politics will see it that way.

UPDATE: This appears to be the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s “fact sheet,” analogous to the one released by the White House.

UPDATE to the UPDATE: Actually, it now appears that that was not an official Iranian fact sheet. Ariane Tabatabai explains here.

BTWC @ 40: Afternoon impressions

Posted: April 1, 2015 | Author: JP Zanders | Filed under: Biological | Tags: BTWC, Disarmament | 2 Comments

On 30 March 2015 the 40th anniversary of the entry into force of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) was celebrated in the Council Chamber at the United Nations in Geneva, the same room inwhich the treaty had been negotiated.

In the afternoon , the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) convened a civil society academic seminar. Below are some impressions of that session (Please click for full-size images).

The full programme and texts of remarks are available from the website of the BTWC Implementation Support Unit.

(All pictures with my camera.)