Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pursuing global disarmament is unrealistic. The recent discussion on formulating a nuclear weapons ban treaty at the United Nations can eventually create challenges for Pakistan’s position on Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT).

This was the gist of a discussion at a roundtable hosted by Center for International Strategic Studies (CISS) on developments related to a proposed treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The discussion titled: Nuclear Ban Treaty: Debating the Missing Link was attended by experts, academia, representatives of think tanks and government officials.

The roundtable was held in the context of the recently-concluded five-day UN conference on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The talks on the treaty were attended by 132 countries, but were importantly boycotted by 40 states, including those possessing nuclear weapons. Pakistan also stayed away from the talks that were held as a result of a UN resolution adopted last December, which provided for convening a conference to negotiate a legally-binding instrument.

The meeting in New York was held from March 27 to 31 and deliberated on the proposed goals, objectives, and preamble of the treaty. A text of the treaty is now being drafted, which would be discussed when the talks resume for June 15.

Speaking at the roundtable, Dr Christine Leah, visiting research fellow with CISS and Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Yale University, said she was opposed to nuclear disarmament because a substantial cut would bring back issues of conventional strategy. She argued that conventional force balance received little attention in nuclear age, but once the concerns about nuclear weapons were to recede, deterrence would then rely on conventional force imbalance.

She said nuclear weapons were here to stay and called for a rethink of arms control concepts developed during Cold War period to adjust to multi-polar Asian maritime context.

Dr Zafar Khan, who teaches at National Defense University Islamabad, said that the “prospects for universal arms control and nuclear ban were dim”. He said for complete disarmament to happen, the international community would have to address issues of discrimination, negative security assurances, conventional imbalances, conventional and nuclear force modernisation, need for restructuring of non-proliferation regimes, and conflict resolution.

Talking about the implications for Pakistan, Dr Adil Sultan said the initiation of talks on a treaty could set up a precedent, which would be at some later stage applied to FMCT that currently faced a deadlock at the Conference on Disarmament. He said that in future the FMCT could also be brought to UN on the pretext of breaking the impasse. “Negotiations on FMCT have not been able to begin, because Pakistan has been maintaining a position that negotiating a treaty that only bans future production of fissile material without taking into account the existing stockpiles would freeze the existing asymmetries thus putting Pakistan at a permanent disadvantage and undermining its security interests,” he said.

CISS Executive Director Amb Sarwar Naqvi said the concept of nuclear ban looked fanciful, but was a manifestation of human desire of creating an ideal world. Strategic Vision Institute President Dr Zafar Iqbal Cheema cautioned against complete nuclear disarmament in the absence of a conventional arms control regime saying doing so could push the world into an era of destruction and chaos. “The idea of disarmament looks noble, but under what circumstances do we intend to achieve it,” he said.

Brig (r) Naeem Salik said that the global nuclear ban idea was a “utopian idea” with very little practical value. Majid Mehmood, a senior researcher at CISS, asked whether global nuclear disarmament would make war redundant and the application of nuclear knowledge that countries would continue to possess.