India and Pakistan Nuclear Testing – Archive Article
December 13, 2008

RADIO 2GB NEWS COMMENTARY BROADCAST ON FRIDAY JUNE 5 1998 ON RADIO 2GB’S “BRIAN WILSHIRE PROGRAMME” AT 9 PM, AND ON JUNE 7 1988 ON “SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE” AT 10.30 PM.

The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests are bad news for the cause of disarmament. But the nuclear situation at the end of this century is not as bad as was predicted 30 years ago.

I am a member of the Foreign Minister’s National Consultative Committee on Peace and Disarmament. This week’s meeting in Canberra was overshadowed by the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.

But a sense of history is important. The basic treaty aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This was adopted by the United Nations 30 years ago this month. Under the treaty, the countries with nuclear weapons agreed not to supply them to countries without nuclear weapons, and the countries without nuclear weapons agreed not to acquire them.

I gave my first talk at a public meeting on nuclear weapons 32 years ago. The negotiations for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty had begun in the previous year – 1965 – and I was asked to explain what the treaty was about.

At that time, we were speculating that by the year 2000 – which then seemed such a long way off! – there could be as many as 30 or even 40 nuclear weapon countries around the world, including Canada, Sweden, Italy and Australia.

It is now inconceivable that Australia could ever acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, Australia has long been very active in the quest for disarmament. But at that time, the massive spread of nuclear weapons seemed very likely – hence the public interest in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a giant confidence-building measure. Confidence building measures are the opposite of an armed race.

An arms race moves ahead with one country acquiring extra weapons, and then its rival matches that acquisition and acquires a few more extra weapons, thereby encouraging the first country to acquire a fresh round of weapons, thereby creating a new round in the arms race.

Similarly, the process of restricting the spread of nuclear weapons has a similar style. One country agrees not to acquire nuclear weapons, thereby encouraging its neighbour to think that it too can do without the weapons, and the neighbours elsewhere in the region are also encouraged not to acquire weapons.

For example, Australia’s support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty reassures Indonesia (which is also bound by that treaty), and Indonesia’s policy of not acquiring nuclear weapons reassures Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, and so on.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has created a new disarmament principle in international politics, so that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is an international public relations disaster. It may make a government popular at home (at least until the bills come in for the next round in the arms race) but it damages a country’s standing overseas. Therefore countries acquire nuclear weapons only by stealth – this is not a process to boast about.

India and Pakistan have put the clock back on progress in disarmament. But if it is any consolation, we are in a better position in 1998 then I predicted back in 1968.