• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

17 October 1997

EXCERPTS: ACDA DIRECTOR JOHN HOLUM ON GLOBAL ARMS CONTROL

(Calls step-by-step method best for long term success) (2560)
New York -- U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) Director
John Holum says that arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament
remain vital components of the global security agenda as the 20th
Century draws to a close.
In an October 14 address delivered in New York to the First Committee
of the United Nations General Assembly, Holum said the United States
has found that "taking one logical step after another is the best way"
to achieve long-term strategic and conventional arms control success.
Efforts are being made to come to terms with "the possibility that
excess nuclear materials could be diverted to serve nuclear ambitions
elsewhere," he said, and states with nuclear weapons "have a
particular responsibility to set aside rigid rules of secrecy in the
storage and disposition of nuclear warheads and fissile materials, and
to adopt fresh approaches to transparency and cooperation."
"We should aim for the fastest possible pace of irreversible
reductions, and the safe and secure storage, and ultimate disposition
of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium recovered from dismantled
arms," Holum continued.
He added that the United States "has not given up on the negotiation
of a ban on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or
other nuclear explosive devices."
Another priority should be the strengthening of the Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention, Holum said.
The official also noted that there is much more practical work to be
done "to end the civilian carnage from anti-personnel landmines," and
observed that the United States "currently spends almost as much on
demining as the rest of the world combined."
Following are excerpts of Holum's remarks:
(begin excerpts)
In his address to the General Assembly last month (September),
President Clinton spoke of the great tide of global integration, and
the resulting need for a new security strategy.
Security is an increasingly broad concept, involving not only defense
but such issues as economics and the environment, science and
information, combating drugs and terrorism, and education and human
rights. But arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament remain
vital components. The threats posed by weapons of mass destruction are
far from being extinguished, and the consequences of miscalculation or
deliberate acts can be horrific -- as we know from the terrorist
activities of a cult group armed with nerve gas in Japan, biological
and toxin weapons in Iraq, and persistent reports and risks of nuclear
smuggling. And, with grim regularity, thousands of lives are lost in
conventional conflicts.
These sobering realities should spur us. Each time we sit down to
negotiate, we need to grasp all the progress we can. When we sit down,
as I noted a year ago to this Committee, we should do so in a forum
right for the given task. Today I want to underscore another,
increasingly pertinent condition for success -- that even as we aspire
to the loftiest goals, we aim in the near term for the kind of
focused, practical steps by which arms control is not just argued but
actually achieved. Let us not stand immobile, longing for the stars,
but resolve to keep moving surely toward them, in deliberate strides.
This Committee has a particular responsibility. It meets to help the
international community establish those realistic goals and provide
the orientation needed to make real negotiating work possible.
The achievements of the past year well illustrate what can happen when
realism prevails.
In September of 1996, the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It does not make nuclear
arms obsolete in a single stroke. But it will curb both horizontal and
vertical proliferation, and bring nuclear disarmament closer.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's enhanced review process is
proceeding. With Brazil's most welcome decision to accede, the NPT
will soon be just four nations short of universality. Meanwhile,
moving steadily among like minded countries, while accounting for the
security requirements of others, nuclear weapon-free zones now span
entire continents.
The pace of nuclear disarmament is picking up -- largely because the
countries whose arms are directly involved have moved in bold but
practical increments. START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) I
reductions are ahead of schedule. And this year Russia and the United
States have cleared away all remaining obstacles to Duma ratification
of START II:
-- Concerns that Russia would have to build additional single-warhead
missiles to maintain parity, while destroying multiple-warhead ICBMs
(intercontinental ballistic missiles), were answered by our Presidents
at Helsinki in March, and reiterated when Secretary (of State)
Albright and Foreign Minister Primakov signed a Treaty Protocol here
in New York last month (September). Immediately after START II is
ratified, we and Russia will begin negotiations on further reductions
deep enough to obviate any reason for such a build-up.
-- Concerns about compliance costs have been addressed in that Treaty
Protocol by extending the START II elimination timetable to 2007. At
the same time, the U.S. and Russia ensured that START II's security
benefits will be realized as soon as possible, through deactivation by
the end of 2003 of the strategic nuclear delivery vehicles slated for
elimination.
-- Concerns about the viability of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile)
Treaty were also answered last month, when Russia, Ukraine, Belarus,
Kazakhstan and the United States signed agreements on treaty
succession and on demarcation between theater and strategic defenses.
Together with the new cooperative relationship between NATO and Russia
embodied in the Founding Act, these steps have set the stage for early
Russian ratification and entry into force of START II, so we can move
on to even deeper reductions and more comprehensive controls on
nuclear arms. In this Committee, the Russian and American delegations
will urge adoption of a resolution supporting this process, on which
so much of our future security rests.
Also in the past year, the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into
force. We were proud to be able to deposit our instrument of
ratification in April, so the United States could be among the
original parties.
On conventional arms, parties to the Treaty on Conventional Armed
Forces in Europe have agreed to aim for further reductions in
treaty-limited equipment. In Latin America, the Organization of
American States General Assembly has proposed to help reduce the
demand for arms, through a legal framework on advance notification of
major arms acquisitions.
How does this remarkable and diverse record of achievement guide us
toward an even more secure future? How can President Clinton's call to
meet the challenge of global integration be pursued specifically in
arms control?
By assigning the right task to the right venue and by orienting our
work less toward idealized visions and more toward practical results.
How does that apply to a number of key priorities?
First, the practical approach calls for consolidating and realizing
the full fruits of what we have already agreed -- through entry into
force and compliance, enforcement, and implementation. This, after
all, is where the practical value of arms control is realized -- not
only in ceremonies or signatures, but in threats averted, in weapons
physically eliminated or avoided, in resources saved for better uses.
This means, for example, that our respective governments need to
secure approval for ratifications necessary to make the CTBT a
functioning and enduring reality. We commend Japan and the other
states that have already ratified the CTBT. As he announced here
September 22, President Clinton has transmitted the Treaty to the
United States Senate for its early and favorable advice and consent.
Also to secure the benefits of existing agreements, commitments to
organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
are crucial. It falls to each country to apply the powerful new
safeguards adopted in May to the real world, by upgrading bilateral
agreements with the IAEA.
Arms control compliance is served by the combination of deterrence,
through verification and the risk of sanctions, and political
commitment. The United Nations has a vital role in stimulating
governments and people everywhere to take compliance seriously. The
United States resolution this year in this Committee will emphasize
this point.
Second, in strategic arms control, a practical orientation means
tangible steps ahead. Just as soon as START II is ratified, START III
negotiations will be underway, aimed at ceilings of 2,000 to 2,500
warheads -- leaving only about 20 percent of peak Cold-War levels.
Indeed, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have already set a timetable of
2007 for this next dramatic disarmament step.
In a first for arms control, our presidents have also agreed that
START III will include the actual destruction not only of means of
delivery, but of nuclear warheads themselves. It will also embrace
transparency measures to ensure that nuclear material from destroyed
warheads will never again be used in weapons.
We are also coming to terms with an alarming potential side-effect of
nuclear disarmament: the possibility that excess nuclear materials
could be diverted, to serve nuclear ambitions elsewhere. The nuclear
weapon states have a particular responsibility to set aside rigid
rules of secrecy in the storage and disposition of nuclear warheads
and fissile materials, and to adopt fresh approaches to transparency
and cooperation. We should aim for the fastest possible pace of
irreversible reductions, and the safe and secure storage, and ultimate
disposition, of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium recovered
from dismantled arms.
Third, another leading priority is the work of the Ad Hoc Group to
strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Here, as we
intensify our work next year, realism means most of all simply
recognizing the core purpose of the effort, to protect all humanity
from the depraved proposition that deadly diseases we've struggled to
eradicate -- plague, botulinum, anthrax, and others -- would be
nurtured and deliberately inflicted as weapons of war. Open-ended
technology transfer is neither the purpose of the exercise nor a
legitimate price of success.
Fourth, lest there be any doubt, let me stress that the United States
has not given up on the negotiation of a ban on the production of
fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive
devices. In their September 25 statement, the foreign ministers of the
permanent members of the Security Council reaffirmed their conviction
that such negotiations should begin immediately and conclude at an
early date. We all agree to pursue the process of nuclear disarmament.
It is past time to agree to take the next logical multilateral step in
that process.
Who can be against it? A cutoff in the production of fissile material
will threaten no one. It will set in place an upper bound, a cap, on
the amount of nuclear weapons material in the world. How can we
achieve reduced roles for nuclear weapons if we cannot even begin
discussing a cap on their indispensable contents?
Fifth, we also have much more practical work to do to end the civilian
carnage from anti-personnel landmines (APL). The United States worked
diligently leading up to and in Oslo to find an outcome to the Ottawa
Process that would be compatible with its security requirements. What
emerged was a result we can welcome but cannot join. The Ottawa
Convention would rule out military options we cannot now do without:
to use anti-personnel landmines of types or in ways, I would stress,
that are not part of the humanitarian threat of long-lived,
undetectable mines scattered in unmarked fields.
All countries in a position to do so should sign the Ottawa
Convention. Then I urge that we turn to the critical and challenging
landmine work that still lies ahead.
Worldwide, for the foreseeable future, there will be many more people,
and many more mines, outside the Ottawa Convention than inside. Now
that its content and likely membership is settled, the question should
be how, given these realities, can we best reduce the loss of human
life to anti-personnel landmines?
Clearly the answer is that each process should make its maximum
contribution, so that their sum will be greater than the result in any
single forum.
On this issue the Conference on Disarmament (CD) unfortunately has
shown that it is prepared for neither long strides nor a quick start.
To the extent the CD was seen as competition to Ottawa, at least one
impediment should be behind us. In any event, let us recall that the
CD does include all the major historic landmine producers and
exporters, and many members believe it should undertake anti-personnel
landmine disarmament. The United States will strongly support CD
negotiations on APL, beginning with a ban on exports next year.
We also urge prompt ratification of CCW (Convention on Conventional
Weapons) Amended Protocol 2, which, again, includes the major landmine
states not part of the Ottawa Process, and deals specifically with
long-lived, non-detectable mines. The humanitarian benefit can be
immense.
As we deal with mines not yet emplaced we must, of course, also be
mindful of a distinct bottom line -- that every mine removed from the
ground is another innocent victim potentially saved. The United States
currently spends almost as much on demining as the rest of the world
combined. President Clinton has directed that we significantly
increase our demining efforts, beginning with a 25 percent increase in
funds next year.
These two issues, the fissile material cutoff and anti-personnel
landmines, underscore the dangers to disarmament of the approach
opposite to what I advocate here. The Conference on Disarmament is in
the grip of a "linkage" virus. It insists not only on maximum results
on one subject, but that all other progress must cease until we agree
to that step -- a timetable for elimination of all nuclear weapons.
I will risk repetition to state our view that the Conference on
Disarmament is a negotiating body, not a debating society, and
negotiations in Geneva should address matters of global reach that
require broadly representative participation.
But the linkage disease is impossibility squared -- a proposal in
effect to stall the proven step-by-step approach by the United States
and Russia that is in fact bringing nuclear disarmament closer, and
then to drag all possible progress on other issues into the same
morass. That linkage virus has paralyzed the CD. We will see if it
proves to be fatal.
Finally, realism should prevail in the ways we organize ourselves to
pursue arms control. To function well over tine, every organization
must be prepared to adapt to change.
The UN Secretariat's support of arms control should be reorganized and
reformed. The Center for Disarmament Affairs should revitalize its
support for the work of the United Nations and the Conference on
Disarmament, and be prepared to support new tasks.
I have sought to sketch out an arms control approach to global
security as the decade, century and millennium draw to a close. This
approach is avowedly practical in design. It is rooted in the
conviction, reinforced by all our experience, that taking one logical
step after another is the best way to achieve long-term success.
Our work has never been more vital. Yet major parts of it are stalled,
ensnared in a combination of out-moded political alignments and new
techniques of diversion and delay. Let us break free of these
shackles.
Let us turn down our megaphones, roll up our sleeves, and get back to
work.
(end excerpts)