Last week’s editorial on this theme focused on the meetings that took place among the traditional post-war powers and their partners among the emerging economic powers, leading significantly to a reconstitution of the G8 into a G20. But the premier conference taking place at that time was the opening of the new United Nations General Assembly session encompassing powers – great and small – that now constitute the international community. And almost complementary to this was the encounter between the main nuclear powers and Iran, on the status of that country’s development of various forms of nuclear capability.
Finally, as these meetings have concluded, the Chinese government and people marked, in dramatic fashion, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of their People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, and concomitantly, the emergence of China over these sixty years as an economic power of substantial significance in international economic relations.
But a centerpiece of much concern during the last month has been the issue of nuclear proliferation. This continues to dominate the concerns of the traditional post-war great powers like United States, and Britain and its European Union partners, as they seek the assistance of newer powers like China, and of post-Soviet Russia, in their efforts to curb the desire of other countries to possess nuclear capabilities for both peaceful and potentially war-making capability. Their determination is that Iran should not possess a war-making nuclear capability. And this is strengthened by their fear that, in the volatile Middle East, Iran is not an ideological ally, preferring as it does, to see a new configuration in the Middle East that would give an Islamic orientation in international relations a more prominent place in that region, leading to a curbing of Western influence in the area, and by extension a less dominating role for Israel – itself a nuclear power – in the settlement of the Palestine issue.
In parallel with the Western powers’ concern with Iran, has gone their concern with North Korea’s development of a war-making capability; though like Iran, Kim Jong Il insists that his country is involved mainly in the peaceful uses of atomic energy, while being cognizant that, for his country, there is still not yet a definitive post-World War II settlement. The United States has persistently tried to engage the support not only of China on this North Korea issue, but also of Russia, an ally of North Korea in its earlier guise as the Soviet Union. But Russia itself is guarded in its approach, insisting that the approach of the NATO powers to their relations with the East and Central European powers emerging from the collapse of the world socialist system, is tilted against Russia itself.
This Russian position arose from the US-NATO decision to place strategic weapons in countries like the Ukraine and Poland, ostensibly to cope with Iranian military capabilities, but perceived by Russia to be simply a rearrangements of the old NATO stance against the Warsaw Pact – meaning against Russia. But just prior to the UN General Assembly and related meetings, President Obama sought to reduce the significance of this Russian objection – and its implications for Russia’s help in relation to both Iran and North Korea – by reversing the Bush-Nato decision, and calling a halt to what Russia took to be the direct pointing of additional nuclear capabilities at itself.
But the issue of who, among the emerging powers, should have nuclear capabilities, and for what, remains the significant issue. President Bush, during his tenure, sought to draw India into formal observance of the rules relating to the possession of the capability for nuclear fission, by reaching certain understandings about its use. But the incentives given to India for this have not been sufficient to induce that country – conscious of Pakistan’s nuclear capability developed without any serious American objection – to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT).
In response, in mid-September, to a UN Security Council Resolution calling on all countries to comply with the obligations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was, at a conference in New Delhi on the peaceful uses of atomic energy, extremely critical of the NNPT, arguing that “It is a matter of regret that the global non-proliferation regime has not succeeded in preventing nuclear proliferation… its deficiencies, in fact, have had an adverse effect on our security.” And on September 29, the Indian government in a letter to the United States Ambassador to the UN, rigidly observed that, “There is no question of India joining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state. Nuclear weapons are an integral part of India’s national security and will remain so, pending non-discriminatory and global nuclear disarmament.”
The American concern, not unlike that of Japan, banned since the end of World War II from possessing nuclear weapons, is the potential for local geopolitical disputes transforming themselves into nuclear-led wars. But the United States is diplomatically crippled by its ‘permission’ so to speak, to allow Israel to develop a nuclear capability. Israel itself, like India, Pakistan and Cuba are the only states not adherents to the NNPT, Cuba being the only one of those without an actual capability. President Obama’s current strategy in relation to Iran’s nuclear capablitlites seems, in that context, to be aimed at placing pressure on that country to put a halt to its activities, as a way of reducing the significance of the Israeli focus on placing the Iranian issue as superior in importance to a resolution of the Palestinian issue. Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to want to deflect America’s priorities from solving the latter – giving it time to extend its settlements as ‘geopolitical facts’ – in preference to solving the so-called ‘Iranian question.’
Countries like Japan have an interest in supporting the US diplomatic strategy towards Iran in the hope that it can be applied, with the cooperation of China and Russia, to ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. And it is indeed interesting that, according to reports, both China and Russia, seem to have responded positively towards President Obama’s most recent initiatives towards Iran, and Iran’s somewhat positive response in turn, as reported by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
We might in fact surmise, that the diplomatic cards could be played the other way around. That is, that a determined move towards getting Israel to subscribe to the resolution of the Palestine issue, might well diminish the Iranian case for a nuclear capability in response to Israel’s possession of one.
But then again, Iran itself is part not only of the Middle East, but of a larger Asian subcontinent in which the emerging powers are now determined to exert greater influence in global affairs. And to the extent that the existing major powers, like even a United Kingdom and its European partners such as France, now restricted in their possession of far-flung colonial possessions, continue to insist on their nuclear option as a significant element of global political strategy, then it may be difficult to persuade the emerging powers that they should possess anything less.
There is much still for the powers to discuss on this nuclear issue in today’s new context of a diversified globe rearranging its political options in response to new economic options and new regional geopolitical complexities. And the United Nations forum must remain the dominant centre for such discussions.
