June 1995, Pages 12, 91

Israeli Nuclear Stockpile Undercuts U.S. Credibility at NPT Conference

By Frank Collins

The United States applied heavy pressure on Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia and many other countries to support the permanent and unconditional extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at the month-long conference that opened April 17 in New York. However, before and during the proceedings President Bill Clinton did not put the slightest pressure on Israel to sign the NPT, saying privately that the United States "understands" the Israeli position.

In fact the U.S. government has refused to acknowledge that Israel has developed nuclear weapons at all, although specialists say Israel has a stockpile of between 200 and 300 weapons, which would place it in the class of China and Britain. It is this obfuscation that undercut U.S. credibility from the beginning of the conference, and imperiled a cornerstone of U.S. nuclear policy based upon renewal of the NPT.

The deadly nuclear arms race has been slowed by the NPT, which became effective in 1970. Many observers believe that, in the absence of this treaty, the number of countries which have declared that they possess nuclear weapons would have risen from the present five to as many as 30. Because of the misgivings of a number of the parties when the treaty was drafted, the life of the treaty was set at 25 years. Its renewal depended upon the negotiations that began this year.

The 1970 NPT was written as a compromise between the five declared nuclear powers—the United States, the U.S.S.R. (now supplanted by Russia), China, Britain and France—and the non-nuclear countries, which were assumed at the time to constitute the rest of the world. The chief inducement to the non-nuclear countries to sign was the pledge by the five nuclear powers that they would abolish their nuclear weapons and become non-nuclear like the rest of the signatories. Signatory countries were assured that the treaty would obligate their non-nuclear neighbors to forgo acquiring nuclear weapons for as long as the NPT was in effect.

Since that time, Israel, India and Pakistan are believed either to have developed or continued to develop nuclear weapons or components that could rapidly be assembled into such weapons. Thus the expected benefit of the NPT to non-nuclear countries has plummeted.

In the case of the Indian, Pakistani and Chinese triangle, a system of mutual deterrence has come into being, resembling the U.S.-U.S.S.R. stand-off in the Cold War. However, there being no other possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, Israel can directly threaten all of its neighbors under its policy of unilateral deterrence without the possibility of nuclear retaliation. The United States could put an end to this unstable situation by acknowledging the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal. Since the Symington amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act requires cutting military assistance to any country developing nuclear weapons in defiance of the NPT, Israel would have to sign the agreement or lose a third of its present U.S. aid.

The Principal Bone of Contention

The principal bone of contention at the New York meeting on the extension of the NPT is that the five nuclear powers have done little or nothing to move toward nuclear disarmament. Under the conditions of the Cold War, the stocks of nuclear weapons of the United States and the Soviet Union grew as rapidly as they could be produced. The remaining declared nuclear powers produced these weapons more slowly. Of the undeclared nuclear countries, Israel evidently has produced nuclear weapons at the probable maximum rate set by its capacity, while India and Pakistan are acknowledged to be capable of each quickly assembling much smaller numbers from materials on hand.

Current estimates of nuclear weapons stockpiles, according to the Washington Post of April 9, 1995, are:

Given the huge disparity between the U.S. and Russian stockpiles and those of the other six countries, the agreed-upon demolition of thousands of surplus American and Russian nuclear weapons, without concrete steps toward total nuclear disarmament, is viewed by many of the non-nuclear countries as simply a reduction to more practical levels of weaponry, rather than real disarmament. With respect to all of these figures, it is well to remember the damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced by two relatively unsophisticated atomic bombs.

Israel can directly threaten all of its neighbors without the possibility of nuclear retaliation.

In addition to the above nuclear countries, several other countries are believed to have taken initial steps to produce nuclear weapons, or be actively planning to do so. Among them are Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya. All of these countries are signatories of the NPT and so are subject to inspection of their facilities devoted to the peaceful uses of the atom by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iraq, whose Osirak reactor was bombed by Israel in June 1981, was found still to be pursuing the nuclear weapons option after the Gulf war to the consternation of the IAEA, which had been inspecting the Iraqi nuclear facilities over the years. While IAEA inspection procedures are being strengthened, there remains controversy as to whether the improved procedures will be 100 percent effective in the case of other countries. Both North Korea and Iran are involved in presently unresolved and well- publicized questions with respect to the purposes of their nuclear power plants.

In all cases, nuclear power plants and other peaceful uses of radioactivity are permitted under Article IV of the NPT, which reads:

1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all parties to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate in the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

According to Article IV, the furnishing of a light-water reactor and technical know-how by Russia to Iran, opposed by the United States, seems to be fully permitted.

The proposal of the nuclear weapons powers at the conference that the NPT be unconditionally and permanently renewed is viewed by many of the non-nuclear countries as no less than an attempt to freeze the status quo for all time, especially in the absence of an explicit plan and a timetable to abolish all nuclear weapons.

Article VI of the NPT reads:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

The non-nuclear signatories of the NPT complain that none of the Big Five, except very provisionally China, have made statements or have presented any concrete evidence that they have programs that would take the final step in the foreseeable future of going beyond nuclear deterrence to total nuclear disarmament.

As far as the United States is concerned, the opposite of disarmament is taking place. Announced U.S. security doctrine holds that the nation must continue to retain nuclear weapons into the indefinite future. Although the supply of radioactive tritium from dismantled warheads will not be exhausted until 2011, the U.S. Energy Department is now debating the type of process to be used for the production of this material for the continuing production of hydrogen bombs for as many as 40 years beyond the above date. Total nuclear disarmament, besides abolishing the danger of nuclear war, would also eliminate the preferred status and special prerogatives of the five nuclear powers under the NPT.

A number of the non-nuclear countries present at the New York negotiations insisted that the permanent extension of the treaty would extinguish for all time the possibility of their putting leverage on the nuclear-weapons five to comply with Article VI. These non-nuclear countries demanded instead that the extension be for some single stated period or else for a series of such periods. This would be authorized under Article Xb of the NPT, which states:

[Within] 25 years of the entry into force of the Treaty, a conference shall be convened to decide whether the Treaty shall remain in force indefinitely, or shall be extended for an additional fixed period or periods. This decision shall be taken by a majority of the Parties to the Treaty.

The United States is the chief supporter of unconditional and permanent extension of the NPT. Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr., President Clinton's special representative to the NPT talks, has visited over 40 countries whose stand on the permanent extension is less than clear, pressuring them to vote for permanent extension.

The U.S. argument has been that the slightest doubt about some future extension of the NPT could cause present non-signatories to continue to abstain from the treaty and might also cause present signatories to drop out of the NPT.

On the other hand, U.S. insistence on the permanent extension of the NPT opened a deep schism in the New York negotiations, increasing the number of NPT signatories unwilling to vote for an extension. During the conference, Ambassador Graham told journalists that more than 100 signatories out of the previous 178 would sign a permanent extension. Others doubted that even a simple majority would emerge for extension.

A Tenuous Majority

Surely a more flexible position of the United States and the other four nuclear powers about the extension of the NPT would have insured a consensus instead of a tenuous majority at best.

As the only remaining superpower, the United States evidently regarded the NPT as an instrument to promote exclusively American foreign policy objectives instead of designing an approach whereby the NPT would unite nations of many differing outlooks in the all-important endeavor to reduce the danger of nuclear war.

It is at this point that the ambiguous position of the United States with respect to the large Israeli nuclear stockpile becomes moot.

Two serious questions arose in connection with U.S. insistence on extending the NPT indefinitely: (1) Has the U.S. appointed Israel to be its agent of nuclear deterrence in the Middle East for all time? (2) Has the pro-Israel lobby in the United States sufficient power to prevent the U.S. from ever raising the question of Israel's nuclear weapons?

These questions alarm all Middle East countries. Besides the notable case of Iran, history records many instances of American friends changing into foes in the Middle East, in part because of U.S. double standards for Israel and its neighbors. The disquiet among Middle East states about Israel's nuclear weapons role is well illustrated by Egypt, a U.S. ally receiving an annual grant of $2.1 billion from the United States. Despite this, Egypt threatened that it would vote against the permanent extension of the NPT unless Israel became a signatory, or else indicated some time frame in which it would sign. This triggered not only very heavy pressure on Egypt from the Clinton administration, but also Israel's face-saving announcement that it would sign the NPT after general peace is established in the Middle East.

As for the long-term influence of the pro-Israel lobby over U.S. non-proliferation policy, an indication of the strength and depth of this influence is the silence of the mainstream U.S. media regarding the Israeli nuclear stockpile and Israeli refusal to sign the NPT. To take one example: while the Washington Post has finally admitted the existence of Israel's nuclear arms, its recent six-article series on the renewal of the NPT, which totalled more than 7,500 words, devoted less than three dozen words to Israel and none to the reasons behind the reluctance of Egypt to vote for the permanent extension.

The case of the Washington Post is far from unique. In the outpouring of material in English about the renewal of the NPT, there was virtually no discussion about the conundrum for U.S. policy makers posed by Israel's ongoing program of nuclear weapons storage and development.

Frank Collins writes frequently on Middle East issues.