防化研究院履约十年回顾

《禁止化学武器公约》生效10周年之际,简要回顾公约生效以来防化研究院参与的履约研究、核查接待、单一小规模设施建设、指定实验室建设、日本遗弃化武处理等各个方面的履约活动,以期总结经验,展望未来。     

Deferred verification: verifiable declarations of fissile-material stocks for disarmament purposes

ABSTRACT

Nuclear disarmament is often seen as eventually requiring access to nuclear warheads or to the warhead-dismantlement process to verify that a state has not hidden weapons or weapon-materials despite promising to disarm. This article suggests this view is misplaced, and that what is needed is a verification mechanism able to provide reliable assurances of the absence of fissile materials available for use in weapons after a state has disarmed. Such a mechanism will need an initial declaration of the amount of fissile materials held by a state for all purposes, military and civilian. In a state with a nuclear arsenal awaiting elimination, this declaration would have to include materials that may not be available for verification because they are in nuclear weapons or are in other classified or proliferation-sensitive forms. This article describes a verification arrangement that does not require access to materials in weapons and in sensitive forms while still allowing checks on the overall accuracy of the declaration. Verification of the completeness and correctness of the declaration is deferred to the time when the weapons-relevant material enters the disposition process, at which point it no longer has any sensitive attributes. By removing the focus on monitoring warheads and dismantlement, this new approach could provide a more manageable path to nuclear disarmament.     

NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship,Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy

In nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, many governments pursue multiple objectives, and changes in policy can occur rapidly—and often unexpectedly. For these reasons, understanding nonproliferation requires empathy and imagination rather than just historical fact. This article considers one teaching tool to encourage such insight—simulations—and demonstrates how teaching and scholarship can interact to improve our understanding of the complex decisions and negotiations involved in nuclear nonproliferation. The article consists of five parts: first, it explains the benefits of simulations as both a policy development tool in Washington and as a teaching tool in universities; second, it describes the pedagogical strategy of the Stanford University simulation program; third, it shows how the simulations have identified and highlighted theoretical and substantive insights that are often neglected in scholarly studies of nonproliferation; and fourth, it describes how students are tested to enhance the learning experience from the simulation. Fifth and finally, the article provides concluding observations about how using simulations in the classroom can help scholars develop insights that improve their understanding of real-world nuclear negotiation dynamics and outcomes.     

Missile Strategy in a Post-Nuclear Age

While the arrival of nuclear weapons coincided roughly with the development of short, medium, intermediate, and eventually intercontinental missiles, the contribution of missile technology to the deterrence equation is often lost. If nuclear weapons were eliminated, even new generation missiles with conventional payloads could struggle to render effective deterrence. But some of the physical and psychological effects commonly ascribed to nuclear weapons could still be in play. And in a world without nuclear weapons, thinking about the use and control of force from the nuclear age would also deserve renewed attention.     

The Power of the NPT: International Norms and Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament

ABSTRACT

There is a lingering disagreement among scholars on how the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) affects nonproliferation and disarmament outcomes. Drawing on constructivist scholarship on international norms, this article examines the extent of the NPT's effect in the case of Ukraine's nuclear disarmament. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukraine found itself host to the world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Despite Ukraine's initial commitment to become a non-nuclear state, it proceeded along a difficult path toward NPT accession. Most controversial and directly at odds with the NPT was Ukraine's claim to ownership of its nuclear inheritance as a successor state of the Soviet Union. This article argues that, while much domestic discourse about the fate of these nuclear weapons was embedded in the negotiation of Ukraine's new identity as a sovereign state vis-à-vis Russia and the West, the NPT played an important, structural role by outlining a separate normative space for nuclear weapons and providing the grammar of denuclearization with which Ukraine's decision makers had to grapple.     

Exploiting the Challenges to Bioweapons Development

ABSTRACT

Widespread and often exaggerated generalizations about the global spread weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have proven to be not only misleading and technologically naïve, but also unhelpful in formulating effective policies to counter their threat. The new book by George Mason University's Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley dispels the popular narrative that governments and terror groups can easily—and inevitably will—develop WMDs, particularly biological weapons, by exploring the complex external and internal conditions that such programs require, as demonstrated by the Cold War-era biological weapon programs of the superpowers. This empirically grounded and realistic assessment of how states try—and often fail—to develop such programs offers a more reliable basis to craft realistic counterproliferation policies that can elicit international support.     

Uranium yellowcake trafficking incidents in Africa

The perpetuation of an otherwise astute fissile material safeguards model by the current non-proliferation regime raises a number of concerns, not least the efficacy of the approach in reducing clandestine weapon developments and the nuclear terrorism threat. Mindful of potential shifts in illicit nuclear material and weapon acquisition, following an excessive focus on fissile material safeguards and the proliferation of nuclear weapon technology, this article uses proliferation trend and scenario analysis in a bid to identify potential proliferation threats and non-proliferation opportunities. The results of the article's assessment of reported incidents (1992–2013) involving theft, unauthorised possession, and attempts to smuggle or sell highly enriched uranium (HEU), plutonium, low-enriched uranium (LEU), natural uranium and uranium yellowcake reveal a decline in occurrences involving fissile material but an increase in uranium yellowcake incidents, particularly in Africa. Presumptions that yellowcake may have provided the newest threat to clandestine weapon developments and nuclear terrorism wane amid concerns over possible biases in reporting, scepticism over an organised and demand-driven nuclear black market, and the difficulties of non-state actors’ development of crude nuclear weapons off the tedious yellowcake conversion-enrichment-fabrication pathway. To secure Africa's uranium yellowcake from potential proliferators, the article proposes concerted domestic, regional and multilateral non-proliferation efforts.     

NONPROLIFERATION POLICY CROSSROADS:

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The four-year struggle to pass the controversial US-India nuclear trade agreement offers an exceptionally valuable case study. It demonstrates a classic tradeoff between the pursuit of broad multilateral goals such as nuclear nonproliferation and advancement of a specific bilateral relationship. It reveals enduring fault lines in executive branch relations with Congress. It vividly portrays challenges confronting proponents of a strong nonproliferation regime. This article is based on an analysis of the negotiating record and congressional deliberations, including interviews with key participants. It assesses the lessons learned and focuses on three principal questions: how did the agreement seek to advance US national security interests?; what were the essential elements of the prolonged state-of-the-art lobbying campaign to win approval from skeptics in Congress?; and what are the agreement's actual benefits—and costs—to future US nonproliferation efforts?     

OPTING OUT OF THE IRON TRIANGLE

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the US chemical industry went from lobbying against the Geneva Protocol and promoting increased funding for chemical warfare to refusing to produce binary chemical weapons and assisting with the negotiations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)—even though the treaty included provisions that could be costly to industry. What happened in those thirty years to make the US chemical industry reverse its position on chemical weapons? This article argues these changes were largely caused by the chemical industry's desire to reform the negative public image it had acquired due to its involvement in the Agent Orange scandal and other high-profile incidents during the 1970s and 1980s. The chemical industry's assistance with CWC negotiations may be explained after an examination of the US public policy literature, which argues that industry will support apparently costly regulations if doing so helps it repair a damaged public image and ensures greater profits in the long run.     

THE AUSTRALIA GROUP

The Australia Group's (AG's) contributions toward stemming global proliferation of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction over the last 20 years are noted, in addition to the group's complementary role in effectively supporting the purpose and objectives of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This report also outlines the organizational and operational means that help accomplish the AG mission and notes the U.S. Congress’ recognition of the role of the AG in countering chemical and biological weapons proliferation. Addressing criticism by some CWC states parties that question the AG's role in nonproliferation, the author also highlights the AG's expanded reach since September 2001 over terrorist activity. Finally,the article identifies a challenge the AG now faces in furthering its objectives and offers a possible solution.