Neo-Liberalism And The Return Of Stagflation
See my article on this topic at Online Opinion for more.
India-IAEA Safeguards Agreement; How Will Oz Vote At IAEA?
At first I thought my f*ked up printer was playing up on me, but alas, no, in actual fact the annex of eligible facilities for Safeguards in India is indeed empty.
The Safeguards Agreement between India and the IAEA has been released. Before we look into it a bit let us concentrate on the IAEA cover page where it states that the Board of Governors should approve the Agreement. As we will see, this neatly demonstrates one of the dilemmas’s faced by the IAEA, namely that it is both charged with promoting the nuclear industry whilst also being its regulatory body.
This Agreement demonstrates that, in so far as the India-US nuclear deal is concerned, the IAEA has put greater emphasis on promotion rather than regulation through good safeguards practice.
The Arms Control Association has launched an appropriate full frontal assault on the Agreement that has important implications for the Government in Australia. This is because Canberra has a vote on the IAEA B/GOV. This is significant because the conclusion of the agreement comes hot on the heels of the Prime Minister launching his Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commission; his first nuclear act since making the announcement will be to vote to approve/disapprove this “India specific” Safeguards Agreement.
Given this, it is worth citing from the ACA broadside. This is based on a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “proliferation analysis” policy briefing, but really the ACA Press Release is more interesting (one of the authors of the policy brief is Daryl Kimball, the director of the ACA).
… Two leading nonproliferation experts stated today that governments committed to reducing global nuclear dangers have a responsibility to modify or block a proposed arrangement to facilitate increased global nuclear commerce with India, which has refused to forswear nuclear testing or halt its nuclear weapons materials production activities. Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, former UN undersecretary general for disarmament affairs, and Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, issued their call in a "proliferation analysis" published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace…
… They concluded, “the Indian nuclear deal would be a nonproliferation disaster, especially now. The NPT is in jeopardy and diplomatic efforts to address the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran are at a delicate stage. For those world leaders who are serious about ending the arms race, holding all states to their international commitments, and strengthening the NPT, it is time to stand up and be counted.”…
That applies especially for the Prime Minister of Australia given his Commission and the rhetoric that accompanied its launch; it’s easy to send up diplomatic reps at NPT Prep Cons and have a go at Syria and Iran but the appropriate metric to asses Canberra’s commitment to the NPT can be found in cases such as this.
So, what will happen? Media reports consistently state that Cabinet has yet to determine its position on the matter. Maybe so, but that’s bullshit. I would be very surprised should Canberra vote against the Safeguards Agreement at the IAEA or block the US-India deal at the NSG. This is because that would damage relations with the United States; the PM in his speech in Japan stated that he has come under pressure from Washington to export uranium to India. In rejecting such pressure it is hard to envisage that Canberra would now vote against the Safeguards Agreement at the IAEA.
The provision that has got the ACA concerned is the following
…• An essential basis of India’s concurrence to accept Agency safeguards under an India-specific safeguards agreement (hereinafter referred to as “this Agreement”) is the conclusion of international cooperation arrangements creating the necessary conditions for India to obtain access to the international fuel market, including reliable, uninterrupted and continuous access to fuel supplies from companies in several nations, as well as support for an Indian effort to develop a strategic
reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime
of India’s reactors; and• India may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its
civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies;…
This means that in the event that India conducts further nuclear weapons tests, either of a thermonuclear device given suspicions that its 1998 thermonuclear test was a fizzle or for yield-weight purposes of new designs for longer range missiles, and there is an interruption of fuel/technology supplies in consequence, then India will suspend/terminate safeguards, which means that despite much noise these are not safeguards in “perpetuity”.
A few lines above that passage we get that India has made
…a decision to place voluntarily its civilian nuclear facilities under Agency safeguards;…
At paragraph 13 it states,
…Upon entry into force of this Agreement, and a determination by India that all conditions conducive to the accomplishment of the objective of this Agreement are in place, India shall file with the Agency a Declaration, based on its sovereign decision to place voluntarily its civilian nuclear facilities under Agency safeguards in a phased manner.…
What’s going on here? India’s rejection of safeguards in perpetuity and usage of the term “voluntary” in the above context is intimately related. This usage of the term “voluntary” is not related to the US-India deal so much as its use in the context of what are called “Voluntary Offer Agreements.” Under the NPT the declared nuclear weapon states “voluntarily” offer a number of facilities for safeguards, certainly not in perpetuity.
In this Agreement one strategic objective of India was to achieve as much of the trappings of a Nuclear Weapon State, outside of the NPT, that it could. Essentially, to a very substantial degree, the IAEA has caved and it caved because the Safeguards Department could not be allowed to hold up the Bush-Singh deal now that the Congress Party managed to buy off the votes of the Socialist Party (although not the Communist Parties) leading to a scramble on Capitol Hill prior to the elections in the US.
The ArmsControlWonk was also correct to focus on safeguards in perpetuity. His concern is based on paragraph 29
…The termination of safeguards on items subject to this Agreement shall be implemented taking into account the provisions of GOV/1621 (20 August 1973).…
GOV/1621 is not public but according to ACW’s info, from Mark Hibbs,
…Sources, however, told Hibbs that GOV/1621 has to do specifically with safeguarding items which are transferred to a state from third parties—a loophole those experts told Hibbs would allow India to interpret the agreement as excluding the 8 indigenous Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors New Delhi offered to place under safeguards pursuant to the US-India agreement …
That would mean that India’s safeguards obligations on the reactors are voluntary, allowing India to terminate or suspend safeguards on these 8 reactors after removing any imported fuel……It appears to me that a reactor becomes subjects to safeguards if (1) it is listed in the Annex (which I don’t have) or (2) uses imported fuel. According to the text of the agreement, India may suspend safeguards on a facility listed in the Annex (case 1) if India and the IAEA “jointly determine that the facility is no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards”. As far as I can tell, the agreement is silent on what happens to safeguards on facilities not in the annex (case 2) after India removes all safeguarded fuel.
That leaves the very distressing possibility that Hibbs was correct — that once India removes any imported fuel leaves from any of the 8 indigenous pressurized heavy water reactors, which are unlikely to be listed in the Annex, India can unilaterally terminate the safeguards on the facility…
That shows the link between safeguards in perpetuity and “voluntary offer.” One of the main reasons why India sought a nuclear weapons capacity was to gain the trappings of a global strategic power. That India has managed to squeeze out a good approximation to a VoA outside of the NPT is a pretty bad example and makes for a shonky Safeguards Agreement.
One thing I have focused on is “campaign safeguards” at reprocessing and conversion/fabrication facilities. We have some detail on campaign safeguards and plutonium reprocessing at paragraph 84
…(a) Subject to the provisions of sub-paragraph (b) below, the Agency shall restrict its safeguards procedures to the area in which irradiated fuel is stored, until such time as all or any part of such fuel is transferred out of the storage area into other parts of the plant. Safeguards procedures shall cease to apply to the storage area or plant when either contains no safeguarded nuclear material; and
(b) Where possible, safeguarded nuclear material shall be measured and sampled separately from unsafeguarded material, and at as early a stage as possible. Where separate measurement, sampling or processing are not possible, the whole of the material being processed in that campaign shall be subject to the safeguards procedures set out in Part III.D of this Agreement. At the conclusion of the processing the nuclear material that is thereafter to be safeguarded shall be selected by agreement between India and the Agency from the whole output of the plant resulting from that campaign, due account being taken of any processing losses accepted by the Agency.…
That’s shoddy. What is the metric for “acceptable processing losses”? Notice also that after the end of a mixture campaign that the amount to be safeguarded shall be selected by agreement with India and the IAEA and will vary from campaign to campaign.
To return to Australia’s vote. It would be entirely rational for Canberra to ignore its rhetoric on the NPT and vote for the agreement given the wider Alliance context. Those interested in “theoretical international relations” will have an interesting little experiment; will Canberra puts its ethical concerns on non-proliferation ahead of relations with the United States, as “constructivists” tell us it would? I say no, that the realists will have the better of the argument.
On the debate between realists and opponents I tend to side with the realists (despite my Leftism), although with important caveats, which we might go through some day. It would be rational for Canberra not to buck relations with the United States in the absence of countervailing pressures; morality is neither here nor there.
Those who think otherwise should find the nearest kindergarden and play with the kids in the sandpit.
In Defence Of “Online Opinion”
As someone who characterises himself as being just about as Left as they come, and despite that someone who actually gets published at Online Opinion, it was only all too natural that my interest should have been piqued by Clive Hamilton's strong critique of Online Opinion. Hamilton upbraids Online Opinion for increasingly airing the viewpoint of climate change sceptics.
Hamilton's main charge is that Online Opinion has been captured by climate change denialists and that, in fact, it is actively promoting a denialist agenda. He points to the disproportionate number of denialist articles published in recent times and a possible connection between the Australian Environment Foundation, which he states was set up to disseminate dis-information on global warming. The implicit assumption is that a relationship, perhaps of a financial or personal nature, has developed between the two entities which accounts for the rise of denialist articles.
I believe that the conclusions Hamilton reaches are unwarranted, based on the evidence that is before us. To establish a case for bias Hamilton would need to establish that the discrepancy exists, if it indeed does exist, because denialist articles are published and climate change articles are thrown into the rubbish bin, but Hamilton does not provide any such evidence.
Australia-Russia Treaty Paving Way For Uranium Exports to Moscow Heads For The Senate
The treaty opening up uranium exports to Russia signed during the Sydney APEC summit is now up for ratification in the Senate. The timing is ironic for a similar so called "123 agreement" between Russia and the United States is currently before the US Congress, sparking fierce debate on Capitol Hill.
The Treaty should be opposed but not for the reasons often cited by critics.
During the APEC Summit itself the Treaty and its nuclear non-proliferation consequences became something of a cause celeb but the arguments used by protesters against it were not valid and they have not improved with age.
For example, it has been argued by many that Russia is currently engaging in the modernisation of its strategic nuclear forces and that the sale of uranium to Russia will enable Moscow to free up its uranium resources for weapons purposes.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the issues. Russia is indeed upgrading its nuclear forces but these upgrades are directed at its strategic delivery platforms. Amongst other things Russia is developing a new Sea Launched Ballistic Missile, the Bulava, and a "new" Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the RS-24, as well as replacing its aging fleet of land based missiles with the Topol-M. It is clear that Russia is not engaging in the modernisation of its strategic nuclear warhead stockpile.
Nuclear Terrorism and Plugging A Deterrence Gap
We might remember that infamous exchange prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait between Saddam Hussein and April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq. In the course of a long exchange Saddam stated
…But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you…
What was Saddam doing here? One way at looking at this is to assume that Saddam was attempting to deter the United States by raising the specter of terrorism. If that is so, then Saddam’s gambit needs to go down in history as an instance of “deterrence failure”.
But it does raise an interesting issue, one that might very well be related to nuclear terrorism.
We have noted on these pages US policies (and a wider debate) on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism. Could it be possible that in fact these policies are not directed at nuclear terrorism per se but rather at plugging a deterrence gap?
Think of another example. In 1999 when NATO bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the poorly secured nuclear research facility, Vinca, must have not have played too big a role in planning for the air campaign. But, what if the bombing occurred after 2001?
We know that al-Qaida was active in the Balkans. Vinca reputedly had ~48kg of HEU (probably not enough for a crude gun-assembly bomb). It would have been easy for Milosevic to “do a Saddam” with Holbrooke whilst making a passing reference to Vinca; “you know the facility is not well guarded. If you bomb me it will get much worse, we’ll be too busy on other stuff; money is tight” and so on. He might say; “you will have to take that into account before you bomb, like, Osama could get ~48kg of HEU pretty easy that way.”
That could be read as an attempt to deter the United States.
So, could deterrence policies on nuclear terrorism that are directed at states be actually directed toward plugging a deterrence gap in the context of regional military contingencies?
I can see how such a policy would be a rational one for any state committed to the employment of military firepower, especially into unstable regions with weapons useable nuclear materials. All the more so in the context of a “second nuclear age” that may see the relative proliferation of fuel cycle facilities.
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.