ABSTRACT
The second idea that I wish to introduce again involves borrowing a term from elsewhere, or at least re-applying a term used previously in nuclear politics and giving it a new slant. This is the term ‘threshold state’. It was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s in reference to a group of six states (Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa) that were outside the NPT and were standing on – or moving towards – the threshold between not possessing and possessing operational nuclear weapons.7 The purpose of international policy was to hold them on the threshold and then persuade them to draw back from it, with a view to their eventually abandoning the weapon programmes and joining the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states. Understanding why the governments of these states wished to approach this threshold, and what would prompt them to cross or withdraw from it, became a major subject of debate among policy analysts. My suggestion is that we should again use this term, but in order to describe a state moving in the opposite direction: from possessing to not possessing operational nuclear weapons. Nuclear disarmament also involves crossing a threshold. My point is that the UK now deserves to be called a threshold state in this sense, since it is close to the boundary between armament and disarmament – and seems closer to that boundary than any other nuclear-armed state. Indeed, there
are respects in which it displays attributes of both a nuclear and non-nuclear weapon state, for instance regarding the near total submission of its nuclear fuelcycle to international safeguards. Lawrence Freedman, not known for his scepticism about the UK’s deterrent, opened a recent paper by observing that ‘Of all the established nuclear powers, Britain has appeared for some time to be the best placed to abandon its nuclear status’.8 Why is the UK in this position? What would encourage it to cross the threshold? The term ‘threshold state’ has relevance in contemporary international debates about nuclear disarmament because all nuclear-armed states will have to become threshold states in the above sense if nuclear weapons are ever to be abolished. We need better understandings of what threshold-crossing into disarmament would entail for each actor. Some lessons can already be learned from the experiences of South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Libya and others that have abandoned efforts to acquire nuclear weapon capabilities.9 However, these were not fully-fledged nuclear weapon states that had absorbed nuclear deterrence into their ways of conceiving security and conducting politics over several decades. In addition, they had yet to establish large R&D and industrial capabilities to support a nuclear arsenal. The UK would be the first such state to lay down its nuclear arms.10 That a founder-member of the nuclear club had decided to go down this path would give the UK’s abandonment of nuclear weapons added international significance. In discussions of disarmament, it is therefore important to acknowledge the distinctiveness of the eight or nine nuclear-armed states. We are used to hearing that ‘the United States is a nuclear weapon state’, ‘Russia is a nuclear weapon state’, ‘France is a nuclear weapon state’, and now ‘India is a nuclear weapon state’. Of course, the nuclear-armed states share a basic quality: they possess nuclear weapons, giving them abilities to practice nuclear deterrence and use their weapons as instruments of power and prestige. That apart, they are marked more by their differences than their similarities. Their capabilities vary in scale, kind and deployment; each state has its particular history of engagement with nuclear weapons and with the non-proliferation regime, rooted in domestic and regional as well as global politics; the value and meaning (and intensity of meaning) that a government and nation attaches to nuclear weapons – the security and identity that they are perceived to confer – are usually distinctive and may change over time; the political and military processes by which capabilities are managed and decisions taken are not the same (there are significant differences even among the nuclear-armed democracies); and some nuclear-armed states are members of the NPT and others are not. Much of the recent discussion of nuclear disarmament has been concerned with the collective, multilateral moves required for its achievement.11 However, crossing the threshold would have idiosyncratic implications for each of the involved states as it would for their neighbours, allies and adversaries. Crossing the threshold into elimination would therefore be different and feel different for each state and region. Although states pursuing disarmament may come to share a common purpose and to accept common rules and practices, it is therefore
important to understand – but not exaggerate – these differences and to tailor policies accordingly. In terminology, the two types of threshold state – one moving from nonpossession towards possession, the other the reverse – might be called ‘armament threshold states’ and ‘disarmament threshold states’. It may be objected that passage in either direction is unlikely to be clearly marked in time or behaviour, resulting in a lack of clarity about what constitutes a threshold. Capabilities, policies and practices take time to build up and take apart. An explosive test has by convention been regarded as the main signal that a state has crossed the line into nuclear armament, but Israel’s foregoing of explosive testing has shown that operational weapons may be developed and deployed without taking this step. In recent times, states have become concerned about the latency of weapon proliferation as well as about acquisition itself. Despite these reservations, ‘threshold’ remains a valid metaphor for describing passage from one politico-military condition to another, even if passage is gradual and may not involve the same steps and sequence of steps for each state. How are the ideas of responsible nuclear sovereignty and the disarmament threshold related? Responsible nuclear sovereignty implies, along with responsible sovereignty in the original usage, that a state belongs to an international society and has responsibilities to fellow members – and to humankind – as a result. It pays heed to the common as well as the national interest. Alistair Buchan observed in 1966, when discussing Rousseau’s use of the fable of the hare and the stag to ‘illustrate the conflict between the particular and the general interest which, in [Rousseau’s] view, was the basis of international conflict’, that
each government [of the then five nuclear-armed states] has been able to produce reasons that convince the majority of its own people why the improvement of its own national security should have priority. It has been able to appease consciences by the assertion that the certainty of the hare offers a better immediate prospect of survival and stability than foregoing it in the uncertain prospect of a bigger game.12
