Those who hoped the end of the Cold War would create conditions for a wholesale elimination of nuclear weapons have, so far, been sadly disappointed. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, pointed out yesterday, complacency and lack of political will among the nuclear weapons States have made for meagre and pitifully slow progress towards that objective. All the more reason, therefore, to welcome both the substance and the timing of the joint declaration on a nuclear-weapons-free world issued yesterday by Ireland, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Slovenia. Although work on this document predates the recent series of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, it is made highly relevant by them. They have dramatised the dangers inherent in the present regime. The tests illustrate clearly that non-proliferation without nuclear disarmament is a formula incapable of delivering stability. It creates a constant temptation for threshold states to break into the nuclear club using such arguments as those put forward by the new Indian government, which says this is the only way to ensure its interests are recognised as an emerging economic power with the world's second-largest population, and nuclear or nuclear-capable neighbours. Without the commitment to nuclear disarmament, it is all the more difficult to dispute Pakistan's counter-argument about the need for a reciprocal capability.
This initiative, which deserves a wide international hearing, will help to link the two issues politically. It concentrates attention on an important question facing the international community after the Indian and Pakistani tests, which one expert has defined as follows: that we are either on the threshold of non-proliferation through disarmament or the erosion of non-proliferation through nuclear freefall.
The nuclear states resist the force of this logic and seek to define existing legal commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty in terms of general and complete disarmament. This interpretation is rejected by the non-nuclear states, including the signatories of this initiative, who say the language of the treaty supports them. But they acknowledge that a supplementary statement of political commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons is required which would require a novel approach to force reductions, predicating each step on their elimination. Ireland has taken this initiative fully mindful of its honourable international record on nuclear disarmament questions. It is also taken outside the ambit of the European Union, two of whose members are nuclear states and most of the rest members of a nuclear alliance. The initiative is pitched at the United Nations General Assembly session this autumn, where it is hoped to gather broad international support. Assuming this is successfully achieved the initiative must be pressed within the EU's orbit as well, since its political logic applies a fortiori to nuclear states and to those in alliances committed to use these weapons. As Mr Andrews put it in his statement yesterday, "there is only one logical step for mankind now. That is to see the abolition of these weapons once and for all".