VIEWPOINT : THE CTBT AND THE 1997 NPT PREPCOM by Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca Johnson is an independent analyst on disarmament issues based in London and Geneva. She has published several reports on the NPT Review and Extension Conference and on negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament. She represented the ACRONYM Consortium at the NPT Conference as a nongovernmental representative. The relationship between comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) negotiations and international efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament has been long-standing and complex. As the current CTBT negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva draw to a close, a new conflict has emerged between the nuclear weapon states (which were recently converted to the cause of a CTBT as a nonproliferation measure) and the non-aligned countries (which have traditionally regarded a test ban treaty as a step towards nuclear disarmament). This disagreement on the meaning of the CTBT has persisted through the final weeks of negotiations at the CD and will have profound implications for its future role within the broader nonproliferation regime. In particular, the outcome of the CTBT negotiations is likely to condition the approach—whether positive or negative—of many governments towards the new “strengthened review” process for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreed to at the Extension Conference in New York in May 1995. Cynics fear that the nuclear weapon states intend to eviscerate the review process from the beginning, turning it into a “talk shop” or bogging it down in procedural complexities. For those states that tacitly opposed indefinite extension of the NPT in New York, the strengthened review process is a weaker lever on the nuclear weapon states than they had hoped to wield had the extension decision been a limited or renewable one. Other states that had accepted the indefinite extension as necessary to underpin a stable nonproliferation regime hoped that, by locking the nuclear weapon states into a more frequent review process, they would gain greater oversight and accountability. South Africa, Sri Lanka, and others at the forefront of negotiating the strengthened review want to ensure that the first Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting set for 1997 establishes a substantive role in monitoring and maintaining pressure for full implementation of the Treaty, particularly Article VI on nuclear disarmament. Already, the depository governments of the NPT have been meeting to discuss procedures for the first PrepCom of the enhanced review process. Thus, the outcome of the CTBT negotiations—and the type of CTBT reached (if one is reached)—will help determine whether non-nuclear states will be satisfied with the strengthened review process and how they might behave at the 1997 PrepCom. Recent changes in position at the CD (especially by China) suggest that the nuclear weapon states are beginning to realize that lack of progress in this important area will be costly. This essay first provides a brief history of the relationship of CTBT efforts to the broader nonproliferation regime. It than analyzes the outstanding issues and dynamics among the key players in the final negotiations at the CD. Finally, it considers the likely implications of the success or failure of the CTBT deliberations on the strengthened NPT review process, as well as on other future nuclear arms control efforts.