Nuclear non-proliferation - 29 July 1994

The other morning I walked out on to Nob Hill where the gold rush nobs built their mansions, most of which were shattered by the 1906 earthquake and on a corner where two of the biggest hotels almost adjoin, I ran into little huddles of tourists in sports shirts some looking glum, some puzzled an old Midwesterner on his first visit was practically outraged – "Call this California?"

That was the common cry. And it's one that's muttered thousands of times every July and August when in spite of a century or more of warning and Mark Twain's famous comment about San Francisco's wintry summer, the tourists flock in under the undying illusion that July and August are as in their neck of the words, the hottest months. The chamber of commerce here I must say has been wonderfully successful throughout the century in keeping from the eager visitors the news that July and August are more dependably grey, foggy and chilly than any other months of the year. Still, it's a word that the hotels and tourist people don't want to spread naturally and in mid-summer here, the, the sweater people do their best business.

I was on my way to pick up a report of the going's on across the bay and over the hills into the Livermore Valley where, in a July temperature close to 100 which is another normal condition in the valley, delegates from 17 nations met with their American opposites to find a way to save the greatly threatened nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is due to lapse next April. You might say that, as a binding law, it's already moot with North Korea refusing to join and at least three other nations busy making or preparing to make nuclear weapons swearing they never had any and haven't got any and are using whatever suspicious elements they possess strictly altogether now for peaceful purposes, they met here in the sweating valley because that's where there is a national laboratory famous for its energy research.

Indeed, one of the you might say tourist attractions they were treated too was the labs famous Nova, a giant laser simply defined as a means of testing physical concepts beyond nuclear weapons, whatever that means. While the United States, Britain, France and Russia want to renew the non-proliferation treaty, a whole raft of smaller nations in the Middle East, in Asia who are saying that it would simply be a licence to the big shots to go ahead with their own nuclear production and endlessly postpone general disarmament. Of course, there's much more to the opposition that that, not least the resentment of small nations that just when they're about to get their own deterrent, the big boys pull rank on them.

It's hard to think of a topic of world concern more pressing for 17 nations to sit down and talk about, but this conference many thousands of miles away from the homes of most delegates lasted for two days, why is it all these big international get together summits even last only two days. Most delegates get there fairly pooped from a long flight, they just have time to look over the programme, sigh over the number of compulsory social events the lunches, the ceremonial dinners, the continuous hospitality, then they have to bathe and change and get to the first of these social orgies, which are exhausting in themselves what with the excessive food, the speeches, the bowing, the toasting not to mention the wines. They get to bed late, their up early for the first meeting, it ends at one because they're either the guest of the host nation at lunch or the host to a guest nation, back for an afternoon meeting must end before a reception given by some shah or sheikh or minister or foreign secretary same tomorrow except that quick visit to awesome Nova, then back and, goodness, time for the farewell dinner, then pack and fly home.

About meetings on arms control, it can be said that these public and publicised conferences are simply the show places for policies that have been worked out by diligent underlings months maybe years ahead and that, therefore, the position of any given nation is well understood before they all get together. If that's so, why do they travel so far and meet at all?

This conference at Livermore was peculiar in so far as I can gather not being called by the American, the United Nations or any other national atomic agency. Apparently, it was organised by the Livermore lab itself, which is true a national laboratory under government supervision. Anyway, it turned out albeit briefly to be a very useful meeting for two complimentary reasons, it reminded complacent people that even if the Cold War is over, the production of nuclear weapons is still a lively business and probably more widespread than ever. Secondly, it showed rather dishearteningly that the attitudes of Russia, China and the United States towards nuclear policy and to all each are if anything a suspicious as ever. This is uncomfortable to believe, but well worth knowing at a time when the conventional wisdom across the Western world is that the threat of a nuclear was is zero and that the main trouble we're going to have with Russia and China is in Russia helping or hoping to prevent the country collapsing into social chaos and a new dictatorship and in China trying to find a balance between trade and encouragement for human rights and a more liberal regime.

Now the conference was organised by a lady, Livermore's expert on nuclear control and non-proliferation treaties. By the way, the original treaty was signed in 1968, the lady's name is Kathleen Bailey, she had some words for the Russians and the Chinese and having heard her, they had some rough words for us. It was all very healthy in the sense that she put a bomb under the conventional wisdom and let the party break up with some new and unpleasant truths that are going to have to be faced sometime soon.

I've not been able to find out exactly who Miss Bailey was speaking for, she did speak as if she was speaking for the United States, I mean for the administration, but saying things that would be just now un diplomatic or rude if they came from Secretary Christopher or the chairman of the joint chief's of staff. Nothing sensationally new or unheard off, but things that in our praiseworthy desire to have a Russian leader we can stay friendly with, we tend to dust under the carpet for instance, Russia is going ahead with making bombers and warheads, delivery systems and has not, as the United States has done, stopped producing tritium and plutonium. She barely hinted at a Russian export business that some criminologists say is scandalously lively, namely the clandestine sale of nuclear bomb making parts and materials to rogue countries or even terrorists.

This last charge is almost impossible to check on, though it's been the essence of most of the spy movies and the James Bond epics, does Charles Gray have the bomb, who did he get it from, will Bond get to him in time defuse it and stop him becoming president of the world? None of the parties to this sort of very profitable exchange between a great power and a terrorist organisation is going to keep the bills of sale or the diaries and, if challenged, will lie through its teeth.

Of course, the Russian delegate was not going to take this sitting down. Yes, he said, Russia just like the United States was still making strategic weapons but not intended, goodness to be used against the United States. Everything was being done as a deterrent against a future unknown foe and it was all part of the huge job of reorganising Russia's entire armed forces. As for the continued production of tritium and plutonium, of course, for producing energy that's what they were for, for peaceful purposes.

I don't believe anybody said anything about Star Wars research, which maybe dormant, but I doubt is dead on either side and nobody brought up a fact which is explosive to bring up today that in spite of all the social and political upheaval in Russia, the Herculean struggle against drugs, organised crime, inflation, homelessness and the rest, the Russian nuclear budget has not noticeably decreased since the break-up of the Soviet Union. I suppose nobody brought it up because we ourselves are not saintly in that regard.

As for the Chinese, Miss Bailey got their delegates' dander up at once by saying they had over 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 11 nuclear submarines, the latter a charge that made the Chinese delegate chuckle at the untruth of it. He's a big man on Beijing's foreign affairs department, deputy director general no less, and he made a point, which at least a dozen other nations might have made on their own behalf. It was the idea that Miss Bailey seemed to take for granted that the United States alone is the sole protector of the security of the world and, as he put it, the rest of us are seen as potential troublemakers.

The United States had some nerve he suggested, I don't know the Chinese for chutzpah, in bemoaning the Chinese nuclear arsenal and deploring it as a threat. So long ago as the 1950s and the Korean War. it was the United States that had made a nuclear threat against China. That by the way is true enough, it was never aired at the time, it was a secret threat by President Eisenhower to have the Chinese put an end to the Korean War or else.

That was the last note of a conference, which ought to reconvene as soon as possible, take up from those useful insults and really listen to the fire alarm of proliferation in some cool place for let us hope something longer than two days.

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