Eugene Kogan: The weakness of the latest U.N. Resolution on WMD

Bush’s weak UN resolution on curbing WMD

By Eugene B. Kogan
Global Beat Syndicate
(KRT)
WASHINGTON—The Bush administration takes pride in its militant attitude toward proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons that, according to the National Strategy to Combat WMD, “represent one of the greatest security challenges facing the United States.” And last September, President Bush announced his intention to pursue a UN Security Council Resolution that would outlaw WMD and nuclear proliferation.
But the draft U.S.-sponsored resolution currently circulating at the UN is strong on demands and weak on consequences.
On the one hand, this is surprising, given the Bush administration’s pride in its robust attitude toward proliferation. On the other, the feeble resolution appears to be just another indication of this administration’s disdain toward international law.
If Mr. Bush is serious about fighting proliferation, he must start strengthening current non-proliferation treaties and regimes instead of seeking to undermine or abandon them. So far, his administration’s record is downright dreadful: it has withdrawn our country from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and has refused to seek the Senate’s reconsideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the rejected Senate in 1997). Mr. Bush has also refused to sign the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol that would create the badly needed BWC monitoring regime.
By strengthening its current UN resolution draft, the BUSH administration has an opportunity to empower the non-proliferation regime. The present draft being circulated to UN members contains a laundry list of states’ responsibilities to prevent proliferation and expresses the intention of the Security Council “to monitor closely the implementation of this resolution and, at the appropriate level, to take further decisions which may be required to this end.”
By using the phrase “at the appropriate level, the resolution effectively becomes a legitimating rubberstamp for the Proliferation Security Initiative and other U.S. non-proliferation enforcement tools. Mr. Bush and his security advisers must resist this temptation to tailor international law to the individual needs of the United States. Nowadays, Republicans are increasingly wary of the “unilateralist” label, and sometimes boast of Bush’s “multilateralism with teeth.”
But now it is time for the White House to “put its money where its mouth is” by agreeing to include an enforcement clause that would threaten Security Council action under Article VII and VIII of the UN Charter if a state is unwilling to comply with the demands of the resolution.
The present U.S. resolution leaves the international community powerless against proliferators, who are not going to be coerced into complying with their treaty obligations simply because of critical rhetoric that reiterates their obligations under international law.
The most recent example is North Korea, which withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in January 2003 despite strong international criticism. An enforcement lause with teeth will make the new UN resolution the linchpin of the non-proliferation regime, effectively forcing countries to observe their treaty obligations while simultaneously dissuading potential proliferators. Only then will multilateral institutions have the necessary international legitimacy to set global standards of compliance, so that states like Iran and North Korea can be effectively held accountable.
If the Bush administration wants to make Americans safer, it must get over its neoconservative impulses and begin thinking seriously about how to make international non-proliferation regimes more effective. Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) remarked recently that President Bush is not “going to be judged harshly by history for the mistakes he made, but for the opportunity squandered.” If he gets this resolution right, President Bush can start proving his critics wrong.