Alphen, Netherlands. 24
March. The Netherlands is shut today for
a bit of nuclear grandstanding. The reason
for all the chaos is Nuclear Security Summit 2014 which is taking place today in
The Hague (as well as a bit of Russia-less G7).
In 1917 US President Woodrow Wilson said that the world must be made
safe for democracy. Implicit in this
summit is the need to make the world safe for power.
On the face of it the
Summit is one of those strategic photo-ops/jamborees/champagne bun-fights for
politicians that promise so much and deliver so little. However, this one takes place just when the
balance between might and right, power and law upon which nuclear restraint
rests is again being tested.
To underline the
challenge Russia’s President Putin pulled out of the Summit in the wake of his
invasion of Ukraine-Crimea demonstrating the extent to which the world now
hovers between might and right. It could
go either way.
The ‘Nuclear Top’, as
the Dutch rather disarmingly call the Summit, focuses on the very real danger
of nuclear terrorism. It should have
focused on President Obama’s 2009 vision of a “Global Zero”, a world free of
nuclear weapons. However, that has about
as much chance of happening as I have of being NATO’s next Secretary-General (I
am still available and at very reasonable rates).
The Summit will address
the danger that nuclear material might fall into the wrong hands, which of
course implied it was always in the ‘right’ hands. The specific concern is that terrorists could
gain access to sufficient radiological material to make a “dirty bomb”.
Sister Summits in Washington
and Seoul produced a Framework to combat nuclear terrorism that is being
discussed as I write. The Framework has
three elements: reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world;
improve the security of existing material; and increase international
co-operation.
Such grandiose great
power démarches have a chequered
history, particularly when the great powers are at geopolitical odds. Be it efforts to ban chemical weapons a
century ago to the many and varied attempts at conventional and nuclear arms
control and disarmament efforts to constrain and restrain massive destruction within
laws and regimes has been constant and not always successful. Indeed, The European Union was born out of
just such an effort; to constrain state action by legal precept thus rendering
the ability of Europeans to wage war on each other impossible.
Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine-Crimea confirms all too eloquently that the twenty-first century could
well be little different than the twentieth.
Good old-fashioned Realpolitik is back with a bang and along with it hierarchies
of prestige, spheres of influence and balances of bunker-busting power in which
how big is one’s arsenal again matters.
The paradox of this Summit
is that it also implies one of the struggles that could well come to define the
twenty-first century – the state versus the anti-state. The presence of China’s President Xi attests
to the concern of leaders that mass destructive nuclear power could fall into
the hands of terrorists. After all, nuclear technology is now some eighty years
old and in the anarchic world of globalisation terrorists could conceivably get
their hands on anything with the right contacts, money and time.
And it is the latter
threat that so exercises Presidents Obama and Xi, and in the absence of Putin
that other titan of geopolitics, President Herman Van Rompuy of Europe (excuse
the giggles). Moreover, it is not just
the idea that nuclear-armed terrorists could inflict real damage on societies,
but that such groups could also be instrumentalised as proxies by third states and
in so doing neutralise great power.
Hard truths
abound. First, hyper-immigration has
also made open societies ever more vulnerable to the hatreds that drive catastrophic
terrorists with nuclear ambitions.
Second, the weakening of many states in the face of anti-state actors
such as Al Qaeda has promoted the ‘anarchisation/democratisation’ of mass
destruction as ever smaller groups now seriously seek to gain access to
radiological and nuclear capabilities.
Third, leaders of the Western powers in particular feel ever more
uncomfortable using force for fear of the retribution it could trigger from
enemies within.
In other words, states
and groups that are on the face of it far weaker than some of those represented
around the table in The Hague could negate the very influence upon which great
power is established if they can successfully obtain such technologies.
Paradoxically, the
vulnerable states include Russia if only Moscow could see it. Russia may be an autocracy and be far less
open than the rest of Europe. However, in
the wake of the disastrous war Russia fought in the 1990s to prevent Chechen
independence Moscow now faces the worst of all worlds – Islamists threats along
its southern border in the very lawless places where leaking nuclear technology,
catastrophic terrorism and criminality co-exist.
In other words, this
summit matters. However, because once
again might and right are again at odds terrorists will seek to exploit the
seams between them. As Machiavelli once
said, “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise”.
Julian Lindley-French
