Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has sought to spur momentum for his vision of a “nuke-free world” by calling for the start of long-overdue negotiations on a treaty aimed at banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons.
Speaking Tuesday evening at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Kishida said Japan will work together with other countries and the United Nations to facilitate discussions between nuclear and nonnuclear weapon states.
“I call on political leaders of nuclear-weapon states and other countries around the globe to step up their engagement on nuclear disarmament so that those from all walks of life are exposed to its importance and take concrete action, not despite of, but because of the challenging security environment,” Kishida said.
However, getting relevant nations to agree on a so-called Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) is likely to be an uphill battle, experts say, since such a deal has been on the table for some three decades without gaining much traction internationally.
What exactly is an FMCT?
An FMCT is a proposed agreement that would prohibit production of the two main components of nuclear weapons: plutonium and highly enriched uranium.
Countries that joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nonnuclear weapon states are already prohibited from producing or acquiring fissile material for weapons. This means that an FMCT would impose restrictions on the five original nuclear weapon states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and the four nuclear-armed states that are not NPT members: India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
An important aspect of the FMCT is that it takes a gradualist approach toward disarmament, said Tong Zhao, a nuclear weapons policy expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The proposal sets aside the harder issue of eliminating nuclear weapons and focuses on the less challenging topic of stopping the production of more fissile materials for these weapons — an approach that makes it less objectionable, particularly to nuclear states with larger stockpiles.
Indeed, some states with large fissile material stockpiles, including the United States, Russia, Britain and France, have already stopped production for military purposes because they simply don’t need any more, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association.
Others, including India, Pakistan, North Korea and possibly China, have not. None of these countries’ stockpiles are under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, with Beijing failing to report to the U.N. nuclear watchdog on its plutonium production activities since 2017.
For an FMCT to be effective, however, all nuclear-armed states would need to agree to halt the production of fissile material.
Why is Kishida seeking to build momentum now?
Hailing from Hiroshima, which was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945, Kishida has a strong personal commitment to pursuing nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.
His latest remarks at the U.N. are part of his Hiroshima Action Plan, which was adopted by Group of Seven nations this year.
While Kishida's FMCT push is unlikely to immediately bring about any major changes, it could provide an impetus to revitalize the discussions on negotiations for such a treaty, said Nobumasa Akiyama, dean of the School of International and Public Policy at Hitotsubashi University.
That motivation aside, concerns about China and a nuclear arms race may also be an important driver, as Beijing is suspected of having an interest in resuming fissile material production to facilitate a rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons program.
Why has it been so difficult to agree on an FMCT?
The proposed FMCT has been languishing for decades in the Conference on Disarmament, a body of 65 member nations established as the sole multilateral negotiating forum on disarmament.
Based in Geneva, it operates by consensus, meaning that a single member can block any decision on FMCT negotiations.
Efforts have been made to relocate negotiations to the U.N. General Assembly, where no single country could block the entire effort, but these have so far failed.
A key issue among members is that some nuclear states worry about the existing gaps between their own fissile material stockpiles and those of potential adversaries.
For instance, Pakistan, which has blocked FMCT talks for years, wants a verifiable treaty that addresses past, present and future fissile material production, given that India reportedly has a larger stockpile.
This view is shared by Beijing, which has so far rejected U.S. calls to join multilateral nuclear disarmament talks that also involve Russia, arguing that to do so Moscow and Washington would first have to “level the playing field.”
What would it take to reach an FMCT?
Daniel Hogsta, acting deputy director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), argues that the chances of rallying support for an FMCT are not promising, given that the idea has failed to gain much backing since it was first proposed in the 1990s.
He also says that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which almost half of U.N. members have signed since 2017, already bans the production of fissile material. In this regard, Hogsta criticized Kishida's initiative as an "attempt to repackage old, failed proposals," claiming that Tokyo is using it to "distract from the fact that despite Kishida's stated objective of a world without nuclear weapons, the Japanese government remains wedded to nuclear weapons as part of its security strategy."
Countries like Japan have declined to join the TPNW, since doing so would make it harder for non-nuclear weapon states to enjoy security guarantees from a nuclear-armed ally.
Hogsta believes that for the FMCT to have any chance of success, either the Conference on Disarmament would have to resume substantive work, or states would need to agree to take the issue elsewhere.
For the conference to resume work, Kimball said its members would need to show more flexibility. This could include discussing a treaty that would not only halt new military fissile production, but which might also mandate reductions or certain controls on existing stocks, including military and civilian ones.
Experts believe, however, that taking the FMCT issue to the U.N. General Assembly would probably be the best way to realize multilateral negotiations.
“Negotiating such a treaty within the General Assembly could lead to its successful conclusion,” Zhao said. “Once a treaty is negotiated, it would reinforce the global norm against fissile material production and exert pressure on countries who choose not to participate.”
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