The perils of these international law things
Apparently Saudi Arabia desires civilian nuclear reactors and a uranium enrichment plant. Under one reading - and it’s a valid one, even the correct one - of international law we are duty bound to aid them in that goal.
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The thing is this Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both we - and in fact everyone absent a very few pariahs - are signatories and so bound. The essential deal is that in return for an agreement not to build bombs then everyone gets access to civilian nuclear technology. That’s just what the deal is. It’s there in the treaty, that’s what international law says.
Now, true, it’s a bit odd to want to do the enrichment oneself. That’s the gobsmackingly expensive part of the process and absent a truly vast buildout of reactors possibly something best done by hiring capability from others. But it is there that anyone has not only the right to do this but to call upon others to aid them. Along with that promise not to build bombs of course.
No, reactor fuel is not the same as bomb material. The difference is low enriched (say, 5%) and highly so (90%) or LEU and HEU. A useful assumption - not a flat out fact but a very useful assumption indeed - is that anyone trying to make HEU might be intending to be a bit sloppy about that no bombs promise. LEU is for reactors only. If Iran - just to take an example - were enriching to LEU only then in strict legal terms we should all be aiding them in doing so.
Our point here is not to introduce to the intricacies of matters nuclear. Rather, to make a point about international law. There are things in international law that we might not, in fact, desire to do. As we can see with this argument about Saudi Arabia and an enrichment plant. A straight reading of that international law insists that not only may they we should, in fact, be helping. There’s going to be an awful lot of smoke blowing, argument and shifty looks as people try to weasel a way out of obeying international law. Or argue that that should happen.
Please note, we have no position at all on whether Saudi should gain an enrichment plant or not. Rather, if we can all decide that, y’know, this international law isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be and we’d rather not have to obey it for practical reasons then, well, doesn’t that open up some vast number of interesting issues?
It’s an interesting one, no? If we don’t have to obey our promises in the Non-Proliferation Treaty then which other pieces of international law are similarly subject to our desires rather than the letter of the law?
Tim Worstall