The Undiminished Relevance of Disarmament and Arms Control: Ten Theses

Arms control and disarmament - in the minds of many people, these concepts are still associated with a long-forgotten era, with superpower summits in Vienna and Reykjavik and the Helsinki Final Act of the CSCE. Disarmament and arms control, however, never disappeared from the global agenda and have once again become topical issues. Disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation are at the heart of Social Democratic foreign and security policy. During the period of détente and Ostpolitik, they were instruments of crisis management and provided a platform for an institutionalised dialogue between diverse political systems and ideologies.

Following a decade of disarmament that began with the conclusion of the INF Treaty in 1987 and ended with the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, military expenditure has been rising sharply again since 1998. According to the yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for 2007, worldwide military expenditure in 2006 amounted to some 900 billion - 3.5% more than in 2005. This meant that global arms expenditure had increased by 37% in the previous ten years. The United States is well ahead of the field, having spent a total of ?396.2 billion, which corresponds to 42% of global arms expenditure. The period since 2002 has also seen a 50% rise in international arms trade.

Almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there are still more than 32,000 nuclear warheads in storage facilities throughout the world. In short, mankind's capacity to destroy itself several times over has only been marginally reduced since 1989. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on the other hand, has become more acute, while among the military planners of the world's major powers the nuclear bomb is making a strategic comeback. Almost unnoticed by the global public, the leading military powers have long been embroiled once more in a new nuclear arms race, which must be halted as a matter of the utmost urgency.

The fact is that disarmament and arms control are facing an acute crisis, which may even threaten their very existence. Does this mean that arms control has had its day as an instrument for shaping international relations? The answer is a categorical "no"! Nevertheless, there is no getting away from the realisation that key achievements in the realm of arms control, of which Europe has been among the main beneficiaries, are at risk. Neither the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (aCFE) nor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) has entered into force. In 2005 the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons ended in failure. The proliferation of missile systems also gives serious cause for concern.

There can be no mistaking the diagnosis: the entire system of international relations and treaties that is supposed to prevent the proliferation of weapons is in acute danger of collapse. The system stems from the time of the Cold War, when things were ?straightforward?. Yet even the nuclear "balance of terror" was far from being as stable and unshakeable as it might seem in retrospect. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, there were four nuclear false alarms. In 1979, 1980, 1983 und 1995, either the United States or the Soviet Union had a finger dangerously close to the trigger. The East-West confrontation, moreover, was an exceptional situation of limited duration. In it, two rare circumstances coincided, namely a military balance and rational political leadership. Neither of these circumstances can be said to apply today. We are now seeing the emergence of regional powers that pursue their hegemonic interests outside of any East-West constellation. Although the danger of a nuclear world war has receded, that clearly definable threat has now given way to previously unknown threats to international security in the form of weak and unstable states armed with weapons of mass destruction as well as non-state players, whose significance is steadily growing. Once the Cold War was over, awareness of the need to preserve the fruits of previous arms-control negotiations and to engage in new disarmament and arms-control efforts seems to have largely waned, in spite of the fact that the existing multilateral agreements still constitute the basis of a cooperative security order.

The purpose of the following ten theses, which are essentially presented in the form of a catalogue of specific proposed measures, is to explain why arms control and disarmament remain imperative if a peaceful global order is to be constructed. If they are systematically applied, they can foster cooperation and peaceful interaction. They cannot and will not work, however, without the necessary political will, which has quite obviously been lacking in recent years.

1. Resolving the crisis over the nuclear non-proliferation regime

At the start of the 21st century, nuclear weapons are no longer regarded as the ultimate deterrent but are increasingly being seen once again as theatre weapons. Through the ongoing modernisation of their arsenals, not only the United States but also Russia, China, France and Britain are undermining the obligation to disarm, which is enshrined in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and are turning their backs on the 13-point action plan for nuclear disarmament that was unanimously adopted by the parties to the NPT at their Review Conference in the year 2000. In spite of pronouncements to the contrary in the UN Security Council, nuclear-weapon states are less and less prepared to give assurances that they will not use their nuclear arms, preferring to reserve the right to carry out even a preventive strike. The ideal of a world free of nuclear weapons pursued by the Non-Proliferation Treaty is being replaced by the threat of a "re-nuclearisation" of global politics. We therefore urgently need new impetus regarding nuclear disarmament. Failure of the NPT Review Conference in 2010 must be prevented. The 13 points in the action plan set out the measures that are needed for further steps in the direction of nuclear disarmament. These include the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the start of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and an admonition to the five official nuclear powers to honour their obligation to disarm under Article VI of the NPT. The multilateral treaty system will be further eroded if certain nations or groups of nations interpret contractual rights and obligations unilaterally to their own advantage. North Korea and Iran have certainly drawn the conclusion from the war in Iraq that the best insurance policy against US invasion is to gain access to the nuclear club as quickly as possible. The nuclear programmes of these two problem countries could quickly trigger a devastating chain reaction. Japan and South Korea will scarcely sit back and watch, nor are the Sunnite rulers of Saudi Arabia at all likely to accept Shiite Iran?s aspiration to become the uncontested number-one regional power with the aid of nuclear missiles. While there are signs of easing tension in the North Korean nuclear crisis, success in defusing the crisis over the Iranian nuclear programme is still a distant prospect.

2. Honouring the obligation to disarm imposed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The five nuclear-weapon states recognised by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, namely China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, continue to have an estimated 12,000 immediately deployable nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, including those held in reserve, this figure rises to some 32,000. The strategic nuclear weapons with which the superpowers guaranteed their ability to destroy each other several times over during the Cold War are virtually pointless today. Any residual need for deterrence could be satisfied with a few hundred bombs. The fact that the United States and Russia have drastically reduced the number of their nuclear warheads since 1990 undoubtedly represents progress, but further action is needed. For example, 5 December 2009 is the expiry date of the 1991 START Treaty, which provided for a one-third reduction in each side?s strategic missiles and a ceiling of 6,000 missiles. If no successor agreement were concluded, the only remaining valid legal basis for inspection of the arsenals of those two nuclear would cease to exist. A decision must be taken by the end of 2008 as to whether the Treaty is to be replaced by a new one, amended or extended for another five years. In addition, the Presidents of the United States and Russia concluded the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT) in 2002. SORT provides for a reduction in the number of strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 on each side by 2012. The Treaty, however, has several shortcomings. The decommissioned warheads need not be destroyed but may be kept in storage. This means that all the stored warheads could theoretically be deployed again once the Treaty has expired in 2012. Moreover, during the present ten-year period, both sides have the right to withdraw at any time, subject to 90 days? notice. SORT, in other words, is also far too timid a step, albeit in the right direction.

3. Supporting a zero option for tactical nuclear weapons

While the supposed utility of strategic nuclear weapons can still provoke lively argument, all experts actually agree that tactical nuclear weapons no longer have a role to play in security policy now that the Cold War is over. I am not referring only to the few nuclear weapons that are still stored in Germany but to tactical nuclear weapons in general. In two articles in the Wall Street Journal, which appeared on 4 January 2007 and 15 January 2008, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other prominent figures called on world leaders to eliminate short-range nuclear weapons as soon as possible if they wanted to avoid the risk of a nuclear conflict. The new nuclear era, they said, would be "more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence". The articles are signed by four politicians who are above any suspicion of starry-eyed pacifism. Besides Dr Kissinger, the signatories are William Perry, George Schultz and Sam Nunn. Their appeal contains eight concrete proposals, ranging from initiating a bipartisan process in Congress for the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to getting worldwide control of uranium enrichment and halting the production of fissile material for weapons globally. The four elder statesmen also call for substantial reductions in the size of nuclear forces, the complete elimination of short-range nuclear weapons and efforts to secure ratification of the Test-Ban Treaty by other key states.

4. Stepping up efforts to continue the development of the Biological Weapons Convention

The first international agreement banning the use of biological, i.e. bacteriological, weapons, the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, dates back to 1925. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, or Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) for short, was signed in 1972, entered into force in 1976 and has now been signed by 167 states and ratified, and hence accepted - at least on paper - by 151, including all NATO member states and Russia. Although Syria and Egypt have signed the Convention, they have not ratified it. Israel has not even signed it. Unlike the Chemical Weapons Convention, the BWC still lacks an effective review and verification regime, which has hitherto been blocked by US resistance. An important element of such a regime are on-challenge inspections, which are conducted at the scene of suspected infringements by teams vested with extensive powers. As long as there is no such verification system, the BWC will remain a toothless tiger, a Convention imposing legal provisions which it is powerless to enforce. The Review Conference in 2006 was unable to rectify matters. In its Final Document, however, it did adopt an ambitious work programme designed to strengthen the BWC in the period leading up to the next Review Conference in 2011 as well as additional measures for the continued application and further universalisation of the Convention.

5. Seeking ways out of the deadlock at the UN Conference on Disarmament

It is to be feared that 2008 will see another act in the tragedy of the Geneva-based UN Conference on Disarmament (UNCD). At the end of 2007, the annual session of the UNCD, which had lasted for almost eight months, once again drew to a close without having produced a result. This means that the stalemate is set to enter its eleventh year. The Conference on Disarmament has been deadlocked since the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, because irreconcilable conflicts of interests are preventing any progress. Yet again, the participants were not even able to agree on an agenda. The United States persists in its outright refusal to negotiate on a reduction in stocks of nuclear weapons and on the prevention of an arms race in space. The developing nations have responded by rejecting talks about a ban on the production of nuclear weapons-grade material. The deliberations are to be resumed at the start of 2008, and another fruitless year is on the cards. Some governments have already been reducing the size of their delegations so that they can at least cut their costs in view of the chronic lack of activity. This stagnation is another symptom of the profound crisis which has characterised arms control for years. The UN Conference on Disarmament is the world?s only permanent negotiating forum on matters of disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, but it faces an increasing danger of descending into farce. Yet in the 1970s and 1980s no fewer than seven international agreements were thrashed out in Geneva, covering a wide range of disarmament issues. There is an urgent need for reinvigoration of the UNCD, which remains an important forum, so that it can act more effectively in pursuit of global arms control and, in particular, make its own contributions in the realm of verification. To that end, however, it needs the governments of all countries to display the political will to disarm.
 
6. Improving control of small and light arms and banning cluster munitions

The initiatives launched for these purposes in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations frameworks should be further pursued and intensified. It is still true that small weapons are the real weapons of mass destruction. In Afghanistan and Central Africa, countless people have been killed by shots from old second-hand Kalashnikovs, UZIs or HK G3s. Estimates put the annual number of people shot dead by small arms at half a million, of whom 300,000 are killed in armed conflicts, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Several million small arms are manufactured every year. According to the annual report of the Swiss Small Arms Survey project, at least 875 million small arms, that is to say pistols, rifles and hand-held rocket launchers, are in circulation. These include weapons that disappeared in huge numbers following the dissolution of the Soviet armed forces and other armies after 1989. Here too, attempts to exercise effective control are being thwarted ? in this case by resistance to export controls on the part of gun lobbies in major countries such as Russia, China and the United States.

Another important aim is the international prohibition of cluster munitions. This is one of several areas where non-governmental organisations have been playing a vital part, and significant progress has been achieved over the past year through the drive to outlaw cluster munitions, known as the Oslo process. The aim for 2008 must now be to bring the international negotiations on the prohibition of cluster munitions to a successful conclusion in the form of a binding agreement.

7. Improving multilateral treaty regimes by means of better verification, tighter export controls and the development of international cooperation

Better verification means measures such as unannounced on-site inspections, the use of new surveillance technology and the creation of trained impartial teams of inspectors. Efforts are needed on the part of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that all parties to the NPT conclude comprehensive safeguards agreements and additional protocols and take the measures required for their early entry into force. The powers of the IAEA to conduct special inspections of facilities, including undeclared facilities, must be strengthened and expanded. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Agreement, a programme designed to eliminate threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative and the Proliferation Security Initiative, which targets the spread of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the additional protocols to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, are innovative approaches and represent new, effective ways to combat breaches of the NPT and to enhance global security. Comprehensive codification, institutionalisation and application would be a more rational course of action than the formation of "coalitions of the willing". The EU should systematically implement the strategy it adopted in 2003 to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which is likewise designed to ensure stricter adherence to the multilateral treaty system.

Another innovative approach is embodied in a number of proposals to internationalise the nuclear fuel cycle. The aim of such a measure would be to guarantee the supply of nuclear fuel for energy generation to all interested countries while reducing the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons. Part of a proposal made by the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is that a special territory should be set up under IAEA administration, in which a commercial uranium-enrichment facility would be established. The IAEA would be solely responsible for controlling the export of nuclear fuel from that territory. The precise ways in which the various proposals would be implemented are currently under negotiation in Vienna.

The international control regime for arms exports is also in urgent need of strengthening and further development. Within the EU framework, the Federal Government should press for the most restrictive, uniform and transparent arms-export policy that can be achieved and for the Code of Conduct to be made more firmly binding.

8. Ensuring more effective control of delivery technology

The development, acquisition, possession and transfer of military delivery technology have not yet been subjected to prohibition or non-proliferation clauses in international law, while the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is of limited effect in controlling exports. Missile proliferation has increased sharply over the past few years and poses serious risks to the stability and security of the recipient regions. An initial step to close this gap was taken through the signing on 25 November 2002 of the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation. This initiative must be further developed. This is another area where worrying trends are observable. Russia, for example, suspended its membership in November 2007 because the United States had not yet met its notification obligations.

9. Resolving the CFE Treaty crisis

The latest developments with regard to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty) have revealed an acute danger that another set of finely tuned instruments in the domain of conventional arms control is being put at risk for no reason. The CFE Treaty, which was concluded between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1990, is one of the most important arms-control agreements. It limits the number of weapons systems from the Atlantic to the Urals and permits regular comprehensive mutual inspections. The background to Russia's suspension of its obligations under the CFE Treaty is the conflict over the US plans for an anti-missile defence system and the fact that the Member States of NATO have not yet ratified the 1999 Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (aCFE). The West has linked its ratification to withdrawal of Russian troops from the former Soviet Republics of Moldavia (now Moldova) and Georgia. Russia's suspension of its obligations under the CFE Treaty is not tantamount to final Russian denunciation of the Treaty. The freeze on fulfilment of any of its obligations means that Russia will no longer be informing NATO of troop movements and military exercises, nor will it permit any inspections. Even though Moscow is stressing that Russia?s suspension of its contractual obligations does not automatically mean that Russia will be beefing up its military presence along its western borders, it has nevertheless plunged the CFE regime into a grave crisis. Every effort must now be made to ratify the Agreement on Adaptation of the CFE Treaty (aCFE) in order to save the CFE regime. This requires movement on all sides and continuation of the constructive dialogue launched in Bad Saarow, Germany, by Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The option of a parallel process in which the aCFE would be gradually ratified by NATO members while Russia consistently fulfilled its Istanbul obligations, which was considered at Bad Saarow, could offer a way out of the crisis. It is in the interests of Germany and Europe that Russia should once again be part of the CFE system and that the CFE Treaty should remain a key element in the effort to build confidence through arms control in Europe.

10. Launching regional initiatives

Nuclear-disarmament initiatives should be launched in the Middle East and Southern Asia with the aim of creating nuclear-weapon-free zones in those parts of the world, similar to those that have already been established in Central and South America, in Africa, in the South Pacific, in South-East Asia and, most recently, in Central Asia. In the event of the US and India concluding their planned nuclear agreement, Germany should urge India, through the Nuclear Suppliers Group, to recognise the disarmament obligation imposed by Article VI of the NPT, to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and to declare a binding moratorium on the production of weapons-grade fissile material.

In the NATO framework too, disarmament and arms control must be brought back into sharper focus. For this reason, the initiative taken by Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Støre, at the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels on 7 December was an important and judicious signal. There is undoubtedly an urgent need for the world's most powerful military alliance to devote more attention to arms control and disarmament once again and to make its own contribution to the pursuit of these goals, particularly in view of the Alliance's strong tradition of successful arms limitation. In the past too, besides ensuring military deterrence, NATO always displayed willingness to engage in dialogue and cooperation, whether through the Harmel Report of 1967, the London Declaration of 1990 or the Strategic Concept of 1999. The NATO-Russia Council, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership, the NATO-Ukraine Charter, the Partnership for Peace programmes and NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue clearly document the efforts of the Alliance to seek and engage in cooperation. The aim of the new German-Norwegian disarmament initiative is to identify specific arms-control and disarmament objectives in time for the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 and to bring on board France and the United States, which have so far been the most sceptical of the allies. It is to be hoped that the disarmament initiative will not only raise the profile of NATO in the field of arms control but will also make it possible to pull the entire arms-control process out of the mire and to preserve what arms-control policies have achieved.

Another important initiative is the Global Partnership initiated at the G8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002 by former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Vladimir Putin, which is helping to reduce the risks of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological proliferation in Russia. The partnership involves the destruction of chemical weapons, the disposal of decommissioned Russian submarines and the safe storage of fissile material. By 2012 a total of 20 billion US dollars will have been spent on this initiative.

Résumé

Although they are not designed to present anything like an exhaustive review, the above theses illustrate the pressing need for restoration of the role of disarmament and arms control as a guiding principle of international relations. In past decades, the strategy of limiting the size of arsenals made the world a safer place. During the era of East-West confrontation, arms control played a vital part in preventing war and building mutual trust. It created the conditions for cooperation and change. The limitation and elimination of strategic nuclear weapons, the destruction of all intermediate-range missiles, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention and the limitation of conventional forces in Europe are but a few important examples. The achievement of a ban on anti-personnel mines and the campaigns against the proliferation of small arms and, most recently, for the prohibition of cluster munitions have seen the emergence of another important player in the field of arms control, namely the non-governmental organisations, without whose efforts the Ottawa Landmines Convention would never have entered into force. All of this shows that arms control is far from an outmoded concept but is more necessary than ever before in view of the new security challenges facing today's world. 

Moreover, no one should harbour any illusions about future scope for circumventing or evading arms-control agreements and their monitoring and verification mechanisms. In actual fact, the only alternative to contractually based, verifiable arms control is a global nuclear, biological and chemical arms race, which cannot be in the interests of the United States either. The risks emanating from the threefold threat of international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states can certainly be dealt with more effectively by means of intelligence, arms control and policing than through military intervention.