Breakdown of the Security Related Treaty Regimes?
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Table 1: Prevention of War (Bilateral United States/USSR (Russia))
Table 2: Control of Strategic Armaments (Bilateral United States/USSR (Russia))
Table 3: Other Bilateral Agreements
Table 4: Disarmament (Multilateral – Open)
Table 5: Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Multilateral – Open)
Table 6: Arms Limitation, etc. (Multilateral – By Invitation Only)
Table 7: Non-Proliferation [Export Control] (Multilateral – By Invitation Only)
Table 8: Weapons Free Zones (Regional)
Table 9: Other Regional Agreements
Table 10: Humanitarian Agreements
Table 11: UN System Agreements
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Ian R. Kenyon 
In the second half of the Twentieth Century (between 1945 and the first part of 2002) Goldblat[1] lists 145 documents, ranging from UN registered treaties through UN Resolutions to unilateral statements, which have some bearing on security and the control of armaments. Only about 10% of these are likely to have been noticed outside a specialist circle but they all represent some aspect or other of the attempt to use negotiation of documents, valid in international law, as a means to enhance international security. In order to address the question of the health of the regime it may be helpful to analyse this collection for original purpose and continuing validity before going on to see what current problems might be appropriate for negotiation of similar instruments and to assess chances of success.
Bilateral – United States/USSR
(Succeeded by Russia)
Unarguably the most important objective of the attempts to create a security related treaty regime in the period under review was the prevention of a Third World War between the two superpowers (the United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and their allies. These had two main components—procedures to prevent the accidental triggering of hostilities,—and agreements to cap—and later to reduce strategic armaments. The prevention of accidental war was the subject of eight agreements starting with the 1963 Hot-Line Agreement (updated from time to time to keep abreast of communications technology) and ending with the 1989 Agreement on Notification of Major Exercises. A full list is in Table 1. These agreements offer potentially useful precedents for use in future situations of tension but their relevance to relations between the United States and Russia is much reduced as the Cold War is over.
Table 2 lists the achievements of the two sides in attempting to control and ultimately to role back the huge strategic arsenals they spent forty years in developing. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) provided the certainty that neither side could win a nuclear war and hence, through the acceptance of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) principle, ensured the strength of deterrence, which underpinned strategic stability through the remainder of the existence of the Soviet Union. Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I (SALT I) (1972), Vladivostok Accord (1974), and SALT II (1979) started the process of putting ceilings to heavy bombers and land-based and submarine-based missiles, bringing the numbers to equivalence and setting the basis for reductions. However, deterioration in relations resulting from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan meant that SALT II never came into force.
Arms control talks were restarted in the early eighties and the first concrete outcome was the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) which required the destruction of two entire classes of missiles—cruise and ballistic missiles of intermediate range. Whilst these weapons were not significant in the two countries' ability to threaten each other from homeland to homeland, their destruction was of great significance to the European allies on whose territory they were based and who, at least on the Western side, would have provided their targets. This treaty provides the first example of disarmament, complete with appropriate intrusive verification, in the nuclear area (although it only involves delivery systems and the warheads remain available for redeployment).
1991 saw both the completion of negotiation of the Treaty on the Limitation of strategic Arms (START I) and the final collapse of the USSR. The latter event brought the necessity for multilateralising the START Treaty, as the weapons of the former Soviet arsenal were partly deployed in what are now the independent states of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. These three states opted for non-nuclear-weapon state status under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and transferred all their nuclear warheads to Russia. The end of the Cold War and the development of a new set of relationships between the states which had formerly been on either side of the iron curtain led to a series of changes in nuclear forces, mostly codified in unilateral or bilateral presidential statements but only in the case of START II (1993) involving formal negotiations. Both the United States and Russia (matched, where appropriate by the United Kingdom and France) announced further reductions in strategic warhead deployments, the detargeting of strategic systems, and the removal of tactical nuclear warheads from aircraft, ships, and artillery systems. START II has not been ratified, partly because of Russian concern over United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, but the Bush administration, having initially proclaimed that such treaties were not necessary between friends, signed SORT Treaty in May 2002. The principal concern today is the early dismantling of surplus Russian nuclear warheads and safe disposition of the fissile material. The release by President Bush of $500 million for the Co-operative Threat Reduction Program in January 2002 is good news.
In terms of our investigation into the health of the regime we can conclude that:
It is not necessary to maintain the structure built to contain the dangers of the Cold War.
It is necessary to encourage a controlled reduction of the strategic systems in the two large nuclear arsenals down to much lower numbers on both sides, and the decommissioning of all excess warheads, tactical and strategic.
Physical protection of fissile material and of nuclear weapons has gained even greater significance following 9/11.
Other Bilateral
Unfortunately, the use of bilateral instruments to improve strategic stability in other areas of tension has been infrequent. Table 3 shows only four examples. Opportunities for emulation in South Asia and the Korean Peninsular of some of the US/USSR achievements are evident. As was shown in the superpower case, however, it is easier to negotiate such instruments as the need for them diminishes.
Multilateral (Open)
Table 4 shows that only four disarmament treaties, open to all states, have been successfully completed in the period under review. The Enmod Convention can be discounted as its authors ensured that its scope only covered activities that no-one knew how to do! The other three are highly significant achievements, likely to be of lasting value. The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), between them, ban use as weapons of the entire spectrum of dangerous substances from living organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, through the toxins, whether produced by biological process or chemical synthesis, to simple chemicals, such as hydrogen cyanide. Thanks to its negotiation at the period covering the end of the Cold War and to side negotiations of a bilateral nature (see Tables 2 & 3), it was possible to give the CWC strong provisions for verification. Although the BWC does not have such provisions and attempts to negotiate a protocol to strengthen it have so far been unsuccessful, it does provide a clear, unambiguous prohibition in law of the acquisition of such weapons. The recent establishment of a mechanism for annual consideration of bioweapons-related issues should help its effective implementation. The APM convention sets an important precedent, first in that it requires destruction of all stocks and the ban of future production or use of a weapon that had been widespread in its application and, second, in that it was negotiated and brought into force without the concurrence of the United States, Russia, or China but with the full involvement of many of their allies. In that it was driven by concerns for civilian victims (often killed or injured long after the conflict which caused the mines to be sown), this treaty could also form part of the humanitarian section below, but undoubtedly deserves to be considered as a major disarmament achievement.
The BWC and CWC have a high degree of universality of membership, although there is a worrying gap in the Middle East, and their parties clearly support them. The Review Conference of the CWC in April 2003 and the new BWC consultation process will provide opportunities for this support to be demonstrated.
Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Table 5 shows the treaties related to the wish to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the small group of states that already possess them. The most important of these must be the NPT itself. This is underpinned by the IAEA Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA Statute) (listed in Table 11); INFCIRC 153 (the model for the individual legally binding agreement that each party to the NPT is obliged to enter into with the IAEA); INFCIRC 540 (model protocol to extend INFCIRC 153 agreements); the Physical Protection Convention; and the UN Security Council Resolution 984, setting out the security assurances provided to NPT parties by the five NPT recognised nuclear weapon states. The NPT is extremely strong as the great majority of its members are determined to avoid having to cope with additional nuclear weapon states. (However, they find complaining about non-compliance with Article VI a useful tool for pressing the United States to reduce its nuclear arsenal). The treaty has achieved near universality of membership. India and Pakistan will only join if given the status of a nuclear weapon state. Israel prefers to stay outside and neither to confirm nor deny its nuclear weapon capabilities. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has just announced its denunciation of the treaty for the second time. And a small group of parties in the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran, are suspected of non-compliance in secret. The five yearly Review Conferences and their Prepatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings provide a focus for international efforts to maintain this particular regime.
International attempts to achieve the cessation of nuclear tests are normally seen as a part of nuclear non-proliferation so the relevant instruments are included here apart from the Treshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET), which, being bilateral, are included in Table 2. The test ban regime is in a strange limbo. The moratorium is holding among the five permanent members of the UN security council (P5) but the US Senate has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and while there is very little chance of that treaty entering into force because of the requirement for particular states to ratify, the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is establishing a worldwide monitoring system, to which the US continues to pay its subscription.
Multilateral (by Invitation)
Some important multilateral treaties are not designed to be universal but are open, often on a regional basis, to certain states by invitation of the other members. Table 6 lists two instruments which were originally open to members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact as part of the winding down of the Cold War. They offer important precedents for other areas of tension but their continuing relevance in the Twenty-First Century Europe must be in doubt.
Another group of instruments, set out in Table 7, are those by which likeminded states co-ordinate their export control systems for goods of strategic importance. These have usually started in secret among a small group of states and have become more formal when the original members decide to expand the group. The 'Australia Group', which co-ordinates export controls on chemical and biological weapon-related items, has yet to reach this formal stage. These mechanisms are highly valued and enthusiastically policed by their members and deeply resented by some excluded states, who challenge their legality in the light of provisions of the NPT, BWC, and CWC, which guarantee access to relevant technologies for peaceful purposes.
Regional Instruments
Table 8 includes another regime, which is designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by the creation of zones into which such weapons should not be introduced. The Antarctic Treaty, Outer Space Treaty, and Moon Treaty include this provision in instruments largely intended for other purposes. Together with the Sea Bed Treaty these all create Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zones (NWFZ) in areas which are neither populated nor under the jurisdiction of a particular state. The Treaty of Tlatelolco was the first attempt, in 1967, to create a nuclear weapon free zone on the territory of a group of states. It was very ambitious, covering the whole of the Americas south of the United States, including the islands of the Caribbean. Last year it finally achieved the ratification of Cuba, the last of the 33 states of the region eligible to join. More recently, new zones have been created by the treaties of Rarotonga (South Pacific), Bangkok (Southeast Asia) and Pelindaba (Africa). Treaties creating NWFZs are important political statements but have little practical effect if their parties are already parties to the NPT.
Table 9 provides a home for a few regional treaties that don't fit elsewhere.
Humanitarian Treaties
Table 10 lists treaties that affect the laws of war but do not perhaps add to international security in terms of our main investigation.
United Nations
The last table, Table 11, lists some important UN documents, including those relating to the attempts to disarm Iraq.
The Legacy
The number of issues whose health is important to security in the new century is much smaller than the 145 we set out to study. The residue of the Cold War requires implementation of SORT with the elements of previous treaties on which it relies. Physical protection and the various aspects of Cooperative Threat Reduction are also important. The three great multilateral treaties relating to weapons of mass destruction—NPT, BWC, and CWC—are as important in this time of 'war on terrorism' and regional instabilities as they were in the past. They seem strong enough at present, but their health cannot be taken for granted and the pressure for universality must be maintained. The export control regimes are likely to be needed for some time yet but need to be supplemented by stronger efforts to bring the problem countries into the fold. The efforts to promote the International Code of Conduct (ICoC) were at least an attempt in this direction, although not very successful.
The Future
The arms control agenda contains no shortage of worthwhile objectives to pursue, in particular, restrictions on the weaponisation of space and the ban on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapon purposes. It should be remembered that the last fifty years contained long periods when little was achieved and that many of the instruments in the tables below were achieved late in their potential period of utility when the need for them was disappearing. It is important to work to persuade political leaders in the countries that are the key players in a particular field that properly drafted legal instruments with appropriate verification mechanisms can be a worthwhile tool for enhancing state security.
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