Missile Norms in a Changing World
The Road Ahead
Randy Rydell 
Options for dealing with long-range missiles or space weapons—regardless of whether the goal is to regulate, to eliminate, or to prohibit such weapons—are constrained by many conditions. Some are national in scope and some are global. Decisions to create or to implement such options are shaped by historical circumstance, by economic and bureaucratic interest, by pressures from public opinion (as expressed through the activities of legislatures and interest groups), and numerous other factors, both technical and political. This is especially true with respect to efforts to deal with threats arising from missiles and space weapons, including efforts by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations. The history of arms control and disarmament efforts in these areas also affects the selection of negotiating fora. The following remarks address these specific issues.
The launching of Sputnik in 1957 triggered a "missile gap" debate in the political struggle leading to the US presidential election of 1960. Did the Soviet Union really have more missiles than the US, or was it the other way around? While the existence of this "gap" was later determined to have been imaginary, there is in 2003 another missile gap that is all too real. The evidence for "Missile Gap II" is not found in merely counting relative stockpiles of missiles. It is seen instead in the growing gap between rapidlyevolving international missile capabilities and the paucity of global norms to deal with the threats these capabilities pose to international peace and security. By all indications, this second missile gap is far more dangerous and real than the first.
The Historical Discontinuity of Missile Controls
Missile Gap II represents a historical incontinuity in many respects. First, it runs contrary to the historical evolution of efforts to strengthen the humanitarian laws of war, especially the efforts over generations to protect civilians from military attack. Long-range missiles, even highly accurate ones, entail serious risks to civilian populations. Because of their expense and limited number, such systems are typically reserved for purposes of delivering "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD). Yes, ICBMs can be used to deliver conventional warheads, but the fact remains that the overwhelming purpose of such missiles es to delivery WMD—weapons that inherently jeopardize civilians. Second, the world has been trying over the last century at least, to improve the transparency of weapons stockpiles. After the First World War, the Secretariat of the League of Nations diligently gathered data on the weapons holdings of its member states and published these data in its annual Armaments Yearbook. It similarly compiled details about military spending, which it published separately. While the UN today performs similar functions (by publishing its Disarmament Yearbook, its Register of Conventional Arms, and its compilation of data supplied to the UN pursuant to the Standardized Instrument for Reporting Military Expenditures)—missiles remain a glaring omission from the scope of this effort. The third historical discontinuity relates to verification: while the history of arms control is replete with efforts to limit the production, sale, or use of various weapons systems, there remains no global system for verifying commitments made with respect to missiles. Worse yet, there are no binding multilateral legal norms with respect to such weapons.
How have long-range missiles— weapons that UN scholar Inis Claude once called "infernal combustion engines"[1]—escaped the application of binding international norms? While there are many possible explanations, the most likely explanation for the failure of the " rule of law" in this field lies in a combination of factors, including: nationalism, greed, bureaucratic inertia, the lure of technological opportunities, public ignorance or apathy, secrecy, and the imperatives of military planning. For some states, missiles represent a crowning achievement in technical excellence—a source of great pride and a symbol of national strength. Many vested interests benefit handsomely from their continued development, production, and even use: weapons labs, specialized suppliers of equipment and materials, offices in government bureaucracy, constituencies of members in legislative bodies, think tanks and universities that hire themselves out for missile research projects, allies that import missiles and their related paraphernalia, and other such constituencies. The entertainment industry—books, television, and the cinema—helps to give missiles and space weapons a certain romantic caché as well. Hence the emergence of a "missile industrial/entertainment complex," which helps to sustain the push for missiles (or more missiles) and the emergence one day of space weapons.
Similar political conditions of course, also shape policies vis—vis various WMD, yet there nonetheless exists a Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), as well as a near-universal commitment to global nuclear disarmament in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). With respect to these weapons, however, the mass public has a far deeper appreciation of their horrific effects—it recognizes that the threat from missiles derives from their special warheads. The recent wave of concern in the United States about the missile threat from so-called "rogue states" arguably derives less from the missiles per se than from the deadly payloads they might someday deliver.
One sign of the lesser public concern with missiles is the weaker sanctions that exist in US laws (and no doubt other countries) for export control violations involving missiles relative to violations involving items related more directly to WMD. On an international plane, the total absence of binding multilateral norms for the production, sale, testing, or uses of missiles is further evidence of the absence of an international norm against such weapons per se.
Though strategic missiles have existed for over a half-century—and recognizing that the NPT (which entered into force in 1970) included in its Preamble the goal of eliminating all nuclear-weapon delivery systems—efforts to regulate their export did not really get underway on a global scale until 1987, when a group of missile supplier states met and created the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Not surprisingly, this first effort had many shortcomings: it adopted a purely regulatory orientation and did not require the elimination of a single missile; it was far from universal in membership (though it did represent a large proportion of missile suppliers); it was totally voluntary (or what some charitably or euphemistically call "politically binding"); it lacked a verification system; it lacked important transparency measures (like any requirement to disclose data on export license approvals either to other members or to the public); and it had no enforcement system to ensure compliance or to impose sanctions for violations.
The MTCR was never intended as a club for disarmament—at best, it amounted to a grudging recognition by the world community of the need for global standards; at worst, however, the standards could be seen as permissive. To the extent that the MTCR legitimated continued missile possession, development, sale, testing, and use, it lost hope of linkage with disarmament and became in effect a gentleman's agreement on how to regularize missile competition.
Despite its many crippling shortcomings, however, the regime undeniably marked a step forward in the development of some rudimentary global norms for missiles. It did lead to the harmonization of export control standards in many of the world's most significant missile exporters. It clarified some important missile-control definitions and standards. It led to regular consultations on missile issues and to some limited information sharing (e.g. on certain threats and export license denials). And it contributed modestly to the development of a bureaucratic subculture of missile control inside the participating governments, thereby indirectly sowing the seeds of a new constituency for the control—rather than the military exploitation—of missile technology.
To this extent, the MTCR marks an important stage in the development of global norms—an evolutionary stage somewhat equivalent to the leap from the Stone Age of no norms at all, to the Iron Age of nascent (though non-binding) norms applicable to some, but still not fully global in the scope of their adherents. Yet the adequacy of Iron Age controls in our globalized Information Age is obviously suspect.
On 15 April 1999, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a brief, one-paragraph statement that called the attention of the world community to the lack of global multilateral norms for missiles.[2] Later that year, Iran introduced a resolution on missiles in the UN General Assembly, which the Assembly later adopted, albeit by a sharply divided vote.[3] The resolution requested the Secretary-General to assemble an experts group to address "missiles in all its aspects." In 2002, the Secretary-General submitted the completed report to the General Assembly—the report, while lacking both in substantive depth or recommendations, was remarkable mainly for its very existence, given that the countries from which the experts were chosen represented virtually all the major missile possessing states.[4] In 2002, the deeply-divided General Assembly adopted another resolution on missiles that requested another experts group, to report in 2004.[4]
Efforts to ban weapons from space have only met with partial success, as is best represented in the entry into force of the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited the orbiting of any WMD. The treaty marked a significant but very limited step forward—limited, because of its lack of universal membership, its lack of a verification system, and perhaps most seriously of all, its failure to prohibit explicitly the basing in space of weapons other than WMD. Space control efforts have also been frustrated by the prolonged stalemate in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva—the world's single multilateral negotiating forum—over the negotiation of a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space (PAROS), specifically to ban all weapons from space.
Today, many of the traditional problems of missile control remain. Transparency remains more the exception than the rule, as some states have even enacted laws prohibiting the public disclosure of export licensing data (e.g., section 12(c) of the U.S. Export Administration Act of 1979). Such practices of "statutory opacity" are accompanied by the customary practice in the MTCR of not sharing data on export license approvals. Thus neither the members of this regime nor the general public has a comprehensive picture of the existing world market for missiles and related components and technology. Such enforced ignorance does not help the process of building global multilateral norms—it sets back hopes for holding states accountable for their missile non-proliferation obligations; it frustrates the process of assessing the effectiveness of the MTCR and national export control regimes; it denies information that would be useful to researchers, academics, and arms control NGOs in analyzing missile-related security issues; and it serves to protect companies against potentially embarrassing exports. There are extreme limitations on the data that are shared even within the MTCR—these data are typically fragmented rather than comprehensive in scope, often not circulated on a timely basis, not standardized in format, not verifiable, not mandatory, and not provided to any formal institution or official database.[4]
The lack of export licensing data on missiles is very troublesome, for in frustrating the conduct of independent research, it opens the door for published reports and official policies that are not based on empirical facts. Greater transparency would help enormously in determining whether missile proliferation is in fact growing, or whether the specter of its growth is being used as a rationalization for other purposes, such as missile defence and the alleged need for space weapons.
Similarly, the lack of multilateral verification measures is not conducive to the development of global norms for missiles. Among the available models of verification systems for missiles are several that are either bilateral in origin (e.g. the Intermediate Forces Treaty and START I) or regional or subregional in focus (e.g. the Brazilian/Argentine nuclear inspection regime).[7] The verification method adopted in the recently-concluded Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT)—a treaty that did not require the physical destruction of even a single missile or warhead—consisted of little more than a mutual commitment to establish a bilateral implementation commission, whose functions and capabilities were not elaborated in the treaty. The US Nuclear Posture Review, meanwhile, contains many references to "follow-on" strategic systems that are under development well into the 21st century.[7]
The Growth of Global Norms for Missiles and Space Weapons
There are three basic types of norms that can exist on a global scale in this field: regulatory, exclusionary, and prohibitive norms. Regulatory norms accept the existence of a given weapon system but seek to limit its numbers, use, or qualitative characteristics. Such regulatory norms can be developed as a result of national or multilateral initiatives—Russia's " Global Control System,"[9] the MTCR, and the recent" International Code of Conduct"[10] for missiles all illustrate the regulatory approach. Exclusionary norms ban the deployment of a given weapon in a certain geographical area or in space. While there are no regional missile-free zones, the Antarctic Treaty indirectly prohibits (through its "peaceful purposes" norm) the deployment of missiles on that entire continent.[11] Until the US withdrawal, the ABM Treaty contained a number of exclusionary constraints (both qualitative and geographical) on the missile defence capabilities of the Soviet Union (later Russia) and the USA. National export controls that selectively deny sales to so-called "rogue states" while promoting them elsewhere are another variant of the exclusionary approach. Prohibitive norms ban the development or possession of a given weapon per se. If it had entered into force, START II would also have prohibited the US and Russia from deploying ICBMs with multiple warheads, while eliminating heavy ICBMs. The INF Treaty prohibited the development or deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. As of early 2003, the world remains bereft of prohibitive norms that are both binding and global in scope with respect to missiles.
It is apparent that today most of the norms for missiles, to the extent they exist at all, are permissive, regulatory, and non-binding. The prescription for closing Missile Gap II involves substantial movement toward the construction of multilateral regimes that are more exclusionary and prohibitive in orientation, and binding in law. Closing this gap—while focusing regulatory schemes on less destabilizing conventional weapons—will require substantial integration of international efforts, particularly in the areas of improvements in transparency and verification, for states will not likely relinquish missile options unless they are fully assured against cheating by their fraternal partners in the regimes or against surreptitious developments by non-members. Such security does not come easy: it requires multilateral cooperation, the relinquishing of unilateral freedom of action, high confidence in the reliability of control systems, the existence of a disputeresolution mechanism, and the preservation of the inherent right to self-defence should the controls fail to achieve their stated objectives.
The Tactics of Closing Missile Gap II
Just as a simple typology can be useful for understanding different types of global norms, so too can a typology help in charting courses of action to establish, maintain, and adapt such norms to changing conditions.
Elite-Driven Model
To some extent, it does indeed take a "rocket scientist" to control rockets—the challenge involves taming the use of some very complex technology. In the division of labor within society, average citizens have neither the time nor the inclination to focus much time on missile control efforts. At best, they try to keep informed about relevant issues that might affect them and their fellow citizens, and they may decide to vote for or to oppose political candidates based on their views on arms control and disarmament issues. The key decisions, however, about technological and policy options tend to be made by a very small number of people, which typically include a national political leader and a coterie of nameless and faceless assistants, many of whom were never elected to any public office, and who often reach key decisions in secret. In such circumstances, accountability is weakened and is effectively driven by the flow of events—the weapons accumulation process continues until countervailing forces like wars, arms races, funding fatigue, opportunity costs, and other constraints limit the freedom of elites to drive events.
Elites, of course, can just as well promote creditworthy disarmament and arms control ventures. The fate of the ABM Treaty is a good case in point: its original midwives were a small number of defence intellectuals who recognized the wisdom of avoiding the arms races that would likely follow from unconstrained deployment of highly-capable missile defences.[12] Yet its death was also due to the labours of another small group of defence intellectuals who saw little security in arms control relative to the alleged merits of deploying weapons systems without international constraints.[13] To this day, very few members of the American public—or even its elected representatives—fully understand why the US once chose "not to defend itself " against strategic ballistic missile attacks from Russia. In terms of subtantive policy, therefore, the Elite Model is valuefree—translated into the fate of the ABM Treaty: what some elites created, other elites destroyed.
Social Mobilization Model
Elites, however, are not the only actors responsible for creating arms control and disarmament norms. "Informed publics" and mass public opinion have often had a substantial effect upon the evolution of such norms. The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—which prohibited its parties from conducting nuclear tests in outer space, the atmosphere, and in the oceans—emerged after studies described the effects of past atmospheric nuclear testing upon the environment and human health. These studies inspired significant, broad-based political action in support of a ban on such tests. Another treaty that resulted from sustained efforts from civil society was the Mine Ban Convention; thanks to these efforts, the International Committee to Ban Landmines received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have a particularly important role to play in the social mobilization model. They gather information, they help to educate the public, they can influence the news media, they can shape research agendas, they can enhance the quality of oversight and accountability in the public sector, they can promote coalition-building among diverse groups, and they can potentially force national political parties to pay attention and even change their agendas.
There are enormous barriers, however, to extending the social mobilization model to other spheres of arms control, including missiles. To many in the public, missile threats suggest the need for defensive measures, not disarmament. There is a popular perception both inside and outside of government that missiles are "normal" components of a national defence capability. Another common perception is that it is unrealistic to seek to eliminate missiles, since the " genie is out of the bottle," "missiles cannot be disinvented," and other such assertions. Just as many citizens and their leaders view missiles as a source of national pride, so too to many such observers see missiledefence schemes in a similar light. The inherent dangers of missile-defence schemes—like generating arms races, aggravating proliferation threats, squandering public funds, and stimulating neverending qualitative improvements in missile capabilities—are based on logical and intellectual arguments, while missiledefence advocates have succeeded in appealing more to popular fears, nationalism, and emotional responses ("don't leave us defenseless").
The other great handicap facing the NGOs is what might be called " Missile Gap III"—namely, the gulf between the huge sums being spent to develop, produce, and test missiles versus the paltry funds available for promoting a missile disarmament agenda. Such funds that are available from private foundations are in danger of further decline across a full gamut of arms control and disarmament issues.[14]
Yet to the extent that WMD disarmament efforts succeed in capturing the public imagination, it is not at all inconceivable that the public (both the informed publics and the public at large) may yet come to embrace missile disarmament as a desirable means to enhance security interests. The elimination of long-range missile capabilities would be a significant confidence-building measure in implementing any global WMD disarmament scheme. Eliminating missiles will not prevent all future WMD threats, but it would substantially reduce these threats, while saving the taxpayers a lot of money.
Elite-driven activism and social mobilization efforts can work in tandem. The mass public outrage over the human and environmental costs of atmospheric nuclear testing, for example, owed a lot to credible reports by scientific elites. Weapons threats can be confronted by ad hoc coalitions involving both elites and other interested groups in civil society. Rebecca Johnson has, in this respect, called for collective action on behalf of a ban on space weapons, through the creation of a coalition consisting of the commercial space and communications industry (whose business would be jeopardized by the testing or use of space weapons), non-governmental organizations, and concerned states.[14] Proposals such as these seek to make public use of the private interest. The ability of such proposals to succeed must, however, ultimately depend upon some capacity to reach the mass public, especially if the goal is to affect national legislation. Hybrid models should, therefore, include some role for political parties, the largest organizations in society that are capable of integrating diverse interests and advancing new agendas on the national political scene.
While the United Nations has potential roles to play in all three forms of mobilization, its role is necessarily constrained by the wishes of its member states. Yet when its member states, or a substantial segment thereof, decides upon a particular course in disarmament or arms control, the UN does have some greater potential to play a positive role in fostering the growth and strengthening of global norms. It can collect, analyze, and publish data on common threats. It plays a role in promoting debate and deliberation of alternative options for coping with these threats; this is a raison d' etre of the UN Disarmament Commission and the First Committee of the General Assembly. It has an important function in "collective legitimization"—either by withholding its "seal of approval" for various arms control initiatives that fail to represent truly global norms, or by confirming the authenticity of such initiatives in advancing such norms. Ultimately, when the new norms appear to have sufficient support, the Conference on Disarmament can consolidate them into binding international legal obligations.
Conclusion
Through a judicious combination of science, technology, and politics—the potential for improvements in international peace and security are potentially limitless. Yet science, technology, and politics are also capable of destroying arms control regimes, abrogating treaties, aggravating arms races, raising the risks of war, and at worst destroying the planet. Ultimately, the public—through its votes and money—will have the final say on how these tools are used, and to what ends. Continued efforts by groups like INESAP to engage both elites and the mass public are needed to ensure that old norms are preserved and strengthened, as new norms emerge to address common security challenges.
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This paper was written for the conference "International Arms Control, Transparency and Verification in a European Russian Framework of Cooperative Security" organized by INESAP and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation on January 24-26, 2003, in Berlin, Germany. The views herein represent solely those of the author.
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