Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I -INTRODUCTION
Arms Control, attempts through treaties, proclamations, convention, and tacit agreement to limit
the destructiveness of war by controlling the acquisition and use of weapons and military
technology.
Historically, warfare appears to be an integral part of human affairs. In 3,000 years of recorded
history, most historiansbelieve that not a single year has been free of armed conflict. Yet people
have always recognized the folly, waste, and inhumanity of warfare and have continually
attempted to limit its devastation and the spread of increasingly destructive weapons.
II - HISTORY
One of the earliest formal attempts to limit the scope of war was organized by the Amphictyonic
League, a quasi-religious alliance of most of the Greek tribes, formed before the 7th century BC.
League members were pledged to restrain their actions in war against other members. For
example, they were barred from cutting a besieged city's water supply. The league was
empowered to impose sanctions on violating members, including fines and punitive expeditions,
and could require its members to provide troops and funds for this purpose.
The First Hague Conference was convened at the initiative of Nicholas II of Russia to control
arms development and improve the conditions of warfare. Twenty-six nations attended the
conference, which codified the laws and customs of land warfare, defined the status of
belligerents, and drafted regulations on the treatment of prisoners, the wounded, and neutrals. It
also banned aerial bombardment (by balloons), dumdum (expansion) bullets, and the use of
poison gas. Most important, it established the Permanent Court of Arbitration to arbitrate
international disputes (although this court had no enforcement powers).
The Second Hague Disarmament Conference of 1907 was marked more by discord than
discourse, a sign of the deteriorating world situation. It did further the cause of mediation and
arbitration of disputes by establishing additional courts to arbitrate cases involving ships' cargoes
seized during war and resolution of international debts. A Third Hague Conference was
scheduled for 1915. Ironically, World War I (1914-1918) caused its abandonment.
A -Washington Conference
From 1921 to 1922 the Washington Naval Conference was held to establish stable relationships
among the naval forces of the various powers. Three treaties were enacted at the conference: the
Four-Power Treaty, the Five-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty. By the terms of the first,
France, Britain, Japan, and the United States agreed to respect the status quo in the fortification
of Pacific possessions and promised consultation in the event of a dispute. An associated
agreement was signed with The Netherlands regarding the Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia).
The second treaty focused on arms limitations. A 5-5-3-1.75-1.75 ratio was established between
United States, British, Japanese, French, and Italian battleships. That is, for every 5 United States
and British battleships, Japan was allowed 3 and France and Italy were allowed 1.75. Maximum
total tonnage was limited, as well as specification of a maximum single-ship tonnage of 35,000
tons. A ten-year moratorium on battleship building (except to fill out the treaty) and a limit on
size and armament were also included. The third treaty was an attempt to accommodate the
signatories’ interests in China.
Qualifications imposed by many of the major nations, however, diluted the Hoover Plan until
little remained but a statement of principles.
A final naval conference was held in London in 1936. There the United States and Britain
reaffirmed the naval limitation treaties, with an acceleration clause (that is, one providing for
proportional increase in the U.S.-to-British ratio) to counteract any German or Japanese
violations. The Japanese, increasingly militaristic and fearful of American and British
superiority, withdrew from further negotiations. This was the last major arms-control conference
before World War II (1939-1945).
In 1949 the USSR exploded an atomic weapon of its own, ending the U.S. monopoly. The
possibility of a nuclear war was now present, because relations between the USSR and the West
were tense (see Cold War). Both the United States and the USSR were engaged in a race to
develop thermonuclear (hydrogen) devices, which have many times the destructive power of
atomic bombs. These weapons raised the possibility of ending all life on Earth in all-out war.
After 1954, when the USSR exploded its first hydrogen bomb, the primary concern of arms
control was to reduce nuclear arsenals and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons
technology
In 1961 the UN General Assembly passed the Joint Statement of Agreed Principles for
Disarmament Negotiations. It was followed in 1963 by a treaty that bound the United States, the
United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union not to test nuclear weapons in space, in the atmosphere,
or under water. In 1967 another treaty between the same nations limited the military use of outer
space to reconnaissance only. The deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit was expressly
prohibited. A second treaty in 1967 banned nuclear weapons from Latin America. One of the
most important agreements on arms control was the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968.
Signatories pledged to restrict the development, deployment, and testing of nuclear weapons to
ensure that weapons, materials, or technology would not be transferred outside the five countries
that then had nuclear weapons (Great Britain, France, China, the United States, and the USSR).
In 1995 more than 170 countries agreed to permanently extend the treaty.
In the late 1960s the United States and the USSR initiated negotiations to regulate strategic
weapon arsenals. These negotiations became known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The
SALT I negotiations produced two important agreements in 1972: the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (ABM Treaty), which drastically limited the establishment of defensive installations
designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of
Strategic Offensive Arms. That same year the two superpowers also signed a treaty barring the
testing of nuclear weapons on the ocean floor. The SALT II negotiations, which began in 1972,
produced another treaty in 1979 that would limit the total number of U.S. and USSR missile
launchers. After the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, relations between the United States and
the USSR rapidly deteriorated, and the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. During the early
1980s controversy surrounded the placement by the United States of ballistic missiles on the
territory of some of its Western European allies. Opposition to this within West Germany (which
became part of the united Federal Republic of Germany in 1990) played a part in unseating
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982. In 1983 U.S. antinuclear groups rallied to support a
bilateral arms freeze, and U.S. Roman Catholic bishops approved a pastoral letter with a similar
aim.
Controversy also surrounded the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) introduced by President
Ronald Reagan in 1983. This research program for developing a defense against ballistic missiles
appeared likely to undermine the ABM Treaty and challenged the assumptions of nuclear
strategy since the beginning of the arms race. Since the late 1940s both deployment of nuclear
arms by the superpowers and restrictions upon their use had been founded upon a theory of
deterrence. According to this theory, the mutual likelihood of destruction in the event of a
nuclear confrontation between the United States and the USSR preserved a delicate balance
between the two superpowers. Stable relations between the nations required that they possess a
roughly equal capacity to harm each other. Critics of SDI believed that efforts to construct a
defense against nuclear weapons would destroy that balance and remove the conditions that
prevented nuclear weapons from being used.
Despite these concerns, U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations resumed in 1985. At a summit meeting in
Washington, D.C., in December 1987, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which eliminated many nuclear-
tipped ballistic missiles that had been deployed throughout Europe and the western Soviet Union.
The treaty called for the destruction of all U.S. and Soviet missiles with ranges of about 500 to
5,500 km (about 300 to 3,400 mi) and established a 13-year program to verify compliance. The
INF treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Soviet Presidium in May 1988.
Conventional weapons such as booby traps and land mines also possess enormous destructive
capacity. Land mines are especially troubling because they retain their destructive power for
indefinite periods of time. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that nearly 2
million land mines around the world kill or maim nearly 15,000 civilians every year. Global
sentiment against land mines led more than 120 countries to sign a treaty in 1997 banning the
use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of the weapons. The effectiveness of the ban was called
into question, however, by the refusal of major powers such as the United States, Russia, Turkey,
and China to sign the agreement.
The collapse of the USSR in late 1991 raised complex new problems. The location of strategic
nuclear weapons at multiple sites in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus raised concerns
about the safety and security of these weapons. The U.S. Congress appropriated $1.5 billion to
help these former Soviet states dismantle nuclear weapons and develop safe storage of weapons-
grade nuclear materials. In 1992 these countries and the United States agreed to abide by the
terms of the 1991 START I agreement.
In 1993 President Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed the START II treaty. This
treaty called for the elimination of almost two-thirds of the nuclear warheads and all the
multiple-warhead land-based missiles held by the United States and the former Soviet republics.
In January 1996 the U.S. Senate ratified the START II treaty, but the Russian parliament never
approved the accord. The START II treaty never went into effect, and in 2002 it was replaced by
a new strategic arms reduction agreement known as the Treaty of Moscow.
In September 1996 leaders of the five major nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China,
France, and Britain—and dozens of other countries signed the landmark Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, which banned most types of nuclear weapons testing. In order to take effect,
however, the treaty must be formally approved, or ratified, by all nations believed to be capable
of producing nuclear arms. In 1999 the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty by a vote of 51 to 48.
China, Israel, Pakistan, and India are among other known nuclear powers that have not ratified
the treaty.
The Senate vote against the treaty drew criticism from many U.S. allies, including Britain,
Germany, and France. Senate opponents of the treaty argued that it was unenforceable, and they
raised concerns that the treaty left open the possibility that rogue powers, such as Iraq or North
Korea, could stockpile nuclear weapons, while at the same time it blocked the United States from
upgrading its nuclear arsenal.
The Senate’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty came on the heels of another
setback. In mid-1998 India conducted a series of underground tests of nuclear weapons. About
two weeks later, India’s archrival, Pakistan, detonated its own nuclear devices to demonstrate
that it also possessed the powerful weapons. Both nations were internationally condemned for
the tests. The United States, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and
individual nations imposed economic sanctions on India and Pakistan in retaliation. Roughly a
year later India tested a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to any target
within Pakistan, and days later Pakistan responded by testing a missile with similar capabilities.
In 2002 tensions between the two nations over the disputed territory of Kashmīr raised fears of a
nuclear war.
Meanwhile, the United States under the administration of President Bill Clinton reached an
important arms control arrangement with North Korea in 1994. Although relations between the
United States and North Korea remained tense, under the arrangement North Korea agreed to
freeze all work on the infrastructure of reactors and reprocessing plants needed to produce
plutonium for nuclear weapons. In exchange, Japan, South Korea, and the United States agreed
to provide fuel oil and other economic aid to North Korea.
In 2002, however, this arrangement began to unravel. United States intelligence agencies
reported that while being paid not to produce plutonium, there was evidence that North Korea
might be at work to enrich uranium or to create the facilities needed to enrich uranium, the other
way of obtaining nuclear weapons. That triggered North Korea’s inclusion in the “axis of evil”
cited by U.S. president George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January 2002. The
United States also responded to this intelligence report by halting supplies of fuel oil to North
Korea. In October 2002 a U.S. official reported that a North Korean official had admitted that
North Korea had a uranium enrichment program. North Korean officials, however, subsequently
denied that North Korea had a covert program to develop nuclear weapons with enriched
uranium. In January 2003 North Korea expelled United Nations (UN) monitors with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty.
In April 2003 North Korea told U.S. officials that it possessed nuclear weapons, and in October
2003 North Korean officials said they were extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods to
produce nuclear weapons. In November 2003 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency repeated its
belief that North Korea possessed at least one and possibly two nuclear bombs. However, other
former and current U.S. intelligence officials said they were skeptical that North Korea had the
technological know-how to produce nuclear weapons. In February 2004 North Korea entered
talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States to discuss an agreement that
would end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In October 2006 North Korea tested a
nuclear weapon. In February 2007 the six-nation talks resulted in an agreement in which North
Korea pledged to shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which produces plutonium as
a byproduct, in exchange for aid. That agreement led to a subsequent North Korean pledge in
October 2007 to disable its Yongbyon reactor by the end of the year in exchange for 950,000
metric tons of fuel oil or its equivalent in economic aid. North Korea also agreed to disclose all
of its nuclear programs and promised not to transfer its “nuclear materials, technology, or know-
how beyond its borders.”
Observers noted that the new treaty contained a number of escape clauses. Either side could
withdraw from the treaty with only three months’ notice, and the reductions did not have to take
effect until 2012, the same year the treaty expires. The treaty also enabled both nations to place
the deactivated warheads in storage or to set them aside as “operational spares” that could be
quickly reactivated. Critics of the agreement argued that the deactivated warheads should be
destroyed, rather than stored, because of the danger that terrorists could obtain access to stored
weapons, which are presumably less well guarded than those in active service.
The initial evidence against Khan came from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) and various Western intelligence agencies, including the United States. The evidence
included the discovery of documents detailing designs for nuclear weapons and equipment built
to enrich uranium for making nuclear weapons. Iranian and Libyan officials themselves turned
over some of the evidence to the IAEA. In addition, the United States seized a ship in August
2003 that was bound for Libya with parts for making specialized gas centrifuges, which are used
to enrich uranium. Khan had assembled a vast network for sharing nuclear weapons technology
that included intermediaries in Dubai, Germany, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and The Netherlands.
Khan was reportedly motivated by his desire to see other Muslim nations obtain nuclear
weapons, both to help the Islamic cause and to deflect attention from Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
program. He was also reportedly motivated by money and had grown enormously wealthy,
despite a modest government salary.
Although the disclosure of Khan’s network added more knowledge about the extent of the secret
nuclear weapons programs maintained by Iran and Libya, the IAEA concluded that neither Libya
nor Iran were close to building a nuclear weapon. The IAEA did find, however, that Iran’s
program was more advanced than Libya’s. Libya in 2004 renounced its program to develop
weapons of mass destruction, and Iran agreed to an additional protocol with the IAEA to give its
weapons experts greater authority to inspect Iran’s territory and facilities. In 2006 Iran
announced that it had demonstrated the ability to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants,
and this ability was confirmed by the IAEA. The UN Security Council subsequently imposed
limited economic sanctions on Iran for violating the terms of an earlier agreement. Iran’s leaders
also said they intended to set up 3,000 gas centrifuges in a cascade, which would demonstrate an
ability to enrich uranium on an industrial scale. Iran continued to insist that its nuclear program
was only for peaceful purposes. In August 2007 the IAEA verified that Iran had been able to set
up a cascade of about 2,000 centrifuges, well short of its goal of 3,000 centrifuges. The IAEA
said Iran was enriching uranium at levels that could only be used for generating electricity.