Trust is Good – Arms Control is Better

International Agreements are Indispensable Instruments for Ending the Arms Race

By Rolf Mutzenich and Matthias Karadi

A new arms race is on the way. The US openly shows its disinterest in arms control negotiations and only relies on its military strength. Europeans encounter problems in pursuing their disarmament initiatives. Nevertheless the authors urge continuation of international and regional agreements.

[This article originally published in Frankfurter Rundschau online, February 18, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.fr=aktuell.de/ressorts/nachrichten_und_politik/dokumentation/.]

Arms control is in crisis or stagnation. The concept of arms control faces two challenges today after the end of the Cold War. Arms control must adjust both to the structural changes of the international system after 1989 and to the technological dynamic of the information age. The disarmament decade of the 1990s seems ended once and for all.

A new arms race is on the way at the beginning of the 21st century. While the US government makes no secret of its disinterest in arms control negotiations in relying on military strength and supremacy, Europeans seem to have largely abandoned disarmament efforts. The new security challenges demand answers in the realm of arms control. Limiting armament and consistently disarming what is not necessary for security are still vital.

Unfortunately the only lesson from September 11 learned by the US and its allies was building its military supremacy by waging preventive wars. Regrettably the US – and most NATO members – presently sees its salvation in the creation of enhanced and improved military interventions more than in the themes disarmament and arms control. Therefore non-proliferation, disarmament and arms control must be strengthened as essential elements of a European security policy. The existing disarmament – and non-proliferation regimes must be reinforced and improved. More efficient control- and sanction mechanisms must be developed.

This is the only possibility for bringing the US to arms control. The world power must give more attention to this arrangement since the initiatives and actions for a supposedly greater security (prevention, preemption, missile defense) are breaking down in reality. At this moment, the concept of a “robust arms control” could lead the US back to the way of a multilateral division of labor.

Technology and Verification

On the background of the changes that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid spread of high technology across all national borders is one of the most important developments in the realm of security. Armed forces are modernized worldwide. Quantitative disarmament measures are often more than offset by this new qualitative rearmament. Technological improvement and modernization – the qualitative arms race – replace the numerical increase in the supply of weapons and personnel.

While arms control agreements were scrutinized and verified by national governments in the time of the Cold War, verification is increasingly supervised by specialized international authorities like the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) in Vienna, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with headquarters in the Hague and the nascent nuclear test ban association. The Center for Verification Questions of the German Army is another example.

Verification regimes must offer comprehensive watertight controls to effectively control and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. They can usually only do this restrictedly. Technological problems and inadequate financial support of verification agreements and authorities intrude.

Technical progress is clear in both verification technologies and in developing weapons systems. Considerable advances have been made in the area of satellite surveillance. Infrared technology offers new possibilities for information and examination. To be taken seriously, verification must be more than well intentioned. In other words, verification must achieve more than “only” data-exchange and trust building. In this sense, verification means the unambiguous, counterfeit-proof review of technically relevant conditions of security policy. Verification is more a political problem than a technical problem. The political will of national governments is crucial for the improvement and development of examination-, control- and surveillance-systems.

The Role of the US

The present crisis of arms control is essentially connected with the politics of the US. The United States has no trust or little trust in the international control regime which they regard as increasingly full of gaps or inefficient. The US obviously believes that it can keep smaller states under military control with increasing political and military dominance even if these states themselves strive for nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

The United States clearly wants a form of arms control that limits the weapons systems of other states without limiting its own possibilities for worldwide military actions. This is most blatant in its plans for missile defense. A security dilemma well known from the history of disarmament policy reappears. As soon as there is a hegemonial power for military power is divided asymmetrically, arms control reaches a deadlock. The superior see no reason any more to abandon or limit their superiority.

This has the fatal result that the inferior on their side see themselves forced to rearmament. The war against Iraq was announced and waged as a “disarmament war” even though the weapons of mass destruction on account of which it was allegedly waged have still not turned up. However the actual goal of the Third Gulf War may have been Saddam Hussein’s violent overthrow and the conversion of the new security doctrine. After the weapons of mass destruction could not be found, overthrowing a criminal regime was emphasized as the official reason for war.

That the leaders of the war coalition deceived and misled their citizens and the citizens of the world remains a stigma of the Iraq war. In addition the fears grow that the war against Iraq was only the first in a series of planned “disarmament wars”. Will insubordinate rebellious regimes in which terrorists and/or weapons of mass destruction are presumed be overrun preemptively and preventively in the future with disarmament- or anti-terror wars? Are Iran and North Korea the next ones on the American agenda? The legitimate hope persists that conflicts over Iranian and North Korean weapon programs can be solved peacefully through negotiation in concerted actions of the European Union and the US.

The crucial question is what an arms control policy must do to convince Washington that prevention through arms control is always better than prevention through disarmament wars. The former must be seen as more efficient, more precise and more verifiable. This means first of all the development of clear, effective and verifiable verification regimes. Thus verification becomes a key question for future arms control agreements if these agreements should gain the consent of the US.

On the other hand, if the United States should continue its present obstruction policy, counter-strategies will be even more important. Regulations and arms control negotiations will be vital without the US. Thus the bio-weapons verification protocol could have been implemented even without Washington. 60 of 61 states had agreed. Nevertheless the protocol failed because the Americans as the only delegation refused to sign the paper.

The American side should also be aware that arms control contributes to creating trust between East and West. Arms control provides important incentives and brings results. In Europe, arms control led to limitation or disarmament and even destruction of whole weapons categories (INF treaty). Disarmament and arms control are still main supports of the European security architecture. Thus arms control is not an “outdated concept” but more necessary than ever in view of the new challenges of security policy.

However the American side is right on one point. The changed political security conditions require new innovative concepts of verification by means of new technologies in long-distance reconnaissance and information technologies. In other words, arms control – if it should have a future – must develop effective verification- and sanctions-mechanisms that are credible and attractive to the US.

Conclusions

For the further development of disarmament, a series of conclusions and demands could revive the process of arms control.

1. Intensification of disarmament. Arms control should aim at intensifying disarmament and strengthening the trend to disarmament. This is very urgent in the area of nuclear weapons. The promise of the nuclear powers to completely disarm nuclear weapons must be accompanied by corresponding deeds. Further disarmament- and arms control-steps are possible beyond the agreements on conventional armed forces renegotiated in 1000 in the framework of the KSE.

2. Improvement of the surveillance regime of the IAEO. The US rightly points out that the safeguard system of the IAEO is inadequate and the complete verification of the observance of the agreement can be successfully evaded. Several possibilities are offered here. Firstly, the present system could be reformed on the basis of the agreement by activating the instrument of “special inspections” that was long unused. Iran may be a test case. Another possibility is to supplement and reform the agreement by introducing inspections on suspicion.

3. Control of small weapons and light weapons. Effective control of the proliferation of small weapons and light weapons is a very promising area of arms control. The initiatives in the framework of the OSZE and the United Nations should be pursued and intensified.

4. Enforcement of selective initiatives. Although the great powers – above all the US – should participate in arms control and disarmament, individual initiatives of like-minded states should not be excluded when the superpowers refuse cooperation. The signatures of important governments are often absent in arms control agreements. The landmines convention is not an exception and makes clear that selective initiatives can make important gains.

5. Financial and technical disarmament assistance. Increased disarmament assistance is urgently necessary. Disarmament costs are frequently the decisive hurdle for a fast and complete enforcement of disarmament measures, for instance with landmines or chemical weapons. A series of governments grant this assistance (e.g. the US with the Nunn-Lugar program). However these contributions are minimal compared with the worldwide military expenditures. The global G8-partnership against the spread of weapons of mass destruction and its confirmation at the world economic summit of Evian can be welcomed unrestrictedly.

6. Developing an airtight net of transparency measures enables early detection of corresponding activities and timely action to the community of states. The existing agreements should be quickly extended with the inclusion of effective verification measures.

7. The following measures are vital in the realm of nuclear disarmament. A comprehensive ban on nuclear tests with airtight verification, expansion of rights of access of the IAEO-weapons inspectors to all non-nuclear weapons states, a Start III-agreement that subjects the arsenals of smaller nuclear weapon states to strict verification and a UN nuclear weapon register. The question of the disarmament of nuclear short-range missiles should be put on the agenda again in the framework of Nato.

8. Effective control of support technologies. Development, acquisition, possession and transmission of military support technology are not regulated by prohibition or non-proliferation norms of international law. The export control regime [“Missile Technology Control Regime” (MTCR)] is limited in its effectiveness. Missile proliferation has considerably increased in the last years and involves serious risks for the stability and security of the affected regions. The signing of the Hague Code of Conduct against the proliferation of ballistic missiles” on November 25, 2002 was a first step in closing this gap.

9. An OSZE agency for arms control and disarmament could emerge from the conflict prevention center.

10. The goal of European policy should be an effective connection of disarmament and non-proliferation. Disarmament must become the instrument for combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WIN). This is the presupposition for further disarmament. Multilateral agreements and a more effective export-control regime should be developed further as part of a common strategy. The transatlantic declaration of June 26, 2003 goes in the right direction. The United States acknowledges the importance of multilateral agreements and declares itself ready for a common strategy in the struggle against the passing on of weapons of mass destruction.

11. An improved verification is crucial. Only this can convince the United States in the medium- or long-term of the viability of international arms control. Verification needs “teeth” and imagination to become effective. Unannounced inspections, use of new surveillance technologies and development of trained impartial teams of inspectors who can quickly and un-bureaucratically lend a hand are imperative. Competent stand-by inspection teams could be developed according to the model of stand-by forces for peacekeeping operations.

A Final Word

International and regional agreements on the control and disarmament of existing weapon arsenals along with the observance and intensification of arms export guidelines are indispensable instruments for stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons. The claim that the classical instruments of arms control do not function any more is a cheap argument that was already formulated in Washington at the beginning of the 1990s. Arms control and verification will never be all embracive.

Possibilities for evading or eluding arms control agreements and their control- and surveillance mechanisms will also exist in the future. There is only one alternative to verifiable arms control based on treaties: a worldwide nuclear, chemical and biological arms race. This cannot be in the interest of the US. In any case the risks resulting from the triad of the threat of transnational terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and collapsing states can be combated more effectively with intelligence services, arms control and police instruments than through military interventions.