Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 64, May - June 2002

Editor's Introduction

The pace and direction of change in international relations since September 11 continues to destabilise efforts to reduce the threat to global security posed by weapons of mass destruction. Rebecca Johnson reports from New York on the timid, first post-9/11 gathering of states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Johnson also charts the latest unsuccessful attempts to steer the Conference of Disarmament (CD) in Geneva out of its long-standing and discrediting impasse.

The deliberations at both the NPT and CD were held in an atmosphere of mounting concern over US nuclear weapons policy, as set out in January's classified but leaked Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). In a powerful critique, former senior US nuclear arms control negotiator Jack Mendelsohn analyses the assumptions and reasoning animating the NPR.

In late April, José Bustani, the Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, was forced out of office by a special session of states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The Convention - one of the major achievements of post-Cold War arms control - now faces an incalculable challenge to restore its structural integrity and political unity of purpose. News Review summarises the course of Bustani's dramatic fall from grace, setting out the different sides of a bitter and bruising argument.

The Review also includes coverage of US and Russian efforts to redefine their strategic nuclear relationship, intense diplomatic efforts to affect a resumption of US-North Korea talks, dogged attempts by the US and UK to rally support for a possible attack on Iraq, an appeal by Senator Richard Lugar for a 'globalisation' of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme, new moves by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to guard against nuclear terrorism, continued concerns about nuclear tension in South Asia, controversy over the environmental and non-proliferation impact of US plutonium reprocessing and nuclear waste disposal plans, growing discord between Washington and Moscow over Russia's troubled chemical weapons destruction programme, the incongruous decision of the UN Disarmament Commission not to hold substantive discussions this year, and the conclusion of the latest round of talks by the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Missiles.

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© 2002 The Acronym Institute.