Disarmament Diplomacy

Editor's Introduction

The looming prospect of war in Iraq, and the rapidly-developing crisis in the Korean Peninsular, form the dark focus of our latest issue. Reflecting on the enormous wave of public protests against this artificially imposed war fever, Rebecca Johnson's editorial raises concerns that the Bush administration is profoundly misreading the security challenges relating to terrorism and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and "runs the risk of fulfilling its own dire prophecies and provoking unmanageable future threats to our common global safety and security."

Extensive coverage of the serious crises relating to Saddam Hussein's continuing failures to disarm and Kim Jong-il's desperate nuclear gambling dominates the News Review, together with coverage of the nuclear standoff in South Asia, dramatic American allegations of nuclear subterfuge in Iran, moves to revitalise US Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) efforts in Russia, and the staggering 'requirements' for spending on nuclear weapons and missile defence contained in the new US defence and energy budgets.

Stepping back from the immediate swirl of crisis and escalation, our three analysis papers each call for a careful review of options available to strengthen arms control agreements and practices. Roger Johnston, a non-proliferation expert at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Morten Bremer Maerli of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), stress the need to avoid a simplistic 'one-size-fits-all' approach to strengthening nuclear safeguards. Sverre Lodgaard, Director of NUPI, critically examines the potential for cooperation on arms control issues - and specifically in advancing the goals of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - in the context of the new Russia-NATO relationship. Lodgaard appeals for the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) to be put to work to "regain lost common ground" on non-proliferation issues "not just between the US and Russia, but between the US and the Europeans as well".

From the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Barbara Hatch Rosenberg examines the dangers lurking in the shadows of 'biodefence' programmes ostensibly designed to counter the risk of biological attack from 'outlaw states' or non-state actors. Rosenberg argues that biodefence is no substitute for biodisarmament, a multilateral goal achievable only through the radical strengthening and full implementation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

© 2003 The Acronym Institute.

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