Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 68, December 2002 - January 2003

Editor's Introduction

At the close of a generally bleak and destabilising year for arms control, Disarmament Diplomacy explores a range of new and ongoing efforts to defend and bolster the international non-proliferation and disarmament regimes. Providing our 2002 round-up of the UN First Committee on Disarmament and International Security in New York, Fiona Simpson notes the "curious amalgam of hopefulness and cynicism" that characterised its deliberations this year. As usual, this report includes a comprehensive appendix covering the 52 resolutions and decisions, with voting details from both the First Committee and the General Assembly.

From the University of Texas, associate professor Marie Chevrier reports on the resumption of the Fifth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) in Geneva, and ponders the merits and deficiencies of the limited package of meetings agreed as a salvage operation following the suspension of the Conference in December 2001.

Two papers highlight the need for better international action to address the threats posed by both the proliferation of ballistic missiles and imprudent defences against missile attack. Mark Smith, of the UK's Mountbatten Centre, reports from The Hague on mixed signals and low expectations from the launch of the International Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (ICoC). From the US Union of Concerned Scientists, David Wright and Laura Grego warn of the emerging danger, related to US missile defence plans, of powerful new weapons systems capable of destroying satellites as well as missiles, thus opening up an obvious path to an arms race and potential war in space.

The News Review is dominated by the accelerating security crises regarding Iraq and North Korea. Also highlighted are the latest developments in US missile defence planning, moves by the US Department of Energy to enhance its nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Program (even as speculation mounts over the depth of the Bush administration's commitment to the current nuclear testing moratorium), a tentative and perhaps temporary easing of military tensions between India and Pakistan, controversy and concern over the lethal use of incapacitating gas by Russian authorities to end the Moscow theatre siege, reflections on differences in US national security strategy today and during the Cuban Missile Crisis forty years ago, and comments by Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter and former UN chief weapons inspector Richard Butler on the urgent need for a good faith nuclear disarmament process.

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