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- Title
Eve of Destruction: Implementing Arms Control Treaty Obligations to Dismantle Weaponry.
- Authors
Koplow, David A.
- Abstract
The corpus of arms control treaties now includes dozens of diverse instruments regulating the possession, deployment, testing, and use of nuclear, chemical, biological, conventional, and other weapons in various ways. One aspect of these vital national security tools that has not received sufficient scholarly and practitioner attention concerns the provisions---contained in some, but not all, of the agreements--that require the parties to destroy, denature, convert, or otherwise dispose of the now-excess armaments. These various provisions have represented very different legal and political strategies regarding the specific requirements, standards, and timetables for accomplishing and verifying the physical task of weapons elimination. The usual balancing act in these provisions attempts to reconcile the benefits of certainty (by crafting precise legal obligations that specify dismantling procedures and timetables in detail) versus the benefits of flexibility (by allowing reasonable accommodation for changed circumstances or legitimate difficulties in accomplishing the destruction). In three prominent instances--concerning chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and anti-personnel land mines--that balancing process has gone badly awry, and widespread, long-term treaty violations or evasions have arisen without adequate remedy or enforcement. This Article provides the first systematic examination of that diverse state practice, scrutinizing the successes and failures, summarizing the lessons learned, and presenting recommendations for future arms control efforts. It thus sheds light on the "back end" of the disarmament process: the mechanisms through which countries go from a highlevel agreement about the numbers and types of weapons they will eliminate from their respective arsenals toward the practical phase of accomplishing destruction.
- Subjects
ARMS control; DEPLOYMENT (Military strategy); CHEMICAL weapons
- Publication
Harvard National Security Journal, 2017, Vol 8, Issue 1, p158
- ISSN
2153-1358
- Publication type
Article