EssayAssessTheContributionOfTheUnitedNationsToDisarmament

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty did emerge from UN mechanisms;  it will be shown, however, that this was merely a superficial contribution since it was predominantly a product of superpower manipulation towards the achievement of a shared national interest.  Indeed, the treaty was opened for signature in 1968 after nearly ten years effort from the General Assembly and the ENDC.  The UN does deserve credit for its persistence and for providing a forum for discussion: indeed, it has been argued that the General Assembly has had an impact upon negotiations ‘toward agreement by the spotlight of debate’ but it will be re-emphasised that this ‘impact’ has been minor.  The consequences of the NPT serve to illustrate this judgement, in that the superpowers showed no signs, at least until the 1980’s, of upholding their promise to negotiate measures for nuclear disarmament ‘as soon as possible’, and this occurred only after the USSR realised it could not compete with the US.  Indeed, non-nuclear powers were severely disadvantaged by the treaty, as expressed in the four NPT Review Conferences of 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1990.  It was in the superpowers common interest to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, since preventing the distribution of nuclear materials reduced the number of nuclear threats, and thus greatly assisted in the maintenance of superpower national security.  Conversely, the security of non-nuclear states was kept at a lower level – a level that did not incorporate nuclear deterrence as a means for security.  This concern expressed itself in disguise:  ‘the group of 21 put forward the view that doctrines of nuclear deterrence, far from being responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security, lie at the root of the nuclear arms race and lead to greater insecurity and instability in international relations’.  If the third world states involved in the group of 21 were not restricted by the NPT, it is more than likely that at least some would have attempted to create nuclear weapons of their own for the purpose of national security.  Nonetheless, it was once again the coinciding of superpower interest that provided the basis for progress, whilst the UN merely provided a setting for agreement to take place.  

Indeed, it seems clear that the key factor in achieving levels of disarmament has been the convergence of state interest, and it is also apparent that the UN has had virtually no capacity to encourage such convergence.  This is not primarily the fault of the mechanisms of the UN – ‘from the very beginning, it was not the lack of machinery that stood in the way of disarmament agreements’ - but can be explained through an examination of the relationship between national security and armaments.  The state’s primary source of guaranteeing the maintenance of security has always been the threat of, or the use of, force.  The most powerful form of force has always been military force, and to possess a strong military force, armaments are essential.  Hence, states seek armaments for the sake of security.  But the theory behind disarmament is that through a reduction in armaments, security is increased. To the extreme, if no state possessed any armaments, there would be virtually no threat of war, and therefore security would be massively enhanced. Hence, states should seek to disarm for the sake of security.  The validity of the latter reasoning is hard to doubt, yet there are two huge problems in attempting to achieve it, problems that cannot be solved in an international system composed of a system of states:  firstly, the problem of controls in the disarmament process, and secondly, the problem of not only ensuring the balance of power before a disarmament phase will be equal to the balance of power afterwards, but also that the balance of power is perceived to be remaining constant.  Indeed, ‘armaments, both then and today, are considered primary instruments of national security – the most fundamental goal of the foreign policy of most states.  Therefore, armaments will not be lightly surrendered without substitute means of assuring that security’.  Relative gains theorists argue that if State A is willing to cooperate with a disarmament proposal of State B , then there is little likelihood of State B’s cooperation, since it would be fearful that State A believed it was making a relative power gain.  Moreover, in this example each state would be fearful of the other ‘cheating’, and not disarming to the agreed level, a problem intensified through the difficulties of verification.  Indeed, the hollow nature of the SALT agreement of 1972 seems to reaffirm this neo-realist concern.     However, the problem becomes more complicated in a multipolar system since states must consider their relative strength with respect to all other states, and hence all states must reach consensus together, a consensus that has rarely been attained.  Under a world government these problems are removed, yet forming a world government is riddled with equally severe difficulties, primarily the unwillingness of states to sacrifice their own sovereignty.  This helps explain the UN’s limited contribution to disarmament, and also demonstrates the unlikelihood of any significant future disarmament.  

Despite the direct involvement of the UN in the signing of the NPT, a clear trend can be observed in which successful progress towards disarmament has taken place outside of UN forums, and this suggests that the UN itself does not contribute to the convergence of state interests in a way that other mediums of negotiation can.  Indeed, the aforementioned Moscow Test Ban Negotiations, the 1967 agreement on the Denuclearisation of Latin America in Mexico, the Helsinki Final Act under the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975 and its follow up at Stockholm from 1984 to 1986, the Washington Gorbachev-Reagan Summit Meeting on the elimination Intermediate Range Nuclear Missiles, the START I agreement, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines at Ottawa, and the Warsaw Guidelines, all took place outside UN forums.  It is fair to comment that ‘in the disarmament field, UN debates continue to have little impact outside the United Nations…Everyone understands that UN debates have little leverage in the ‘real world’ of disarmament talks’. The reasons for this are clear.  The UN forum is so large, with so many members, that making progress on such a complex issue proved impossible given the huge contrasts in world perspective.  Secondly, States have to publicly consider other political issues in statements under the public eye, which often conceal their true ideas and motives.  Indeed, open-diplomacy has proved less effective than closed door diplomacy with respect to disarmament; the former has led to meaningless propaganda ridden statements, whereas the latter has provided the conditions necessary for a business-like approach to negotiation.  Even the third world delegates who fought so hard at the Special Session On Disarmament of 1978 to end the co-chairmanship of the superpowers in the Conference of the Committee of Disarmament came to realise that the UN’s large forums were not conducive to consensus.  This sheds yet more criticism upon the UN’s contribution to disarmament.

In conclusion, the UN’s contribution to disarmament has not only been very limited indeed, but also will remain that way.  Perhaps what can been gained from its failure to date is an impetus to propagate the ‘collapse of the whole notion that structural and procedural reforms can help to reconcile diametrically opposite outlooks and philosophies on issues such as international stability and world order’.  States will not agree to disarm if they do not share the same conceptions of how the international system operates, and this seems apparent irrespective of the mediating body.  It must be said, nonetheless, that the UN has not proved the best medium for discussion when states have shared an interest in consensus; in most cases consensus has been reached outside of UN forums: it has been shown that UN forums are too large to deal with complex issues effectively, and also prevent the necessary business-like approach for successful negotiation due to exposure to the public eye.  Finally, in a system of states, the National Interest will always take primacy over any ideal for the common good, especially when there is not only so much mistrust between states, but also so much difficulty in disarming whilst maintaining the balance of power, and perhaps more importantly the perceived balance of power, which is in a sense also directly related to mistrust.  

Bibliography

Avi Baker, Disarmament Without Order – The politics of disarmament at the United Nations, Greenwood Press, 1985

Bennett and Oliver, International Organisations – Principles and Issues, Pearson Education INC. 2002.  

Larsen and Rattray, Arms Control – Toward the 21st Century, Lynne Rienner Publishers INC, 1996