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Show American Foreign Policy towards Nuclear Disarmament, 1945-1999 Taylor C. Parkin the new amount of trust built between the two nations. These and other confidence-building measures have become the cornerstone for all disarmament negotiations. United States Foreign Policy on Disarmament in the Post Gold-War World With the end of the Cold War [the danger from nuclear weapons] has greatly diminished. We have now begun the process of reducing nuclear arsenals. But the potential danger has not been eliminated. For this the elimination of all nuclear weapons will be necessary as a first step. A nuclear-weapon-free world is an essential step towards the creation of a society in which the human species is no longer endangered, and this will mean no less then the creation of a war-free world (Rotblat 1996, 1). At the close of the Cold War the United States met a new nuclear challenge: disarmament in the post Cold-War world. Now that the multi-polar world had been created with the crumbling of the Soviet Empire, multiple new questions regarding the validity and certainty of prior treaties and negotiations were under inquisition. Which treaties would hold true? Was disarmament still valid? What defined a powerful state under the multi-polar system? A new quest existed for American foreign policy and that would be framed by an, "evaluation of the success of past non-proliferation efforts, the current incentives and constraints to proliferation, and whether or not the international community regards the spread of nuclear weapons on the eve of the twenty-first century as largely inevitable or manageable" (Foran 1996, 175). In all of these cases the United States would play a leading role, as the only existing super power, in answering these questions. The first defining chapter on the future of nuclear disarmament was built into the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START). This treaty was developed over two years and signed in Moscow on 31 July 1991. It was the largest one-step reduction taken so far by the United States and Russia in their attempts to disarm. It provided for a reduction within seven years of ICBMs as well as SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) to aminimum ten percent overall reduction of armaments (Conference on Disarmament 1991, 1). It also built upon prior commitments made in the NPT, the Anti-Ballistic Missiles Treaty, and the Washington Summit Joint Statement of June 1, 1990. In accordance with these treaties the two parties would strive to "reduce and limit [their] strategic and offensive arms," as well as strive to, "reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war and strengthen international peace and security" (Conference on Disarmament 1991, 1). By becoming party to this treaty the United States set a precedent for the eventual elimination of armaments. Its role as a leader and promoter of disarmament had become solidified by its own promise to disarm. Its main goal now was to follow through with its own disarmament and verify that Russia was doing the same. Under the requirements of START in 1991 the United States began dismantling its nuclear arsenal. On 27 September 1991 it stopped development of mobile ICBMs and removed from alert posture all remaining ICBMs (UNODA 1992b, 5). This was important because it placed the United States ahead of its scheduled disarmament. It continued to forge ahead by canceling the development of any new ICBMs and dismantling fifty larger ICBMs. This was a significant reduction because it was no longer just halting the development and assembly of weapons, but rather furthering complete destruction of armaments. As the year progressed, the United States also removed most of its nuclear Tomahawk missiles from submarines. In order to keep pace with the United States, Russia began its own dismantling in response. The bilateral negotiations worked in order to take many active ICBMs off alert on both sides. "President Boris Yeltsin reaffirmed Russia's commitment as the successor state to the USSR, to fulfill 'all its obligations under bilateral and multilateral treaties and agreements in force and signed on the subject of arms limitation and disarmament1" (UNODA 1992a, 3). Following the signing of START the United States along with over one hundred other countries began to press for the extension of the non-proliferation treaty. The NPT was viewed as the next most comprehensive step towards disarmament, along with a comprehensive test ban treaty. The NPT, though not signed by all countries, remains the most widely supported, multilateral arms control treaty (Foran 1996, 186). It is also complemented by Nuclear Weapon Free Zones (NWFZs) which in many cases overlap the countries that have yet to sign the NPT, effectually including them in the treaty. NWFZs are geographically isolated areas where no nuclear weapons can be housed or deployed. In order for a NWFZ to exist all nations in the area must agree, as well as all nuclear states, to maintain a nuclear-free area. After the creation of many NWFZs the United States headed a meeting of the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council in Washington on 20-21 February, 1992. This meeting accomplished many goals among the permanent five including: (1) deciding which weapons systems the countries would notify each other about; (2) determining when in the arms transfer process notification should take place; (3) implementing an agreement to share information on arms transfers that occurred in 1991; and (4) working on guidelines for weapons of mass destruction (UNODA 1993a, 62-63). Though these things were accomplished many questions remained. The United States was still pushing for a registry of armaments; however, China as well as a few others remained uncooperative. In China's case there were at least two reasons: (1) The United States was selling F-16 military aircraft to Taiwan in 1991; and (2) China valued its sovereignty highly and viewed the registry as a breach of that sovereignty. The conventional arms transfer gave China a pretext in which to withdraw from the talks 58 |