Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, briefs the members of the UN Security Council. Iran and US are both accused of undermining the 2015 nuclear deal. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Jan Eliasson and Dan Smith
STOCKHOLM, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

A deadly pandemic to control. An urgent nationwide vaccination programme to roll out. An economic crisis to navigate. Political divisions and distrust deep enough to spark mob violence and terrorism.

The 46th President of the United States faces a barrage of critical domestic challenges from day one.

Nevertheless, one matter of foreign policy will need to be at the top of his agenda: there will be barely two weeks left to save the 2010 strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, New START, from extinction.

New START is the last nuclear arms control treaty left standing between the USA and Russia. It sets caps on the deployment of the long-range portion of the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals and is due to expire on 5 February.

Fortunately, both incoming president Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have indicated their willingness to extend the treaty without conditions. So, it is likely to be a smooth process.

Amid the mistrust that colours today’s geopolitical landscape, far harder arms control challenges lie ahead.

The crisis in arms control

The past four years have seen major parts of the international arms control architecture weakened or dismantled. The 1987 Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty) collapsed in 2019.

In 2018, the USA unilaterally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)¬—the 2015 ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran signed up to by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council along with Germany and the European Union.

In November last year the USA formally withdrew from the 2002 Treaty on Open Skies, which allowed countries across the Euro-Atlantic space, from Anchorage to Vladivostok, to carry out unarmed surveillance flights over each other’s territory in order to monitor military activity.

Russia has now announced it is following suit.

The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is also looking precarious. Much of the world is frustrated at the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the NPT—the USA, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom—as well as Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which will enter into force on 22 January, was born of this frustration.

While the US presidency of Donald J. Trump has been particularly detrimental to arms control, problems were growing long before, and are far from being resolved.

‘Arms control for a new era’

Joe Biden brings to the presidency an impressive depth and breadth of experience in the field of arms control and international negotiation.

He made a commitment to ‘arms control for a new era’ a prominent part of his electoral platform and characterized the extension of New START as ‘a foundation for new arms control arrangements’.

New arms control arrangements are certainly needed. Without them, there is a serious risk of the further spread, and potential use, of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

It is also necessary to deal with an increasingly unpredictable, and expensive, arms race based on competition in technologies rather than numbers of weapons and characterized by the increasing entanglement of nuclear and non-nuclear technologies.

Several factors, such as missile defence, advanced conventional capabilities, hypersonic weapons, the accelerated militarization of outer space and the potential application of artificial intelligence to strategic weapons, are affecting the nuclear calculus and strategic stability.

It is unclear how these factors should be addressed in arms control negotiations. The task of designing a new approach to arms control is, in itself, dauntingly complex. And negotiations will take place in a far from ideal context.

Complicating factors

Delivering a new, effective arms control architecture will demand creativity, cooperation and compromise on all sides. Joe Biden has said that the USA will lead the process. But his team will face severe constraints.

The challenges around returning to the JCPOA—something Joe Biden has said he hopes to achieve—are illustrative. The JCPOA was proving a successful non-proliferation tool until the US withdrawal.

But it was only entered into by the USA in the face of strong opposition from the Republican Party, which has not weakened in the interim. In addition, there are a number of other problems and external factors that could distract attention from urgent work on the JCPOA.

Even with control of both houses of the US Congress, it will be difficult for Joe Biden to obtain the support needed to approve future arms control treaties with Russia (or other states).

Thus, the incoming president may well be restricted to executive orders, which are limited in scope and can easily be revoked by future US administrations.

Congressional approval will also be necessary to terminate certain sanctions on Iran in 2023, as is required under the terms of the JCPOA.

Recent US actions have also damaged the USA’s international reputation in many quarters—among both adversaries and allies—which will further complicate arms control diplomacy.

A collective challenge

The world faces a range of potentially destabilizing realities in the coming decades, from climate change and other environmental crises to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of the big picture is that the geopolitical order is shifting, with new regional powers and new alliances in which the USA is less influential.

In arms control, as in many other areas, the international community needs to find new ways of working to secure our common interest.

We should hope that the successful extension of New START will be the prelude to a gradual resurgence of arms control, non-proliferation, disarmament and risk reduction. But, as with the other big issues of our time, success will depend on all key actors stepping up.

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By Dan Smith
STOCKHOLM, May 8 2019 (IPS)

On 8 May last year, US President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which sets limits on Iran’s nuclear programme to ensure that it cannot produce nuclear weapons.

Despite the US withdrawal, the JCPOA remains in force; it is a multilateral agreement to which seven of the original eight parties still adhere.

When they arrived at the agreement in July 2015, the parties to it were Iran, the USA, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union. A few days after the JCPOA was agreed, it was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.

The JCPOA limits Iran’s uranium enrichment programme until 2030 and contains monitoring and transparency measures that will remain in place long after that date. Along with other international experts, SIPRI’s assessment from the outset has been that the agreement is technically sound with robust verification procedures.

Dan Smith, Director at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Credit: PSI.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is responsible for monitoring Iran’s JCPOA implementation. It has consistently found that Iran is fully living up to its undertakings. In short, well-crafted and properly implemented, the JCPOA closes off Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons, should it decide to go in that direction.

However, Saudi Arabia, Israel and most US Republican politicians opposed the agreement. Donald Trump made abandoning the deal a keynote of his 2016 election campaign.

Like most other critics, he has described as major flaws the JCPOA’s temporary nature and its lack of controls on Iran’s ballistic missile programme. He is also highly critical of Iran’s actions in Syria and elsewhere in the region, which he characterizes as its ‘malign behaviour’.

This makes it clear that, rather than an evidence-based technical objection to the agreement or its implementation, the US decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was a political measure aimed against Iran.

The time-limited nature of the JCPOA is by no means unique—the major US-Russian strategic arms control agreement, for example, expires in 2021. It is normal in such cases to find an appropriate opportunity to discuss extending the agreement.

The 15-member UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the Iran nuclear deal in July 2015.

Regardless of its views about Iran’s regional policies and actions—or, indeed, about the policies and actions of its regional rivals such as Israel and Saudi Arabia—the US withdrawal from the JCPOA is ill-conceived and regrettable for many reasons.

It undermines the value of multilateral diplomacy and raises questions about the sanctity and sustainability of interstate agreements.

Furthermore, it challenges the authority of the UN Security Council, which has unanimously passed a resolution endorsing the JCPOA and calling on all UN member states as well as regional and international organizations to take action to support the agreement’s implementation.

US withdrawal from the JCPOA risks seriously weakening trust and confidence in international institutions and arrangements that are essential parts of the global security architecture.

In particular, the US action undermines the global effort for nuclear non-proliferation by sabotaging an important and effective anti-proliferation agreement. It is to be hoped that the remaining parties to the JCPOA will find ways to support its continued implementation.

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SIPRI Director on Armament and Disarmament Dr Sibylle Bauer discusses the future of arms control at the Munich Security Conference.

By Dan Smith
MUNICH, Germany, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

This year’s Munich Security Conference (the MSC), held on 15-17 February raised many questions but didn’t have the answer. It was not a happy and certainly not a self-confident gathering. Yet a couple of moments suggested the first new blooms of new ways to think about security might soon poke through the soil.

The MSC is the annual meeting of makers, shakers and influence-makers on the Euro-Atlantic security scene. Its recent editions have all been full of doubt and query. In 2015 the conference theme was ‘Collapsing Order, Reluctant Guardians?’

That was followed the next year by ‘Boundless Crises, Reckless Spoilers, Helpless Guardians’ – no question-mark this time but not any better or more confident because of that.

In February 2017, with the impact of the newly inaugurated Trump administration as yet unclear, it was ‘Post-Truth, Post-West, Post-Order?’. And last year it was ‘To the brink—and back?’, which, if you look hard, at least has a drop of optimism hidden behind the query.

This year the theme was ‘The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?’ To make sure everybody got the point, there was a little jigsaw puzzle in the conference packs. But by the end of the gathering, not to anybody’s surprise, there was no real answer.

The components of anxiety and uncertainty are not new or surprising for anybody who follows international politics. In the last several years there has been a general deterioration in geopolitical stability.

A key dark moment was the Russian takeover in Crimea during February and March 2014 but the problem goes back further than that. In 2009, as Secretary of State in the new Obama administration, Hillary Clinton aimed for a major “reset” in US-Russia relations because of the negative turn they had taken in the previous years.

US-Russian relations remain at a low ebb, especially over arms control. The expression “INF Treaty” seemed to be used every other sentence that was uttered at the MSC.

It was not like that last year when the prospects for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 was a matter of interest only for the specialists among the specialists.

Now people were discussing whether there is any hope at all for nuclear arms control between the US and Russia and what happens if there is none – a new arms race? Or is a more likely prospect perhaps something new, more of an asymmetric nuclear arms competition in which each is spurred by the other’s new systems but not to match them?

Along with this, tensions are growing between the rest of NATO and Russia, punctuated by further dark moments such as last year’s novichok poisonings in the UK.

There is the trade dispute between the US and China, and close military encounters in the South China Sea where, late last year, US and Chinese warships passed within 40 metres of each other.

Beyond the great power rivalries, there is widespread violent conflict and a re-ordering of power in the Middle East. Worldwide, the incidence of armed conflict is much greater than ten years ago.

Military spending and arms transfers are at their highest levels since the end of the Cold. Regional rivalries, as between Iran and Saudi Arabia and between India and Pakistan remain heated.

There are also rifts and significantly divergent perspectives within NATO. At the MSC, it was instructive to compare the quiet politeness that greeted US Vice-President Pence’s speech with the enthusiastic applause that greeted a single mention of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name.

As represented here, the European part of the Euro-Atlantic security community, yearning always for a strong western alliance, seriously does not like the Trump administration.

Presumably because they recognised this in their separate ways, those consummate opportunists of the annual MSC platform, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarid, both devoted their time to attacking America, not Europe.

A big part of the problem about is that there is not much appetite for a thoroughgoing rethink. For most MSC participants, the answer to the question – “Who will pick up the pieces?” – is, despite Trump, “America, please!” And into what shape should the picked-up pieces be assembled?

Few addressed the question directly but a fair inference is that, for most, the new shape should be as much like the old one as possible. According to one sharp observer of the scene, Carnegie’s Judy Dempsey in her post-MSC wash-up, what was on display at MSC was “a bickering West reluctant to address the new geostrategic realities.”

There were just a couple of moments that suggested something different. One was the first session on climate change and security that the MSC has ever staged in the main conference hall. It is about time.

We have got beyond asking whether climate change causes conflict – a dumb question because no conflict has a single cause; the discussion now is about the circumstances in which climate change contributes to insecurity.

What starts out as growing human insecurity because of, for example, over-use and inefficient management of water, can translate over time into the open warfare and human catastrophe that is Yemen today. Looking ahead, the discussion needs to address the impact of sea-level rise on low-lying coastal areas.

One billion people live less than five metres above current sea-level. What happens to the security agenda ten to fifteen years from now as these areas start to be endangered, if their governments and city authorities cannot help citizens ride out the impact of the change?

If nobody else was prepared to confront the bigger picture, Angela Merkel was. The German Chancellor opened her speech by noting that in 2016 geologists confirmed the view that we now live in the Anthropocene Epoch, when human action is the biggest influence upon nature.

And this, she said, formed the context in which all discussions of security should be held henceforth.

In sum, then: many questions, no satisfying answers, but a couple of glimmers of light showing where to look.

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By Dan Smith
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

At a political rally on Saturday, 20 October, US President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the 1987 Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty). This confirms what has steadily been unfolding over the past couple of years: the architecture of Russian–US nuclear arms control is crumbling.

Building blocks of arms control

As the cold war ended, four new building blocks of East–West arms control were laid on top of foundations set by the 1972 Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty):

• The 1987 INF Treaty eliminated all ground-launched missiles with a range between 500 and 5500 kilometres, including both cruise and ballistic missiles.
• The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) capped at equal levels the number of heavy weapons deployed between the Atlantic and the Urals by members of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO).
• The 1991 Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START I) reduced the number of strategic nuclear weapons; further cuts were agreed in 2002 and again in 2010 in the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START).
• The 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) were parallel, unilateral but agreed actions by both the Soviet Union and the USA to eliminate short-range tactical nuclear weapons, of which thousands existed.

Taken together, the nuclear measures—the INF Treaty, START I and the PNIs—had a major impact (see figure 1).

Source: Kristensen, H. M. and Norris, R. S., ‘Status of world nuclear forces’, Federation of American Scientists, 2018.

The fastest pace of reduction was in the 1990s. A deceleration began just before the new century started, and there has been a further easing of the pace in the past six years. Nevertheless, year by year, the number continues to fall.

By the start of 2018 the global total of nuclear weapons was 14 700 compared with an all-time high of some 70 000 in the mid-1980s. While nuclear weapons are more capable in many ways than before, the reduction is, nonetheless, both large and significant.

Cracks appear: Charge and counter-charge

Even while the number continued to drop, problems were emerging. Not least, in 2002 the USA unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty. However, that did not stop Russia and the USA from signing the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT Treaty) in 2002 and New START in 2010, but perhaps it presaged later developments.

Trump’s announcement brings a process that has been going on for several years towards its conclusion. The USA declared Russia to be violating the INF Treaty in July 2014. That was during the Obama administration.

Thus, the allegation that Russia has breached the INF Treaty is, in other words, not new. This year the USA’s NATO allies also aligned themselves with the US accusation, albeit somewhat guardedly (note the careful wording in paragraph 46 of the July Summit Declaration).

The charge is that Russia has developed a ground-launched cruise missile with a range over 500 kilometres. Many details have not been clearly stated publicly, but it seems Russia may have modified a sea-launched missile (the Kalibr) and combined it with a mobile ground-based launcher (the Iskander K system). The modified system is sometimes known as the 9M729, the SSC-8 or the SSC-X-8.

Russia rejects the US accusation. It makes the counter-charge that the USA has itself violated the INF Treaty in three ways: first by using missiles banned under the treaty for target practice; second by deploying some drones that are effectively cruise missiles; and third by taking a maritime missile defence system and basing it on land (Aegis Ashore) although its launch tubes could, the Russians say, be used for intermediate range missiles. Naturally, the USA rejects these charges.

A further Russian criticism of the USA over the INF Treaty is that, if the USA wanted to discuss alleged non-compliance, it should have used the treaty’s Special Verification Commission before going public.

This was designed specifically to address questions about each side’s compliance. The Commission did not meet between 2003 and November 2016, and it was during that 13-year interval that US concerns about Russian cruise missiles emerged.

Now Trump seems to have closed the argument by announcing withdrawal. Under Article XV of the treaty, withdrawal can happen after six months’ notice. Unless there is a timely change of approach by either side or both, the INF Treaty looks likely to be a dead letter by April 2019.

It could be, however, that the announcement is intended as a manoeuvre to obtain Russian concessions on the alleged missile deployment or on other aspects of an increasingly tense Russian–US relationship. That is what Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, implied by calling the move ‘blackmail’.

Arms control in trouble

Whether the imminence of the INF Treaty’s demise is more apparent than real, its plight is part of a bigger picture. Arms control is in deep trouble. As well as the US abrogation of the ABM Treaty in 2002,
• Russia effectively withdrew from the CFE Treaty in 2015, arguing that the equal cap was no longer fair after five former WTO states joined NATO;
• The 2010 New START agreement on strategic nuclear arms lasts until 2021, and there are currently no talks about prolonging or replacing it; and
• Russia claims that the USA is technically violating New START because some US launchers have been converted to non-nuclear use in a way that is not visible to Russia.

As a result, Russia cannot verify them in the way the treaty says it must be able to. The Russian Government’s position is that until this is resolved, it is not possible to start work on prolonging New START, despite its imminent expiry date.

It seems likely that the precarious situation of Russian–US arms control will simultaneously put increasing pressure on the overall nuclear non-proliferation regime and sharpen the arguments about the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW, or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty).

For the advocates of what is often known as the nuclear ban, the erosion of arms control reinforces the case for moving forward to a world without nuclear weapons. For its opponents, the erosion of arms control shows the world is not at all ready for or capable of a nuclear ban.

The risk of a return to nuclear weapon build-ups by both Russia and the USA is clear. With it, the degree of safety gained with the end of the cold war and enjoyed since then is at risk of being lost. Aware of the well-earned reputation for springing surprises that the Russian and US presidents both have, there may be more developments in one direction or another in the coming weeks or even days.

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