Arms Control Since the End of the 20th Century

Historically, the end of the Cold War was the high point of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral arms control efforts. The decade of the 1990s is remembered as the gilded decade of arms control based on legally binding mechanisms with verification procedures.

This movement began in the 1980s with the resolution of the Euromissile crisis. The signing of the INF Treaty between the US and the USSR in 1987 and its entry into force the following year was a major disarmament event: an entire class of weapons – medium and intermediate range nuclear-capable ground-to-ground missiles – was eliminated; other European states joined the initiative, making the INF the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty.

This event, which heralded the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991, generated three dynamics: the finalisation of negotiation efforts that had been underway for several decades, like the Chemical Weapons Convention for instance, the taking of unilateral initiatives by states, and the launch of a major multilateral movement designed to reap the greatest possible peace dividend.

The emblematic successes of this period concern nuclear weapons. For example, a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was opened for signature in September 1996, with 71 states signing the treaty on the first day.

Another important milestone was the unilateral Franco-British disarmament initiatives: France withdrew its Mirage IV-P fighter jet from service, abolished the ground-to-ground component, dismantled the Albion plateau missiles and the 30 Hades missiles on wheels, with a short range (400 km). The number of its Ballistic Missile Submarines, SSBNs, was reduced from six to four. The UK decided in 1993 not to renew its airborne component. Its nuclear forces were limited to an oceanic component consisting of four “Vanguard” class SSBNs capable of carrying 16 Trident II D5 ballistic missiles. The UK authorities have indicated that each missile carries no more than three warheads and that the operational stockpile does not exceed 200 warheads, compared to a stockpile of around 430 at the end of the Cold War.

Other major developments relate to chemical weapons and conventional arms control: The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (also known as the Chemical Weapons Convention), which opened for signature in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

It was also the launch of a conventional security architecture in Europe based on three pillars: the CFE Treaty (open to signature in 1990, into force in 1992), the Open Skies Treaty (signed in 1992, into force in 2002), and the Vienna Document (adopted in 1990 and regularly updated since then).

These three instruments, subsequently extended to a plurality of states in Europe and Central Asia, were intended for the annual exchange of information on conventional armaments, the notification of changes in the structure or size of the conventional armed forces of the States Parties, the establishment of unarmed surveillance flights over the territory of the States Parties to enhance mutual understanding and confidence, inter alia.

Against the backdrop of all these initiatives, a positive spiral towards ever more arms control and disarmament seemed to be emerging in the early 1990s. This gilded aera, however, soon came to a sudden end and today’s experts look back wistfully on these years.

At the end of the last century, the non-proliferation norm began to show signs of fragility:

• Flaws in the IAEA verification system had already been exposed by the 1991 Gulf War.
• The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in the spring of 1998 dealt a blow to the vocation of the NPT’s universality.
• The North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises dealt a blow to compliance with the treaty and to the conditions for withdrawal.
• The NPT review process became tense after the 2000 conference.

In addition, a number of new types of threats to security emerged. What they had in common was that they involved the proliferation of components of WMDs with the potential to cause large-scale damage. Examples include:

• the perception, after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, of the lasting anchoring of a risk or threat of terrorism of mass destruction,
• the discovery of the proliferation network orchestrated by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in December 2003,
• the revelation of the growing involvement of non-state entities, that is scientists, the industry, etc., in the proliferation economy.

In sum, WMD proliferation seemed to be increasing, in ways that would make it less detectable than in the past, and in response to motives that were as threatening as they were debatable. The world order was decaying and the forms of its recomposition were poorly understood. The global non-proliferation regime was deeply affected by such perceptions.

Until then, counter-terrorism and non-proliferation issues had been advancing two separate and parallel agendas. From the turn of the century onwards, counter-proliferation emerged, essentially a number of new instruments, hybrid and under one banner. Their purpose was to respond in a single package to the failures of the non-proliferation regime and to sub-state threats of strategic importance.

Actually, the concept of “counter-proliferation” emerged in the early 1980s. It is its generalization that dates from the 2000s. Counter proliferation can be defined as the set of political initiatives launched on the fringes of the major traditional intergovernmental legal instruments, the aim of which is to increase the operational effectiveness of the global non-proliferation regime for state and non-state actors.

There is no suitable classification of the new instruments for combating proliferation, of which the best known are the Proliferation Security Initiative (2003), United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004), or the generalization of the tool of proliferation sanctions from 2006 onwards.

They were intended to be used in a timely manner, which is why people started to talk about them as a “toolbox.”

All these instruments share, for the most part, two key characteristics:

First, The search for operational efficiency. The fight against proliferation has become an enterprise of technicians divided by profession: monitoring of financing flows, export controls, drafting of national legislative instruments, detection equipment, boarding exercises on the high seas, etc.

Second, emphasis on the notion of cooperation between actors, both states, as well as technicians. Without cooperation, none of these instruments can provide anything other than a false sense of security. Cooperation has been claimed everywhere since the beginning of the 2000s.

The approach to reducing the volume of violence in international affairs through the negotiation and conclusion of legally binding instruments has not been favoured by major States for many years now.

The beginning of the erosion of this patiently nurtured edifice during the Cold War can be dated to George W. Bush’s first term in office, when the United States first officially announced its mistrust in the existing arms control system itself.

The beginning of the erosion of the conventional arms control architecture in Europe during the 2000s – for example the problems concerning the CFE Treaty or the Vienna Document – should have alerted states concerned about the preservation of the system.

This obviously was not the case. What we are experiencing today reflects a widespread lack of political foresight, particularly on the part of liberal democracies. They were supposed to be the guarantors of a world order based on the rule of law, which has been slowly eroded over the last twenty years.

The deterioration of US–Russian strategic relations since the annexation of Crimea in 2015 has weakened the scope of arms control instruments, which, although essentially bilateral, condition the global security. Russia’s proven violation of the INF Treaty and the American withdrawal from it in 2020 accentuate the risk of the disappearance of this entire architecture, which is subject to serious tensions. At the same time, the implementation of commitments in the field of non-strategic weapons remains opaque and the Russian and US nuclear doctrines are subject to criticism.

In addition to arms control challenges, the stakes of nuclear and ballistic proliferation (in North Korea, and in Iran, for instance) and the development of new strategic weapons systems raise new questions in terms of strategic stability. The questioning of US-Russian arms control instruments is therefore forcing Europeans and the Allies to rethink their security architecture: what place is there for deterrence? What should be arms control objectives? What new systems could be destabilising? What should be the follow-up to New Start?

These questions arise in a context of heightened public expectations in terms of nuclear disarmament, fueled by the prohibitionist movement and NGOs like Ican, the context of ethics through the rising importance of humanitarian approaches and, finally, a loss of familiarity with the culture of deterrence and even with the strategic issues at stake.

In detail, each case of weakening or deconstruction has its own causal link, but at least the following facts can be established:

• The international security instruments developed during the 20th century perish because they are not adapted to the changing strategic environment: The collapse of the INF Treaty is the perfect illustration of such a reality.
• The global nuclear order that emerged from the Cold War is being challenged and will continue to be challenged in the future (e.g. North Korea’s unilateral withdrawal from the NPT).
• The ban on the use or threat of use of so-called unconventional weapons is not accompanied by any taboo. These are wishful thinking or largely fantastical ideas. The use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime is a clear example of how chemical weapons are not a taboo subject.