In the 1990s, Europe boasted the most extensive network of disarmament and confidence-building agreements. However, they did not prevent Russia from unleashing in 2022 the most devastating war on the European continent since World War II. It was launched by Russia against a state that voluntarily abandoned nuclear weapons in 1994. Thus, there were many voices that disarmament was a delusion of security, and the best guarantee of inviolability is having your own nuclear arsenal (the DPRK case). Is Russia the gravedigger of the doctrine of disarmament in our times?
The view that limiting armaments and reducing them is a way of strengthening international security was formed late, at the turn of the twentieth century. A Pole Jan Gottlieb Bloch played a great role in this. In professional literature, he is often called the father of modern pacifism and mature polemology, but also of the doctrine of universal disarmament. Just like Rafał Lemkin, he is still an underappreciated figure in Poland (he has a street named after him only in Łódź). In his multi-volume work “The Future of War in Technical, Economic and Political Relations”, completed in 1898, he showed the pointlessness of wars, their devastating consequences for societies and economies, resulting from the unbridled arms race and new lethal technologies. The reading of Bloch’s work inspired Nicholas II to come up with the initiative to convene the Hague peace conference in 1899 (Bloch took part in it as a personal guest of the Tsar of Russia). The first and second (convened in 1907) Hague Conferences were pioneering platforms for discussing disarmament and the peaceful settlement of disputes. The outbreak of the First World War prevented holding the third Hague Conference.
In terms of disarmament, the Hague conferences brought little, because only the agreements on the prohibition to use of balloons to drop missiles and explosives and the ban on the use of poisonous gases (more significant were the provisions on the principles of military operations and arbitration conventions). Yet since the Hague Conferences are considered the beginning of the history of disarmament (in fairness some say that the first act of disarmament was the Strasbourg Agreement of 1675 between France and the German Reich prohibiting the use of poisonous substances on the battlefield). Previously, disarmament applied mainly to states defeated in wars and conquered in expansionist adventures.
The doctrine that treats disarmament as an instrument of foreign (security) policy has resulted in the establishment of specialized diplomatic corps to service negotiations in this field, and in the formation of quite solid expert staff (and institutional mechanisms) in the US, Russia and most European countries.
The Treaty of Versailles disarmed Germany, but it contained a clause that would oblige other powers to undertake disarmament measures. The League of Nations, established at that time, already had the purpose of disarmament included in its statute.
In the interwar period, tangible results were achieved in reducing naval armaments. Conferences in Washington (1921-1922), Geneva (1927), London (1930 and 1935) brought about treaty obligations limiting the US, Great Britain war fleets (on the basis of parity) as well as Japan, France and Italy. Japan, which did not sign the Second London Treaty, decided to disarm its most dangerous rival in the Pacific on its own by attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. After the end of World War II, the experience of naval operations did not mobilize to develop the concept of limiting naval armaments. This concept has so far turned out to be a historically important, but nowadays, dead end street of disarmament.
Attempts to limit land-based armaments within the League of Nations however largely failed. The temporary armaments commission was established there as early as 1921, and although the arrangements within its framework were never formalized, the idea of banning chemical and biological weapons in armed conflicts, discussed there, was reflected in the Geneva Protocol of 1925. A new permanent disarmament commission was established in 1926. High hopes were attached to the Disarmament Conference convened in 1932. It worked until 1937, but already in 1933, when, after Hitler came to power, Germany began to demand equal rights in armaments and left the Conference and the League of Nations itself under the pretext of no results, its fate was sealed. It ended her work fruitlessly in 1937.
The postulate of disarmament returned with fresh force after World War II. The Charter of the United Nations inscribed the disarmament role to the tasks of both the Security Council and the General Assembly. The challenge was the emergence of a new type of weapon in the arsenal: nuclear weapons. In 1946, the General Assembly established the Atomic Energy Commission to meet the challenge. Two approaches to the nuclear issue collided in its forum. The United States presented in the Baruch Plan the concept of international control over nuclear energy, rejected by the USSR on the pretext that it would legitimize the American monopoly on the possession of nuclear weapons. The USSR wanted complete nuclear disarmament. The Conventional Arms Commission set up by the Security Council in 1947 also got stuck in US-Soviet disputes.
In 1952, the Security Council proposed a new format for disarmament work: the Disarmament Commission. In 1960, at the will of the great powers, the so-called Disarmament Committee of Ten States was established which was to become the negotiating body. These formats were transformed several times. In the years 1962-1968, the Disarmament Committee of 18 countries was active, in the years 1969-1978 the Conference of the Disarmament Committee, and since 1979, the Disarmament Conference has been operating under the aegis of the United Nations.
The post-war arms race gained momentum unprecedented in history. It resulted in equipping the armies of countries around the world (the US and the USSR in the first place) with tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, a multitude of means of delivery capable of hitting every corner of the earth. In addition, there were huge stocks of other means of mass destruction, hundreds of thousands of tanks and other conventional weapons. Political and ideological disputes made the outbreak of the new world war a real prospect even as a result of misreading the adversary’s intentions, and the degree of saturation with lethal weapons threatened to destroy the world even in the event of a failure of technology or a kind of “spontaneous combustion”.
Disarmament became the most important platform for international dialogue during the Cold War. Masses of diplomats were involved in conducting disarmament negotiations. And they were diplomats of the highest class. The most skillful ones were directed to disarmament. Because the matter from the purely technical side was highly complicated. It was not easy for them. A wall of distrust grew up between East and West. The positions of the parties and the proposed proposals were analyzed with extreme suspicion. There was mutual fear that the other side was pursuing under the guise of disarmament proposals to obtain unilateral benefits, and was trying to “trick” the enemy. Disarmament negotiations took time and patience. For long hours, seemingly insignificant details were discussed.
Geopolitics caused the East and the West to rely in their military doctrines on various factors influencing the size and dislocation of military potentials. The East amassed enormous conventional potential in Europe, while the West based its defense on the ability to rapidly deploy American troops. The USSR developed its nuclear potential on the basis of land-based ballistic missiles. The US had to rely on naval and air forces (especially in the 1950s and 1960s). At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the concept of parity in considering the shape of agreements became obvious. It helped tame strategic nuclear weapons. But it did not take root in conventional disarmament until the late 1980s.
There were many cynical attitudes in the decision-making centers on both sides. One of the Polish high-ranking military commanders used to say in private circles in the mid-1980s that all this disarmament was a propaganda game between Moscow and Washington. “Everyone wants to convince the world public that they want peace more than the other side, but they’re arming themselves to the teeth all the time.” Yet, many disarmament diplomats treated their work as a mission. Each success in the field of disarmament could be considered a contribution to easing international tensions, reducing the risk of war and building mutual trust.
Real progress was already achieved in the disarmament field in the 1960s. In 1963, a treaty was concluded to partially ban nuclear tests. The Tlatelolco Treaty, negotiated in 1967, made Latin America a nuclear-weapon-free zone. In 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed.
Nuclear arms control gained great momentum in the 1970s due to bilateral negotiations between the USSR and the US. It was a time of detente. In 1972, the SALT I agreement (freezing the number of land and sea-based ICBMs) and the anti-ballistic defense treaty were agreed. In 1979, the SALT II treaty was signed, introducing limits on intercontinental missile launchers and heavy bombers as well as on the number of multi-warhead missiles. And in 1975, a general convention banning biological weapons was concluded. In 1973, negotiations began between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries on the restriction of conventional weapons in Central Europe. However, they quickly plunged into an impasse (they ended in 1989 to no avail).
In the 1980s, after a severe crisis in relations between the USSR and the USA in the middle of the decade, it was possible to break the deadlock and arrive at the signing of the INF treaty in 1987, eliminating short- and medium-range missile weapons. The Stockholm Conference of the CSCE adopted in 1986 a significant package of confidence-building measures in Europe, introducing, inter alia, on-site inspections.
The nineties of the last century were a golden age of disarmament. The USSR, crushed by the weight of armaments, embarked on far-reaching reductions in conventional armaments in Europe in the 1990 CFE Treaty. The Vienna documents of 1990 and 1992 took confidence-building measures to a new level. In 1992, NATO and the former Warsaw Pact countries signed the Open Skies Treaty, authorizing aerial inspection of their territory. Ambitious goals were pursued in the field of strategic disarmament between Russia and the United States. In 1991, the START I treaty was signed, providing for the introduction of limits for nuclear warheads (6,000 each) and means of delivery (1,600 units each). START II of 1993 lowered the ceilings of warheads to even lower values (3,000 to 3,500 units), but it never came into force. The 2002 SORT treaty reduced them even more, and it was replaced in 2010 by the new START treaty (which was to apply until 2021). In 1996, a total nuclear test ban treaty was successfully negotiated. Unfortunately, it has not take legal force yet. In 1993, the Chemical Weapons Convention was signed, which entered into force in 1997.
But also since the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, disarmament ceased to be as existential as before. There were no serious political reasons for using the accumulated potentials back then. The majority, and the vast majority, of armed conflicts began to be internal conflicts, civil wars. There were wars “between peoples”, in which light weapons and small arms became the main tool.
In the new millennium, disarmament has plunged into crisis. The only bright flame was the 2017 treaty on the total ban on nuclear weapons. It entered into force in 2012, but is ignored by nuclear powers and many Western countries.
The agreements concluded in the nineties collapsed. Russia has suspended the application of the CFE Treaty. Russia’s violations forced the US to denounce the INF Treaty. The USA left also (followed by Russia) the Open Skies Treaty. Only two days before its formal expiry, in 2021, the START Treaty was extended (for another five years). Russia was censored for using chemical weapons (“Novichok”). The register of conventional weapons established in 1991 has not yet become a fully universal tool (one third of countries do not want to provide any data), and the 2001 SALW Protocol has not yet effectively blocked the illegal movement of light and small arms around the world.
In the nineties it was said that agreements such as CFE or Open Skies constitute a permanent foundation of European security, that they guarantee stability for centuries. The disarmament commentaries that were written at the time may look overly enthusiastic and naïve today. It turned out that the stability was relatively solid, and the order did not collapse despite the fact that Russia did not want to feel bound by the disarmament agreements (it also broke, if not the letter, certainly the spirit of the Vienna document on confidence-building measures at that time). It treated them as a corset in practicing politics from a position of force in its immediate environment (the war with Georgia in 2008 or with Ukraine in 2014), and most of all Russia used its departure from the agreements as an element of psychopolitical blackmail against the West. And the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 erased with one stroke the impact of the entire legacy of disarmament. At least in Russia, the disarmament culture has not developed a permanent inhibition against the instinct of violence.
The world system of arms control negotiations has not been in such a serious crisis since the 1930s, when Germany (and Japan) turned their back on disarmament.
In 1997, when I headed the political section of the United Nations System Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was entrusted with the role of the national coordinator of the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The convention entered into force then, we had to prepare appropriate legal acts and create mechanisms for implementing its provisions. I had to master basic knowledge of chemistry, chemicals and industrial technologies. And chemistry was not one of my favorite school subjects.
State parties then made declarations that they possess or do not possess stocks of weapons to be destroyed. Whenever military data is declared under international agreements, the problem arises to what extent the declared information corresponds to the actual state. And one always has to answer the question to what extent the data submitted by the states is reliable. The Chemical Weapons Convention presented an unprecedented challenge. Because in fact it was a convention on the restrictions put on the chemical industry. And data on chemical compounds subject to the Convention (and their precursors), their production and trade in them come not only from state but also from private entities. In case of no other disarmament agreement that I have dealt with in my long professional experience, I have not encountered so many skeptical comments from experts at the Hague Chemical Weapons Prohibition Organization about the reliability of the information submitted. “Oh, they are fudging now and they will be always fudging” – I heard. So when, years later, the issue of using “novichok” emerged, all those whispers of that time were revived in my memory. They confirm the truth that universal prohibitions of weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear and biological) require, above all, elementary political trust that exceeds the capabilities offered by existing techniques and verification procedures, no matter how thorough and rigorous. No prescriptions will be effective unless there is elementary trust.
Distrust has stalled progress in many fields of disarmament negotiations. The Geneva Disarmament Conference has become a symbol of apathy at the threshold of our millennium.
And yet disarmament is diplomatic worthwhile. Bloch’s Promethean dream of universal disarmament should continue to inspire diplomats.
