THE ACRS EXPERIENCE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE WMDFZ CONFERENCE

Abstract

This article examines the arms control logic that was applied to the only regional arms control talks that have taken place in the Middle East to date: the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) working group that was part of the multilateral track of the Madrid peace process in the early 1990s. It highlights both the successes and major constraints of the ACRS talks in an effort to assess what might be relevant to the weapons of mass destruction-free zone conference proposed for later this year. In addition to the basic arms control dilemmas that will continue to challenge this conference—as they did ACRS—the article suggests that current conditions in the Middle East are even less conducive to regional dialogue than they were in the earlier period, due to the internal upheavals in several key Arab states, and the specific challenge of Iran's move to develop a military nuclear capability.

Keywords:

• Middle East
• arms control
• weapons of mass destruction-free zone

Notes

1. See Bruce Jentleson, “The Middle East Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) Talks: Progress, Problems and Prospects,” IGCC Policy Paper, No. 26 (University of California Berkeley: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 1996); Bruce Jentleson and Dalia Dassa Kaye, “Security Status: Explaining Regional Security Cooperation and Its Limits in the Middle East,” Security Studies 8 (1998) pp. 204–38; Shai Feldman, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Center for Science and International Affairs, 1997); Peter Jones, “Negotiating Regional Security and Arms Control in the Middle East: The ACRS Experience and Beyond,” Journal of Strategic Studies 25 (2003), pp. 137–54; Emily B. Landau, Arms Control in the Middle East: Cooperative Security Dialogue and Regional Constraints (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press and JCSS, 2006); Emily B. Landau, “ACRS: What worked, what didn't, and what could be relevant for the region today,” Disarmament Forum 2 (2008), pp. 13–20, <http://unidir.org/pdf/articles/pdf-art2727.pdf>; and Emily B. Landau and Dalia Dassa Kaye, “Disarmament Efforts in the Region: Lessons from the Arms Control and Regional Security Talks,” in Bernd Kubbig and Sven-Eric Fikenscher, eds., Arms Control and Missile Proliferation in the Middle East (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 27–38.

2. The only realistic interpretation of the WMDFZ conference proposal is as some type of ongoing regional arms control discussion. Any other interpretation would be detached from the reality of how WMD figure in the Middle East and what it means to deal with them in a regional context.

3. See Gerald M. Steinberg, “The History of Arms Control in the Middle East,” in Avi Becker, ed., Arms Control without Glasnost: Building Confidence in the Middle East (Jerusalem: Israel Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), pp. 7–27.

4. The concept of Confidence-Building Measures (CBM) was first explicitly formulated in the European context, in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975, but these measures were also prevalent in the US-Soviet bilateral arms control experience, beginning with the “Hot Line” established in 1963. In 1992, then-US Secretary of State James Baker introduced the confidence-building imperative in his initial remarks on the ACRS working group. He determined that the agenda of the talks would be to consider “a set of modest confidence-building or transparency measures covering notifications of selected military-related activities and crisis-prevention communications. The purpose would be to lessen the prospects for incidents and miscalculations that could lead to heightened competition or even conflict.” See Remarks of Secretary of State James A. Baker III before the Organizational Meeting for Multilateral Negotiations on the Middle East, January 28, 1992, US Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary/Spokesman (Moscow, Russia).

5. See Emily B. Landau, “Placing WMD in Context,” Arms Control Today, September 2011, <www.armscontrol.org/2011_09/Placing_WMD_in_Context%20%20%20%20>.

6. It should be noted that Syria also embraced the Egyptian disarmament focus; indeed, Syria was much more inflexible on this issue, to the point that it refused even to take part in the ACRS talks.

7. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” Prague, April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>.

8. Peter Jones, “Arms Control in the Middle East: Is it Time to Renew ACRS?,” Disarmament Forum 2 (2005) pp. 55–62, <http://unidir.org/pdf/articles/pdf-art2278.pdf>.

9. The history included here—which draws heavily on the author's previous research into this question, and incorporates some points from a June 2011 presentation at the Washington, DC conference “Moving Toward a Region Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East: Challenges for 2012“—will be brief and related in broad-strokes. For more detailed accounts, see Landau, Arms Control in the Middle East, and Landau, “ACRS: What worked, what didn't, and what could be relevant for the region today.”

10. The ACRS talks proceeded in plenary gatherings as well as in what were called “intersessional” meetings, which comprised a host of smaller meetings and seminars, including visits to arms control-related facilities, with the aim of enabling the parties to further discuss the issues in smaller and more informal settings. The intersessional meetings were divided into two baskets: conceptual and operational. The conceptual basket focused on formulating the long-term objectives for the talks, while the operational basket focused on specific CSBMs.

11. Landau, Arms Control in the Middle East, pp. 42–47. This summary of the CSBMs also appears in Landau and Kaye, “Disarmament Efforts in the Region,” pp. 28–30.

12. See Dalia Dassa Kaye, “The Middle East WMDFZ Conference: A Reset for Regional Arms Control?,” Nonproliferation Review 19 (November 2012), pp. 413–28.

13. See Landau, Arms Control in the Middle East, Chapters 5, 6, and 7, pp. 90–159.

14. Thomas L. Friedman, “Syria to Attend Most Phases of Middle East Talks,” New York Times, October 17, 1991, <www.nytimes.com/1991/10/17/world/syria-to-attend-most-phases-of-middle-east-talks.html>.

15. Iran's regional hegemonic interests would be enhanced by the immunity to counterattack that Iran would enjoy as a nuclear state, in scenarios that fall short of actual use of nuclear weapons by Iran. Once it acquires nuclear weapons, Iran will have a free hand to stir up major trouble in the region. Iran is threatening to a number of states in the region, and many have expressed fear of its nuclear ambitions, especially in the Gulf. Analysts who argue that nuclear weapons will engender stability are basing their conclusions on examples from outside the Middle East, primarily the US-Soviet bilateral relationship during the Cold War. However, as reflected in a recent analysis favoring nuclear stability, making predictions about the effect of nuclear weapons in the Middle East without analyzing the political realities in this region is a grave mistake that can lead to very problematic, even dangerous, conclusions. See Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” Foreign Affairs 90 (July/August 2012), pp. 2–5; for a critique of Waltz that highlights the complexity of regional politics and actual motivations in the nuclear realm in the Middle East, see Emily B. Landau, “When Neorealism meets the Middle East: Putting Iran's Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons in (Regional) Context,” Strategic Assessment 15 (forthcoming 2012).

16. See Nasser Karimi, “Iran's Ahmadinejad: No place for Israel in region,” Associated Press, August 26, 2011. In February 2011, Ahmadinejad said, “We will soon see a new Middle East materializing without America and the Zionist regime….” Agence France-Presse, “'Beware friendly US,’ Ahmadinejad warns Egyptians,” Al Arabiya News, February 11, 2011, <www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/11/137223.html>.

17. On chemical weapons, see Dany Shoham, “Poisoned Missiles: Syria's Doomsday Deterrent,” Middle East Quarterly 9 (Fall 2002), pp. 13–20, and Michael Eisenstadt, “Dealing with Syria's Chemical Weapons: Military Options.” Policywatch 1964, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, July 17, 2012. On the nuclear program, see “Background Briefing with Senior U.S. Officials on Syria's Covert Nuclear Reactor and North Korea's Involvement,” April 24, 2008, <www.fas.org/irp/news/2008/04/odni042408.pdf>.

18. This was evident in the context of discussions on the CWC. In January 1993, President Hafez Assad said, “Possession [of] chemical weapons by the Arabs constitutes minimal deterrence against Israel's nuclear weapons and allows them a partial strategic balance.” See Eitan Barak, “Getting the Middle East Holdouts to Join the CWC,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 66 (January 2010), pp. 57–62. See also quote from Bruce Reidel, in “What comes after Assad in Syria?,” The Daily Beast, July 20, 2012: “After Syria was defeated by Israel in 1982, Hafez [Assad] ordered the development of chemical weapons as a deterrent against his Israeli enemy.”

19. See Leonard Spector, “Assad's Chemical Romance,” Foreign Policy, August 23, 2011, <www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/23/assads_chemical_romance>.

20. See Neil MacFarquhar and Eric Schmitt, “Syria Threatens Chemical Attack on Foreign Force,” New York Times, July 23, 2012, <www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-wont-be-used-in-rebellion-syria-says.html>.

21. In 2008, IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards Olli Heinonen convened a special closed meeting of the Board of Directors to discuss material on Iran, and was quoted in the media as saying that some of the evidence the IAEA has with regard to Iran's activities was inconsistent with any application other than research into the development of a nuclear warhead. See Joby Warrick and Colum Lynch, “UN Says Iran May Not Have Come Clean on Nuclear Past,” Washington Post, March 2, 2008, <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/01/AR2008030101722.html>. For much of 2012, Iran has repeatedly denied requests for the IAEA to inspect a facility at Parchin where Iran is strongly suspected of conducting experiments related to detonators for nuclear weapons. See Associated Press, “New image reportedly depicts Iran's military nuclear testing site,” Haaretz, May 13, 2012. See also David Albright and Andrea Stricker, “Time for Action on Iran at IAEA Board of Governors Meeting,” Institute for Science and International Security, ISIS Report, September 11, 2012.

22. For Iran's tactical use of the negotiations with the EU-3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States) over its nuclear program as a means of playing for time see Emily B. Landau, Decade of Diplomacy: Negotiations with Iran and North Korea and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation, INSS Memorandum No. 115, March 2012, pp. 53–58.