Compliance issues and the future of arms control

ABSTRACT

Arms control has increasingly become threatened by compliance issues. Viewed individually, these issues might be expected and should not be cause for alarm. However, the list of agreements with unresolved issues has grown too long to ignore. The US State Department’s 2021 arms-control-compliance report calls attention to this problem. Recent casualties include the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, and the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. Although the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has been renewed, even the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is under stress because of the view, shared by many states, that there has been a failure to implement its key nuclear-disarmament obligation. Many are advocating a move to less formal arms-control arrangements that are politically but not legally binding. However, these bring their own set of compliance problems—in particular, lack of effective verification regimes and dispute-resolution mechanisms. The current approach to compliance issues is failing. These issues need more urgent, high-level attention if the world is to avoid this threat to international peace and security.

KEYWORDS:

• arms control
• compliance
• verification
• Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty
• New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Notes

1 US Department of State, “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” April 2021, <https://www.state.gov/2021-adherence-to-and-compliance-with-arms-control-nonproliferation-and-disarmament-agreements-and-commitments/>.

2 Edward Ifft, “Dealing with the INF Crisis,” European Leadership Network Commentary, March 13, 2020, <https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/dealing-with-the-inf-crisis/>; “The Demise of the INF Treaty,” Strategic Comments, Vol. 24, No. 9 (2018), <https://doi.org/10.1080/13567888.2018.1557842>; Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Statement from Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn on US Withdrawal from the INF Treaty,” October 22, 2018, <www.nti.org/newsroom/news/statement-ernest-j-moniz-and-sam-nunn-us-withdrawal-inf-treaty/>.

3 Neil MacFarquhar, “Russia Shows off New Cruise Missile and Says It Abides by Landmark Treaty,” New York Times, January 23, 2019, <www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/world/europe/russia-inf-cruise-missile.html>.

4 Shannon Bugos, “U.S. Completes INF Treaty Withdrawal,” Arms Control Today, September 2019, pp. 24–25, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-inf-treaty-withdrawal>.

5 For information on Vienna Document 2011, see <www.osce.org/fsc/86597>.

6 “The Future of U.S.–Russia Arms Control” (panel discussion with Anatoly Antonov and Jim Miller), Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, Washington, DC, March 11, 2019, <https://s3.amazonaws.com/ceipfiles/pdf/NPC19-FutureUSRussiaArmsControl.pdf>.

7 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “O summarnykh kolichestvakh strategicheskikh nastupatel'nykh vooruzheniy Rossii i SSHA v sootvetstvii s Dogovorom o SNV” [On the total number of strategic offensive arms of Russia and the United States in accordance with the START Treaty], May 24, 2021, <www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/international_safety/-/asset_publisher/FXwQn3fmpBvm/content/id/4741276>.

8 The 2021 State Department compliance report states that Russia is in compliance with the terms of New START. For more detail, see US Department of State, “New START Treaty Annual Implementation Report,” <www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Annual-New-START-Report.pdf> (the 2021 version of the “Condition (a)(10) report”).

9 Jill Hruby, “Russia’s New Nuclear Weapon Delivery Systems: An Open-Source Technical Review,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, November 2019, <https://media.nti.org/documents/NTI-Hruby_FINAL.PDF>.

10 For a first-hand account of the New START negotiations, see Rose Gottemoeller, Negotiating the New START Treaty (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2021).

11 New START, April 8, 2010, Article V; see also US Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, “Article-by-Article Analysis of New START Treaty Documents,” May 5, 2010, <https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/141829.htm>.

12 See Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23, Nos. 3–4, for a series of articles on the CTBT.

13 Edward Ifft, “An Assessment of Obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),” European Leadership Network, June 2, 2020, <https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/an-assessment-of-obligations-under-the-comprehensive-nuclear-test-ban-treaty-ctbt/>; see also Edward Ifft, “The New Threat to the Test-Ban Treaty,” Survival, Vol. 62, No. 5 (2020), pp. 55–64. (Note that the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty is not mentioned here, since it does not primarily bear on issues related to underground nuclear testing.)

14 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, May 23, 1969, Article 18.

15 Daryl G. Kimball, “U.S. Questions Russian CTBT Compliance,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2019, pp. 20–22, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-07/news/us-questions-russian-ctbt-compliance>.

16 US Department of State, “Adherence,” p. 41. Similar concerns are expressed regarding Chinese activities. The report further notes that, in 2020, Russian nuclear testing may have been curtailed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

17 Frank N. von Hippel, “Transparency for Nuclear Weapons Test Sites,” Physics Today, May 2020, pp. 10–11, <https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4463>.

18 A brief summary can be found in Arms Control Association, “Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and the Adapted CFE Treaty at a Glance,” last reviewed August 2017, <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheet/cfe>.

19 US Department of State, “Condition (5)(C) Report: Compliance with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe,” January 2021, <www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Condition-5-c-Report.docx.pdf>.

20 Paul F. Walker, “Three Decades of Chemical Weapons Elimination: More Challenges Ahead,” Arms Control Today, December 2019, pp. 6–13, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-12/features/three-decades-chemical-weapons-elimination-more-challenges-ahead>.

21 Alicia Sanders-Zakre, “Russia Blocks Consensus at CWC Conference,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2019, pp. 32–33, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-01/news/russia-blocks-consensus-cwc-conference>; Joby Warrick, “Watchdog Links Syria to Deadly 2017 Nerve-Agent Attacks,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, <www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/watchdog-links-syria-to-deadly-2017-nerve-agent-attacks/2020/04/08/06958be6-79b9-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html>.

22 US Department of State, “Adherence,” p. 53.

23 Shannon Bugos, “US Will Not Rejoin Open Skies Treaty,” Arms Control Today, June 2021, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-06/news-briefs/us-not-rejoin-open-skies-treaty>; see also George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, and Sam Nunn, “Open Skies Help Keep the Peace with Russia,” Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2019, <www.wsj.com/articles/open-skies-help-keep-the-peace-with-russia-11571599202>.

24 Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004).

25 For CEND, see US Department of State, “Key Topics—Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation,” n.d., <www.state.gov/key-topics-bureau-of-international-security-and-nonproliferation/#cend>.

26 The spring 2020 issue of the journal Daedalus contains a series of articles on the future of arms control. Several of these articles are of particular interest for the issues discussed here.

27 US Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review,” February 2018, p. 74, <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF>.

28 US Department of State, “Adherence,” p. 12.