Arms Control
Functions of the UN: Maintenance of International Peace and Security Arms Control
Introduction to Arms Control
The UN charter authorizes the Security Council to plan for worldwide disarmament and arms control. To help achieve those goals, the UN has sponsored arms control negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, for decades. The General Assembly also held a special session on disarmament in June 1982. None of these UN activities have had much direct effect on actual arsenals.
Instead, during the Cold War, the most important arms control agreements were reached by countries negotiating directly with each other, particularly by the United States and Soviet Union. At that time, arms control was dominated by the nuclear arms race between the superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union reached several important agreements, and then other countries signed on. Examples include the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty, and the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In some instances the General Assembly ratified these agreements. But in none of these cases did the UN play a major role.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, UN agencies assumed a lead role in enforcing a Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. IAEA inspectors uncovered and dismantled Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, and other UN weapons inspectors monitored the destruction of stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. However, in 1998 Iraq announced it would no longer cooperate with the UN. In 2002, in response to renewed U.S. efforts to enforce Iraqi disarmament, the Security Council approved a resolution warning of “serious consequences” if Iraq did not disarm. Weapons inspections resumed, but U.S. authorities charged that Iraq was not cooperating fully and was hiding banned weapons. In March 2003, after diplomatic talks broke down, the United States led a military assault on Iraq. However, U.S. forces failed to find any evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and subsequent investigations revealed that much of the prewar intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs was flawed. See U.S.-Iraq War.” (1)
Arms Control
Embracing mainstream international law, this section on arms control explores the context, history and effect of the area of the law covered here.
Resources
Further Reading
- The entry “arms control, limitation” in the Parry and Grant Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law (currently, the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law, 2009), Oxford University Press
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Arms Control in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
Guide to Arms Control
Hierarchical Display of Arms control
International Relations > International security > International security
International Relations > Defence > Arms policy
Arms control
Concept of Arms control
See the dictionary definition of Arms control.
Characteristics of Arms control
[rtbs name=”xxx-xxx”]
Resources
Translation of Arms control
- Spanish: Control de armamentos
- French: Contrôle des armements
- German: Rüstungskontrolle
- Italian: Controllo degli armamenti
- Portuguese: Controlo de armamento
- Polish: Kontrola zbrojeń
Thesaurus of Arms control
International Relations > International security > International security > Arms control
International Relations > Defence > Arms policy > Arms control
Leave a Reply