Recently, four senior statesmen called for renewed action toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Our cover story this month is an interview with one of them, former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).
Nunn says that, without such action, he has become convinced that the world is headed toward a “nuclear nightmare” because of the potentially cataclysmic mixture of a world with spreading nuclear technologies and terrorists aspiring to acquire and use them. In op-eds in The Wall Street Journal in January 2007 and January 2008, Nunn, along with former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, laid out a series of important near-term disarmament steps.
As Nunn and his partners struggle to rein in nuclear arms, the world will mark the success of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) at the second review conference next month. Since entering into force nearly a decade ago, the chemical weapons ban has led to the destruction of many of these arms. It has also been embraced by the international community; only a dozen states have neither signed nor ratified the treaty.
Nonetheless, as the authors of two of our features note, the CWC’s success is incomplete. Daniel Feakes points out that the holdouts from the treaty now include states, particularly in the Middle East, whose participation is quite important but whose support will be difficult to win. He also notes that ratifying the treaty is one thing, but it is not clear how deep the commitment is to truly implementing it.
Ralf Trapp says that scientific and technological developments threaten to outstrip the ability of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to determine whether states-parties are complying with the treaty. He urges the CWC’s second review conference to take steps to bring it up to date.
In our Looking Back essay this month, John Hart discusses the legacy of old and abandoned chemical arms that still harm countries from Belgium to China. Hart examines the complex political and technological challenges of removing and destroying these arms.
Our news section includes an article by Wade Boese on Russia’s little-noticed decision to end missile testing notifications, an update from Peter Crail on the International Atomic Energy Agency probe into Iran’s nuclear program, a CWC analysis by Oliver Meier, and extensive coverage of the effect of the Bush administration’s fiscal year 2009 budget request on arms control and nonproliferation.