Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction: Prospects for Effective International Verification
By Berhanykun Andemicael and John Mathiason, Palgrave Macmillan, June 2005, 224 pp.
In this extensive survey, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and UN officials Berhanykun Andemicael and John Mathiason explore a compelling question: Can verification of international nonproliferation agreements actually work? Although their answer is an emphatic “yes,” they are careful to address the many limitations of existing verification bodies, such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the IAEA, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. These limits include the failure to win universal membership and budgetary and personnel problems. The authors lay out a plan that can be followed to tackle these issues.
The Search for Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Inspection, Verification and Non-Proliferation
By Graham S. Pearson, Palgrave Macmillan, October 2005, 352 pp.
Graham S. Pearson examines the international community’s efforts to investigate Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons and efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Pearson focuses on how inspection and verification measures evolved over a 10-year period in Iraq, basing most of his findings on reports produced by the various teams of U.S. and UN inspectors who were in Iraq between 1991 and 2003. Given the success of these efforts, he argues that the latest group of UN inspectors, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee (UNMOVIC), should be preserved and given a mandate beyond Iraq. He also provides a framework for strengthening the regimes for the inspection, verification, and nonproliferation of chemical and biological weapons.
Beyond Hiroshima
By Douglas Roche, Novalis, October 2005, 280 pp.
The recent failure of the 2005 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference to agree on any substantive nuclear nonproliferation or disarmament item revealed an increasing divide between states that possess nuclear weapons and states that do not. Douglas Roche, Canada’s former ambassador for disarmament, addresses this divide and offers some suggestions as to how concerns of nuclear-weapon states can be met while eventually achieving nuclear disarmament. He supports following the example set by the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention: a nuclear weapons convention would prohibit the production and use of all nuclear weapons in all circumstances. Roche acknowledges, however, that this is not possible without addressing the key legal, political, and technical issues that are of particular concern to nuclear-weapon states. He argues that an incremental-comprehensive approach to disarmament would enable the world both to avoid a future Hiroshima and at the same time achieve increased security against terrorists and breakout states.
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