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Editor's Note
Our feature articles this month all touch in one way or another on the intersection of technology with arms control.
Troubled by the possibility that terrorists might acquire and use widely available shoulder-fired missiles to down airplanes, the U.S. government has been looking at ways to counter such destructive attacks. The most eye-catching possibilities have been multibillion-dollar high-tech devices, including unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with laser jammers and ground-based systems that use microwaves and high-energy lasers to deflect or destroy missiles. But as Matt Schroeder points out in this month’s cover story, small, low-tech Department of Defense and Department of State security and destruction programs may be far more useful ways to reduce the threat.
In another feature article, Kyle M. Ballard takes a critical look at a technology that has been used against terrorists: riot control agents, which are chemical agents intended to incapacitate but not kill targets, to disperse crowds, or to deny access to protected areas. Ballard writes that eventually the Chemical Weapons Convention needs to ban these arms. In the meantime, he recommends that states put far more explicit restrictions on their use.
Jack Boureston and Jennifer Lacey probe a unique way in which, by denying technology, states could enforce arms control agreements. They argue that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s recent actions to limit technical cooperation with Iran provide a useful precedent in dealing with countries’ failures to comply with their safeguards agreements.
Our news section this month includes extensive coverage of the recently concluded negotiations on a U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement, growing tension between Russia and the United States over issues such as missile defense and conventional arms, ACT’s unique analysis of the U.N. register on conventional arms, and the progress made in halting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
In our “Looking Back” section, Paul F. Walker examines the Global Partnership, a program launched in 2002 by the world’s wealthiest countries and Russia aimed at securing or destroying much of that country’s Cold War stockpile of nuclear, chemical, and biological arms, as well as related delivery systems. Halfway into a ten-year commitment, Walker says the program has been a clear success but states’ commitments should be ramped up, not scaled back.