Arms Control

Abstract

During the Cold War, most arms control initiatives were conducted on a bilateral basis between the United States and Soviet Union, and thus are beyond the scope of this book. The major exceptions to this were efforts to control or ban chemical and biological weapons, which continued into the 1990s, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970, which came up for renewal in 1995. Early in the 1990s, the United States and European states compromised over the details of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). There were few major disagreements between Europeans and Americans with respect to extending the NPT. The Mine Ban Treaty (MBT), negotiated at Oslo and signed in Ottawa in December 1997, was different. Europeans and Americans were unable to agree on the details, and the treaty entered into force without U.S. participation. Similar disagreements persisted in two later cases, the Small Arms Program of Action and a verification protocol for the Biological (Bacteriological) and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). In both of these, the United States prevented agreements from being reached. Over this time period, then, we see a sharp decrease in the level of transatlantic cooperation.