The chemical weapons convention : strategic implications for the United States
Abstract : On January 13, 1993, in Paris, 130 countries signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to ban the entire class of Chemical Weapons. Debate continues on the strategic implications of the Convention, as drafted, and whether it is in the U.S. national security interest. This paper explores the historical, moral, and legal aspects of chemical warfare, and the strategic implications of the Convention, including operational, policy, constitutional, and industry impact for the U.S. This paper concludes that, although 'imperfect,' the Convention represents a significant contribution to U.S. security objectives, and serves the national interest.
NGOs as catalysts for international arms control? The ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the United States
The article investigates the role of pro-arms control non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in furthering the domestic ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the United States. The study starts out from the two-level framework for analysing domestic ratification processes of international agreements, and it introduces the concept of audience gains to complement this framework: being the counterpart of audience costs, audience gains denote positive contributions of domestic non-state actors to formal ratification processes. The article distinguishes two complementary pathways for NGOs to generate audience gains, that is, the pathways of ‘mobilising consensus’ and of ‘persuading veto players’. Two in-depth case studies on the ratification of the CWC and the CTBT in the US explore the extent to which pro-agreement NGOs were indeed successful in employing the two pathways. The evidence of the case studies is that NGOs were more influential catalysts of the ratification of the CWC than with respect to the CTBT. The article's findings on the prospects for NGOs to push the domestic ratification of international agreements are expected to be of more general relevance beyond the field of arms control.
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.