Nuclear Disarmament after New START
The purpose of this paper is to examine and propose concrete nuclear disarmament measures which should be taken following the entry into force of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) on February 5, 2011. This treaty is the first concrete outcome from the famous Prague address by President Barak Obama in April 2009 and there still remain many items which should be pursued and implemented. I will take up the issues of the further reduction of strategic nuclear weapons, the reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons, the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), and the consideration of a nuclear weapons convention. I will examine the circumstances surrounding each issue, and make proposals for their realization.
A Critique of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 8 July 1996 : The Nuclear Weapons Case
A CRITIQUE OF THE ADVISORY OPINION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THE LEGALITY OF THE THREAT OR USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 8 JULY 1996. THE "NUCLEAR WEAPONS CASE". The General Assembly of the United Nations, by Resolution, requested the International Court of Justice to give its Advisory Opinion on the following legal question: Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance permitted under intemational/aw? The question raises a number of legal, political and moral issues which go to the heart of the development of public international Iuw, and of relations between States in the United Nations era. Central to all such issues is the tension, both legal and political, which exists between the five declared nuclear weapon States (the Pemmnent Members of the United Nations Security Council) and most non-nuclear weapon States. Essentially, the latter take the view that the threat or use of nuclear weapons should be illegal in all circumstances, largely in terms of the humanitarian laws of armed conflict. The former insist that, in the absence of specific prohibitior::, nuclear weapons are not illegal in all foreseeable circumstances. This dichotomy has been institutionalised in the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which solidified the discriminatory treatment accorded to nuclear weapons by the nuclear weapon States during the Cold War practice of deterrence. The nub of the Court's findings was that it was unable to conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in extreme circumstances of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake. I
Leadership, the United Nations, and the New World Order
The concept of international leadership has become almost central to discourse about United States foreign policy, and about the effectiveness of the United Nations in the New World Order. The concept was used in 1990 and 1991 by some politicians, journalists, and academics to denote an activity that promotes action, a role that promulgates vision and purpose, and a force that maintains stability in the post-Cold War international system. Then-US President George Bush stated before Congress on 11 September 1990 that, “we are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders”1, and exclaimed in January 1991 that, “we are the only nation on this earth that could assemble the forces of peace. This is the burden of leadership.”2 The rhetoric of the administration during its attempt to build the Coalition against Iraq seemed to suggest that the bipolar stability of the Cold War would be replaced by a great-power consensus supported by American leadership. During the Gulf War, The Guardian sounded a typical comment, that: “The Allies embarked, under dominant American leadership, upon the first testing of a New World Order, with the United Nations at its heart”.3 Advocates of the “renewalists” thesis on US hegemony, such as Joseph Nye, argued that the US, with its unique combination of military and economic power, its political culture, and experience in realpolitik, was Bound to Lead.4