Weapons of mass destruction

There is a need for global disarmament and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, including by all five permanent members of the Security Council and any other countries that possess them. Disarmament must be achieved through diplomatic negotiations, not through armed aggression, be it unilateral or multilateral.

The need for global disarmament has long been recognised by the international community. Under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, the US and the four other acknowledged nuclear powers made a binding commitment to nuclear disarmament. In exchange, the non-nuclear weapons states agreed that they would not seek nuclear weapons capability. Thus far, the US and other nuclear powers have been adamant in insisting that non-nuclear weapons states live up to their commitments, but silent in the face of criticism about their own failures.

Thirty years on, at the NPT review conference in the year 2000, the US and the other signatories agreed to end nuclear weapons testing by enacting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as the first of thirteen specific disarmament commitments. Shortly thereafter, the US Senate voted against ratification of the CTBT. In 2002, the US government declared that it no longer agreed with the commitments made in 2000, particularly the global ban on nuclear testing, putting the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in jeopardy.

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a treaty aimed at eradicating another weapon of mass destruction, entered into force in 1975. Since its inception, the BWC has been ineffective at ensuring compliance with its terms, largely because of its lack of a verification scheme. Five years of work to develop effective verification measures were torpedoed by the US government in June 2001. The Bush Administration refused at the last minute to agree to international inspections, citing concerns about US national security and the need to protect US corporations' industrial secrets. This decision outraged the international community, and is particularly hypocritical in light of the current demands on Iraq.

The Bush administration has also reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, announcing in December 2001 that it was withdrawing from the Treaty in order to pursue its Star Wars missile defense programme.

Funding the safeguarding and destruction of nuclear weapons and materials in the countries of the former Soviet Union by the United States is crucial if the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to be curtailed. Yet one of the first acts of the Bush Administration when it came into power in 2001 was to slash funding for these programmes by almost 21 percent while increasing nuclear weapons funding by almost five percent.

The story continues up to the present. As recently as 5 February 2003, a key US Senate committee recommended ratification of the Bush-inspired US-Russia Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT). The SORT treaty does not require the destruction of a single weapon, representing another failure of the US (and Russia) to abide by disarmament commitments. The SORT treaty provides for cuts only in "deployed" weapons and blatantly fails to meet the NPT test of a multilateral disarmament treaty leading to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Coupled with Bush's planning for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq (or any other possible aggressor), and his plans to build new nuclear weapons, this shows that the US is in material breach of the NPT as well as other international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament treaties. Furthermore, it clearly displays that the Bush Administration presents an imminent threat to global security.

Greenpeace UK briefing: Tackling weapons of mass destruction