Challenges to Disarmament Regimes: The Case of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

Abstract

A disarmament treaty is an agent of change in the international security environment in its own right. Disarmament requires the total elimination of the weaponry under consideration. At minimum, the agreement could therefore be expected to remove the threat posed by that weaponry from the overall threat equation. Unfortunately, the effect of a disarmament treaty on the external security of a state is not as straightforward: the security bene® ts obtained under the treaty must be evaluated relative to the possible security losses in other domains. The research into disarmament dynamics and their impact on security is constrained by the fact that only four disarmament treaties exist: the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the 1997 Anti-personnel Mines (APM) Treaty. They cover different weapon categories and, because of the compartmentalisation of analysis, few connections between them have ever been made. Furthermore, the four treaties vary in scope, participation and enforceability. The INF Treaty was negotiated between two states, the United States and the USSR, and is applicable only to a wellcircumscribed territory. It calls for veri® cation and on-site inspections, which