Treaty Review Research Articles

NPT Review Conference 2010: Issues and Prospects

This article lists the major issues before the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference and goes into the politics behind them. It concludes that as long as the treaty remains iniquitous, it will not be able to prevent nuclear proliferation. The forthcoming nuclear summit in April 2010 provides an opportunity for all countries to work towards a nuclear weapons convention, which outlaws nuclear weapons and promotes genuine nuclear disarmament.

The puzzle of trusting relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

A successful outcome of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference is widely seen as vital if the NPT is to continue to play an important role in preventing nuclear proliferation. Focusing on the concept of trust, this article offers a novel perspective on the treaty and its future prospects. Too often dismissed as impossible or dangerous in international politics, trust has received little attention from both academics and practitioners. This article challenges this predominant view by making a case that the NPT establishes and embodies a series of trusting relationships between states. Trusting relationships are analysed as a way in which states relate to each other, taking into account both interests as well as promises. It does not make the case that once such relationships are established they will remain constant, but rather that trusting relationships are dynamic. They can be strengthened or weakened depending on the choices of actors. The article shows how trusting relationships have underpinned the NPT from its beginning and charts their evolution by reference to three key sets of relationships. These are, first, the relationships between the recognized nuclear weapon powers and the non-nuclear weapon states; second, those among the recognized nuclear weapon states; and third, those between the NPT signatories and those states remaining outside of the treaty. For each set of relationships the problems and issues that have eroded trust are outlined and the steps that might lead to the overcoming of these strains and the strengthening of the trusting relationships are discussed. By understanding the NPT through the prism of trust, the article sheds new light on both the achievements of the treaty as well as its potential fragility. At the same time, such an analysis opens up the directions of policy crucial to strengthening the treaty at the Review Conference and beyond.

SOUTH KOREA AND SPENT FUEL REPROCESSING

As the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference draws closer, how the nuclear community handles South Korea's desire for reprocessing could become the definitive case study. America's civil nuclear arrangement with the UAE has been mooted as the way forward, but many NPT signatories feel that a double standard is at work.

METODE REASURANSI QUOTA SHARE TREATY DITINJAU DARI HUKUM PERJANJIAN

AbstrakThis essay discusses the methods of quota share reinsurance treaty review ofthe applicable treaty law in indonesia. Writing this essay aims to find outlegal protection for client (Insured) when an insurance company (insurer) ismaking a reinsurance agreement with the company by using the methods ofquota share treaty, subject to sanctions such as Feezing efforts by theregulator and the responsibility for the insurance company (insurer) inviolation of the clause "claim cooperation clause" which are listed in thereinsurance agreement with the method of quota share treaty in handlingclaims. This research is using the literature research and field research.Results of this study suggest that the government create more regulations tohandling claims and required a special institution that can protect the rightsof customers in the consumer services in the areas of insurance

Treze passos para o juízo final: a nova era do desarmamento nuclear dos Estados Unidos e da Rússia

Este artigo procura explicar por que os líderes dos EUA e da Rússia não implementaram total e efetivamente o plano de ação de treze pontos práticos para o desarmamento nuclear, estabelecido na Conferência de Revisão do Tratado de Não-Proliferação Nuclear em 2000. As decisões relacionadas aos treze pontos, tomadas pelos membros dos Executivos das duas maiores potências nucleares, são vistas como resultado da conciliação de imperativos internos e externos por esses indivíduos, que enfrentam oportunidades e dilemas estratégicos distintos simultaneamente nos âmbitos doméstico e internacional. São consideradas as escolhas políticas de membros dos Executivos nacionais e estrangeiros, Legislativos e principais grupos de interesse desses países, bem como a distribuição de poder sobre a formulação da decisão nacional, estabelecida pelas instituições políticas domésticas. As hipóteses apontam que os membros dos Executivos desses países - apoiados por grande parte dos membros dos Legislativos e dos principais grupos de interesse envolvidos, como as Forças Armadas - procuraram garantir autonomia para definir a estrutura e a composição de forças estratégicas e táticas, modernizar arsenais atômicos e operar uma força capaz de lidar com contingências que envolvam não apenas potências nucleares tradicionais, mas principalmente novos Estados detentores de armas de destruição em massa e organizações terroristas.

'Treaties Submitted to the United States Senate: Legislative History 1989-2004' - Book Review

Book review of Treaties Submitted to the United States Senate: Legislative History 1989-2004.

Taking a Stand Against Nuclear Proliferation: The Pediatrician's Role

Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to the health of children. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which for almost 40 years has limited the spread of nuclear weapons, is in danger of unraveling. At the 2000 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, 180 countries, including the United States, agreed on 13 practical steps to implement Article VI of the treaty, which calls for nuclear disarmament. However, the United States has acted in contravention of several of those disarmament steps, with announced plans to develop new nuclear weapons and to maintain a large nuclear arsenal for decades to come. Pediatricians, working individually and through organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, can educate the public and elected officials regarding the devastating and irremediable effects of nuclear weapons on children and the need for policies that comply with and strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, rather than undermining it. For the children of the world, our goal must be a nuclear weapons convention (similar to the chemical and biological weapons conventions) that would prohibit these weapons globally.

Trading for Security: Military Alliances and Economic Agreements*

The authors appraise a well-known argument connecting economics and security in international relations: military allies are likely to trade more with one another than non-allies. A review of alliance treaties and diplomatic history suggests that, under certain conditions, states may tie together alliance agreements and economic agreements. When states explicitly link alliance agreements with economic cooperation, one would expect to see increased economic exchange coinciding with coordinated security policies. This article evaluates whether the linking of economic and security agreements accounts for a positive relationship between alliances and trade among European states before World War II and produces evidence in support of this argument. Trade among allies who have specified economic cooperation in their alliance agreements is higher than trade among non-allied states and higher than trade among allies who have not promised economic cooperation. In contrast, trade among allies without specific economic provisions in their treaties is statistically no different from trade among non-allies. Thus, the positive empirical relationship between alliances and trade that the authors find in pre-WWII Europe is a result of only a specific subset of all military alliances, namely, those treaties that stipulate economic cooperation between the allies. This study advances our understanding of the alliance–trade relationship by focusing attention on the joint negotiation of cooperation in different issue-areas.

Nuclear weapons, international security and the NPT

In the aftermath of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in May this year, Professor Michael Wesley (2005) and Associate Professor Marianne Hanson (2005) have offered us two different views of the NPT, its effectiveness and its likely future. This debate is an important one, because at its heart lies a disagreement about the place of nuclear weapons in global security. For Wesley, the NPT is already ‘on life support’: it’s unfair, ineffective and dangerous. Moreover, it fails to provide us with the instruments we need to ‘stabilise the process of proliferation’. Wesley proposes scrapping the NPT and designing a new regime which would accept the inevitability of further proliferation but attempt to modify the ‘conditions’ under which such proliferation occurs. On the other side of the debate, Hanson tells us that the NPT*/despite a number of specific weaknesses*/remains the principal pillar in humankind’s normative rejection of nuclear weapons. In this view, blame for the current poisonous atmosphere in the non-proliferation regime (and more broadly across the global security environment) should be assigned elsewhere, principally to American policy and the centrality of nuclear weapons in US strategic doctrine. Scrapping the treaty, Hanson argues, would merely invite instability and danger, since the world cannot afford a greater number of nuclear weapon states.Does the NPT harm international security? Not much. But it probably just does less good than people are inclined to think. Nuclear weapons don’t dance to normative tunes. And arms control can’t carry the full weight of strategic relationships, particularly during a time of transformative change. The NPT is capable of bearing small burdens but not the large burden of reordering the world. Most lacking in the non-proliferation arena is political will, in particular the will to accept the risks and costs of muscular enforcement. In the future, wars will probably have to be fought to ensure that some actors do not acquire nuclear arsenals.© 2005 Australian Institute of International Affairs

Lessons from the unsuccessful 2005 nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is probably the most important treaty for the control of nuclear weapons. A Review Conference was held in May 2005 but the member states failed to agree on any decisions or recommendations. Possible causes for this failure reside in the unsupportive geopolitical climate surrounding the conference, design limitations of the Treaty, and the obstructionist actions of particular states. However, valuable contributions were made at the conference by some states and by civil society representatives. Fortunately there are still many ways for states and civil society to make future conferences more successful in eliminating the threat to human security from nuclear weapons.

U. S. Approach to the Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference; Concerns About Korean and Iranian Nuclear Programs

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Antinuclear groups push to keep treaty review in the air

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at critical point, observers say.

2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference

The 2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that was recently held in New York may have closed with a consensus on an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons in accordance with Article VI of the NPT of 1968, but it did not discuss how this would be achieved. Ryukichi Imai, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), Tokyo, argues in this article that despite the diplomatic success of the 2000 Review Conference, the results are in reality less satisfactory: the United States and Russia continue to conduct their business with a lack of transparency; there was no discussion of the current dangers of proliferation; and no agenda for the future was set, allowing the nuclear threat to remain, particularly in North East Asia.

2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference

The 2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that was recently held in New York may have closed with a consensus on an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons in accordance with Article VI of the NPT of 1968, but it did not discuss how this would be achieved. Ryukichi Imai, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), Tokyo, argues in this article that despite the diplomatic success of the 2000 Review Conference, the results are in reality less satisfactory: the United States and Russia continue to conduct their business with a lack of transparency; there was no discussion of the current dangers of proliferation; and no agenda for the future was set, allowing the nuclear threat to remain, particularly in North East Asia.

Towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World?

NEW ZEALAND'S VOCAL SUPPORT for global nuclear disarmament predates the end of the cold war by several years. During the 1980s, for example, anti-nuclear sentiment played a prominent role both in New Zealand's domestic politics and in shaping the country's foreign and defence policies. More recently, New Zealand has been an enthusiastic member of the New Agenda Coalition, a small group of member states of the United Nations dedicated to raising the profile of nuclear disarmament.(1) Wellington's anti-nuclear credentials were confirmed at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York, 24 April-19 May 2000, when it was appointed to chair a subsidiary body responsible for securing agreement on the disarmament obligations of the major nuclear weapons states.With the help of that subsidiary body, the 2000 review conference elicited a major and 'unequivocal commitment' from the five nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China) to accomplish complete nuclear disarmament. At the very least this will provide a standard against which the five can be held to account in future negotiations at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) and elsewhere. At the conclusion of the conference, New Zealand's minister for disarmament and arms control, Matt Robson, observed that 'there is a new mood of optimism'(2) about the future prospects for disarmament.However, the pledge made by the nuclear weapons states was not accompanied by an explicit timetable for elimination, and it is hard to deny that the possession of nuclear weapons remains an attractive proposition for a number of states. Moreover, bargaining between the United States and Russia over Washington's plans for a limited national missile defence (NMD) system at times overshadowed the work of the NPT conference. The strains placed on the arms control and disarmament agenda by this issue alone are enough to raise questions about the future prospects for nuclear disarmament and to make the task confronting New Zealand and other pro-disarmament countries all the more daunting.This article assesses the opportunities and challenges facing New Zealand as a strong advocate of a nuclear weapons free world. An overview of the place of nuclear weapons issues in New Zealand's approach to world affairs during the last decade of the cold war and the first decade of the post-cold war era sets the stage. In accounting for New Zealand's commitment to nuclear disarmament reference will be made to both domestic and international political influences and the relationship between the two. This in turn is used to analyse the prospects in the early twenty-first century for significant global movement towards the abolitionist goals held by New Zealand.NEW ZEALAND'S NUCLEAR-FREE POLICIES & THE 'SECOND' COLD WARIn the early 1970s East-West relations prospered under detente, and the first of two treaties arising out of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) was signed. By the end of the same decade political and military relations between Moscow and Washington had taken a turn for the worse. During this 'second' cold war, ushered in by the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 American presidential elections, international concerns about the risks of a superpower nuclear confrontation were once more on the rise.(3)The decision by member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to install intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe in response to a perceived threat from such Soviet systems as SS20 missiles was particularly significant. This attempt to bring peace through nuclear strength helped stimulate a wave of anti-nuclear protests in the northern hemisphere that included the Greenham Common demonstrations in England(4) and the nuclear freeze campaign in the United States.(5)Such international concern was a further stimulus to existing anti-nuclear sentiment in New Zealand, which had for several years focused on French nuclear testing in the South Pacific(6) and on port visits by American naval vessels that were nuclear powered and/or seen as capable of carrying nuclear weapons. …

South Asia and the Politics of Non-Proliferation

National power is inherent in the system of independent states, and military force is inherent in national power. In influencing the rise, fall, and hierarchy of states, force is the decisive element in the structure of any given international system. Thus, military power will remain a prominent feature of international relations. There is a very real risk, however, that the pursuit of national security through a strategy of self-help will produce regional and international insecurity as a result of a process of competitive rivalry and the build-up of arms. Thus we have a paradox: international realities compel us to look to our own forces or risk becoming the victims of others'; but the unchecked proliferation of arms and weapons systems will degrade everyone's security.Arms control refers to efforts to constrain reciprocal threats from unchecked build-up of arms through formally negotiated agreements or tacit understandings on restraints on numbers, types, and deployments of weapon systems. Proliferation refers to the dispersion of weapons, capabilities, and technologies. Weapons can be sought for one or more of six reasons: deterring enemy attack, defending against attack, compelling the enemy to one's preferred course of action, leveraging adversary and great-power behaviour, status, and emulation. Specific causes of proliferation are many, diverse, and usually rooted in a local security complex. On the supply side, a major emerging proliferation challenge is the globalization of the arms industry, the flooding of the global arms market, and a resulting loosening of supplier constraints.The nuclear arms control agenda has three inter-linked components: non-proliferation, arms control (for example de-alerting and de-mating), and disarmament (the partial, limited, or total abolition of nuclear weapons). Some states focus solely on disarmament as the most urgent task in order to camouflage their own proliferation agendas. Others focus on non-proliferation as the immediate and most urgent priority in order to evade their responsibility for disarmament within a foreseeable time frame. Both invoke arms control as a refuge from calls for non-proliferation and disarmament and to obfuscate rather than clarify, let alone advance, the agenda. Both also seek to appropriate the mantle of the 'international community' to their respective though competing points of view. In fact, the closest and most substantial articulation of the point of view of the international community can be found in the 'Principles and Objectives for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament' adopted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review and Extension Conference in 1995.The barriers against the acquisition, spread, and use of nuclear weapons include legal conventions, norms, and the fact that they have not been used in over fifty years. Safeguards and export restraints do not amount to non-proliferation, which is essentially a political goal requiring political judgment on the part of a given government that, on balance, nuclear weapons do not serve its interests. Before the key problem states can be persuaded to move to a non-nuclear weapons status they have to be convinced that the balance of advantage lies with forswearing the nuclear option. This necessarily includes not just the national security calculus, but also the internal political constellation. In this article, I hold in abeyance strategic arguments in favour of or against the overt nuclear weapons status of India and Pakistan(f.1) and focus instead on the politics of the debate. For in the decision to weaponize, politics was always in command.OF NORMS AND REGIMESNorms, not deterrence, have anathematized the use of nuclear weapons as unacceptable, immoral, and possibly illegal under any circumstance - even for states that have assimilated them into military arsenals and integrated them into military commands and doctrines. There have been many occasions since 1945 when nuclear weapons could have been used without fear of retaliation but were not, even at the price of defeat on the battlefield (the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, for example). …

States Parties to CFE Agree to Adapt Treaty to New Security Landscape

The following document was adopted by the States Parties to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe on the scope and parameters of the process commissioned in paragraph 19 of the Final Document of the First CFE Treaty Review Conference. The meeting of the States Parties to the CFE Treaty took place in Lisbon, Portugal.

On Expelling Nigeria from the Commonwealth

SummaryIn November 1995, the execution of Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth and the possibility of its expuhion from membership. The absence of an expulsion clause for the Commonwealth led to the question whether the association has the inherent power to expel and whether any such power of expuhion is limited by international law. A review of treaties, customary international law, and commentary suggests that the Commonwealth can expel a member by use of implied power. Other factors, however, militate against Nigeria’s expuhion. Once expelled, Nigeria would be free to behave as it saw fit. Expuhion could aho divide the Commonwealth and make other members think twice about their membership obligations. The author concludes that expuhion from the Commonwealth must be a last resort.

Une victoire éclatante et fragile

A Brilliant and Brittle Success, by Thérèse Delpech Against ail expedations, the NPT Conference has led to its indefinite extension without resort to voting. This unhoped-for success clearly reinforces the NPT, and attests to the breadth of international consensus on stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons after the cold war. This result owes much to the intense diplomatie activity of numerous countries, he they endowed with nuclear weapons (as are the Unites States, Great Britain or France), or not (such as Germany, Japan, Australia or Canada). Yet other decisive factors in this consensus were the South African proposai to reinforce the Treaty review mechanism, as well as the remarkable performance of ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka. However, the Conference's success should not obscure the importance of issues left in abeyance. These include threshold countries (India, Pakistan, and Israël), whose security concerns wiïl need to be addressed, as will the problem of non-compliance with Treaty obligations (which raises the central question of the role of the UN Security Council), and the manner in which the five nuclear weapon states, which have special duties in matters of world peace and security will ful-fill these tasks in the future.

La citoyenneté européenne et les femmes

European citizenship and women The contribution of Eliane Vogel-Polsky on "European citizenship and women" is based on the conviction that European citizenship will be the decisive test for the political future of women in the European Union. The establishment of the Union could be a real incentive to progress if it meets the requirements of active and responsible citizenship exercised equally by all citizens, men and women. On the basis of the concept of European citizenship incorporated in the Treaty of the Union, the author shows how a solution can be found to the confiscation of political power by men (a situation observed in all Member States and in the decision-making practice in the Community) and to the systematic under-representation of women in political, economic, social and cultural decision-making spheres, by pursuing the objective of protecting the rights and interests that European citizens derive from the Treaty. The institutionalization of democratic parity in political structures and the decision-making process is an urgent democratic responsibility which must be clearly tackled in 1996 at the time of the review of the Treaty.