Geneva Talks Research Articles

Binärkampfstoffe — Eine neue Variante chemischer Massenvernichtungsmittel

AbstractSince 1954 a new generation of chemical warfare agents, the socalled binary warfare agents as a variant of chemical weapons have been developed, mainly by the US Army. There exist models of binary poisons in plants as well as in animals and also in the civil production of very different chemicals. But in any case the development and stockpiling of this new type of warfare agents is against all the progress made in the Geneva talks on disarmament and the very first results of the Geneva Disarmament Conference. It is also an escalation in the arms race and in the destablization of security esp. in Europe, for which the main stocks of these weapons are planed by the USA. Finally this binary concept is opening the doors for new research and development in the chemical weapons field.

The other negotiations

Outside the center stage held by the Geneva talks, other arms control negotiations are taking place that do not reach the headlines. This column periodically covers such talks.

Disarmament and other options for Western policy—making on chemical warfare*

The increasing prominence of scenarios of non-nuclear war in NATO's defence planning has made the proper status of chemical warfare weapons increasingly difficult to assess. The perplexities largely stem from the relationship between chemical weapons and the nuclear threshold, and what that may mean for overall deterrence. Alone among the NATO members, France and the United States have retained chemical weapons in their arsenals. Both are now poised to modernize and expand their chemical forces. The American administration wishes to proceed with this at once, and has cited undisclosed evidence of increasing Soviet chemical warfare capabilities in justification. It has also argued that modernization and expansion would strengthen the West's negotiating position in the continuing Geneva talks on chemical warfare disarmament. At the end of 1985, the US Congress made its funding of the administration's programme conditional upon a formal expression of support from NATO. In May 1986 NATO defence ministers duly adopted a 'force goal' to this end, but made it clear that, in doing so, they were not assenting to any deployment of the new weapons to Europe. These developments have brought the issue of planning and preparedness for chemical warfare into unprecedented political visibility in Western Europe. Public opinion has not viewed the issue with equanimity. Like the neutron bomb, this subject has great potential for divisiveness. In political terms it is unsurprising, therefore, that a note of genuine conviction can be heard in the voices of West European leaders extolling the virtues of negotiated chemical warfare (CW) disarmament; and West European delegations to the 40-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, where CW has been under discussion since 1968, are now negotiating with an evident will to succeed. Some of the problems confronting CW disarmament are explored in the pages which follow. The starting point is an analysis of the present CW arms control regime1 and of the CW policies that have so far flowed from it.

Use and abuse of Geneva talks

Use and abuse of Geneva talks

Postmortem on INF talks

The first anniversary of the demise of the intermediate- range nuclear forces (INF) arms limitation talks in Geneva is a suitable occasion to reflect on their origin and their failure. For although the question of resuming INF negotiations is still posed, and the United States professes a desire to resume the talks, the prospects for their resurrection is virtually nonexistent. While we may regret the collapse of the talks, we should recognize the fact and consider why they were fated not to succeed.

Afghanistan in 1983: And Still no Solution

The fourth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan occurred December 24, 1983.' The Ghost of Christmas Past gently pricked the world's conscience, a reminder that the first direct Soviet armed intervention since World War II in an independent, nonaligned country remained largely unanswered-except by the Afghan mujahidin (freedom fighters). Some observers thought they saw a light at the end of the tunnel as the indirect Geneva talks,2 monitored by the United Nations, progressed from Geneva I (June 1982), II (April 11-29, 1983), and III (June 12-24, 1983). Nothing substantive came out of the talks, however, and no arrangements have been made for Geneva IV. Only Pakistan and Afghanistan participated in the conference; Iran refused because the Afghan mujahidin were not represented. Also, Pakistan's foreign minister, Sahabzada Mohammad Yaqub Khan, did not talk directly with Afghanistan's foreign minister, Shah Mohammad Dost, for this would imply recognition of the Babrak Karmal regime. The U.N. representative, Diego Cordovez, served as a shuttle between the two parties, and both he and Yaqub Khan kept the Iranian diplomats at the Palais des Nations informed. But all parties concerned, including the USSR, loosely agree that ways should be found to implement the four guidelines substantially accepted by (among others) the U.N. General Assembly, the Organization of

Geneva Talks on the Afghan Problem

Geneva Talks on the Afghan Problem

African Studies Research in Mozambique

The Centro de Estudos Africanos (Centre of African Studies - henceforth CEA) was founded soon after Mozambique's independence in June 1975. It was set up under the directorship of Aquino de Bragança, who was formerly Secretary to the Conference of Nationalist Organisations in the Portuguese Colonies, that linked together all the lusophone liberation movements during the anti-colonial struggle. From its inception the C.E.A. had two high priorities - a committment to collective research and to studies vhich would te relevant to the needs of Mozambique in its attempt to build a socialist society. The latter was not seen simply in narrow nationalistic terms, but was placed firmly within the regional context. Hence, the first major study carried out was on the political economy of Zimbabwe as a background document to the Geneva talks of 1976.

Fate of trade talks rests with congress

The handful of chemical industry trade experts that function both inside and outside the government's trade advisory process have their work cut out for them. Words like crucial and vital are being bandied about to describe the next few months as far as the U.S. trade policy is concerned. Many of these trade experts will be spending as much time in Washington, D.C., as they will in their home offices. Since Jan. 4, many of them have been doing just that. It was then that President Carter formally notified Congress of his intent to enter into a package of multilateral trade agreements. His notice signaled the start of what undoubtedly will be a hectic 90 days (perhaps more) for everyone connected with trade policy. For the chemical industry's own experts, it will mean continuing to monitor some important unfinished business at the trade talks in Geneva. It will mean being alert to the legislation that ...

United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki

The signing in Helsinki of the agreement on security and cooperation in Europe has led to bitter criticism of President Ford and of the policy under which the United States drifted into recognizing Soviet acquisition of 114,000 square miles of Finnish, Polish, German, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territory, apparently sanctified as well Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and recognized the “permanent” division of Europe. In return for endorsing these Soviet conquests, the Western states received some vague promises that the Soviet Union and the East European states would take a “positive and humanitarian attitude” towards applications from their citizens to rejoin their families in the West, would “facilitate the improvement of the dissemination” of publications from other countries, would provide three weeks' notice of large military maneuvers within 156 miles of frontiers, and assured that every European state would be free from “external influence.” All these phrases seem small recompense for such great concessions and from two years of negotiation by 492 diplomats, especially when hope in Western Europe in particular had been high for an end to jamming, censorship, and control over travel. Critics noted in particular that the formal summit agreement awarded the Soviet Union prizes it had sought since 1954, while the parallel discussion of reducing military forces in Eastern and Western Europe, in which the Soviet Union and its associates maintain immense superiorities, has long been stalled. Indeed, now that the West no longer has the lever of the Geneva talks, it has little pressure to persuade the Soviet Union to discuss mutual balanced force reductions. Many now fear that the Soviet Union will press instead for a collective security agreement, which would have no meaning, but which would totally demolish NATO, while leaving the Soviets on the commanding military heights in Eastern Europe.

Chemical Warfare: Binary Plan, Geneva Talks on a Collision Course

Chemical Warfare: Binary Plan, Geneva Talks on a Collision Course

The Formosa Tangle: A Formosan's View

The tangle on Formosa was first created by the fact that Peking was determined to liberate Formosa yet unable to do so. It is the Red Chinese awareness that in the absence of sufficient military strength to overcome the United States, which has committed itself to the defense of Formosa, force alone cannot secure the island. Although the Red Chinese have consistently rejected American proposals for immediate renunciation of force in the Formosa Strait, they have been pursuing the policy cautiously, without direct military confrontation with the United States. They probably know that such a clash might spread quickly to the mainland to pave the way for total destruction of the Red Chinese regime. Since the Bandung Conference in 1955, Red China no longer considers force to be the most effective possible means of securing the island. Much effort has been directed to the accomplishment of through diplomacy and propaganda. The basic conception behind the policy of liberation through diplomacy is to prevent the Formosan question from becoming an international issue. In rejecting the American proposal to renounce the use of force in the Taiwan area, the Chinese Ambassador at Geneva talks declared:

The Non-Proliferation Treaty

THE signing of the partial nuclear test ban treaty in the ,summer of 1963 prompted many arms control analysts, as well as many decision-makers and diplomatic negotiators concerned with East-West arms talks, to shift their attention from the now much-reduced problem of radioactive fallout in the atmosphere to the growing dangers of international strategic instability inherent in the proliferation of nuclear This concern was by no means new. The experts had been worried about it for several years. As early as 1959, the United Nations General Assembly had recognized that an increase in the number of nuclear states would aggravate international tension and render more difficult the attainment of arms agreements. Two years later, the Irish Resolution had called for . . the conclusion of an international agreement containing provisions under which the nuclear States would undertake to refrain from relinquishing control of nuclear weapons and from transmitting the information necessary for their manufacture to States not possessing such weapons, and provisions under which States not possessing nuclear weapons would undertake not to manufacture or otherwise acquire control of such weapons. I At the opening of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) talks in Geneva in January 1964, both the United States and the Soviet Union included a non-proliferation agreement in the list of partial or collateral arms measures which they proposed for the consideration of the conference.2

International Control of the Uses of Nuclear Energy

It has often been emphasized that the uses of nuclear energy call for new methods in regulating cooperation among states, methods more appropriate to its technological character. Einstein is often cited in this connection as having said that the dangers of destructive power of nuclear energy are so vast that 'a new way of thinking is necessary if we want to survive'.1 The British experts Webster, Salter and Franks (1948) made similar statements when, having discussed the problem of nuclear energy control and the development of international organizations, they stated that 'the new discovery is revolutionary. New methods are needed to deal with it'. And as a solution to the situation in which 'suspicion and fear will be so widespread that good political relations will be impossible', due to the uncontrolled possession of nuclear energy on the part of individual states, they proposed the establishment of a special organization for international control.2 Hence, the problem of nuclear energy control became the basic issue of a lengthy discussion which continued until the principle of international control gradually emerged and asserted itself in a clearer form in the light of practical experience. In effect, every subsequent proposal concerning cooperation in the nuclear field which is debated now, takes the need to establish international controls for granted, which was not the case during the early discussions held in 1946 in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. It is well known that the Soviet Union at that time, in contrast to Western powers, failed to consider this control a vital element in the prohibition of nuclear weapons and only later accepted the idea of the creation of a special organization for armaments control, along with all the consequences related to onthe-spot inspection. This method of control has also been accepted in principle during the Geneva talks for the working out of a draft agreement concerning a nuclear test ban, although it could not have been expressed in the Moscow Agreement on the Partial Prohibition of Nuclear Tests. Since similar instances can be found in a number of bilateral and multilateral agreements on cooperation among states in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the international character of this control reflects one of the principal characteristics of the novelties which the existence of nuclear energy added to international law.3 Due to the unprecedently great dangers that might arise from the improper uses of nuclear energy, some countries, in the interest of international community, gave their consent to the idea of the application of international control on their own territory. This does not mean, however, that solutions adopted in this domain were uniform in all cases where the principle of international control was accepted. States approached the organization of this control in various situations, and from different standpoints. During this process several solutions were envisaged. To present them it is necessary to dwell first on those control systems that were adopted in the field of

The Menace of Preventive War; Some Lessons from British Guiana

Under the title "The Road to Disarmament: the Military Background to the Geneva Talks," P.M.S. Blackett, Nobel Prize-winning British physicist and one of the world's leading authorities on nuclear warfare, has assembled facts and figures on the military programs and strategies of the United States and the Soviet Union which ought to be known and pondered by everyone everywhere.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Geneva Talks Adjourn

Geneva Talks Adjourn

An Appraisal of the Geneva Talks

An Appraisal of the Geneva Talks

After Geneva—What?

It was plain all along that the four-power talks in Geneva would end in deadlock: the Western powers insisted on bringing a united Germany into the Western military alliance. The Russians would never accept that, any more than the West would agree to a united Germany entering into an alliance with the Soviet Union.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Geneva and the I.T.O.

the Palais des Nations at Geneva, Switzerland, representatives of seventeen nations are drafting an international trade and preparing an agenda for a world trade conference. Concurrently these same countries are negotiating multilateral tariff agreements one with the other. Officially, these Geneva talks are styled Second Session of the Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment. The first session of this committee was held in London in October, 1946. Framework of this London meeting was a charter prepared by the United States in anticipation of a world trade conference. This draft was an extension and clarification of proposals first published in December, 1945, and initialled by both Great Britain and the United States at the time agreement was reached on the terms of the U.S.-U.K. loan of $3,750,000,000. The Geneva talks got under way early in April. Nations represented on the committee were: Australia, Belgium-Luxembourg, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, India, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Union of South Africa, United States of America, United Kingdom. Russia is a member of the committee, but so far has not participated even in an observer capacity. The official explanation of Soviet non-appearance was described initially thus: U.S.S.R. felt unable to participate in the work of the committee at this stage as it had not at that time found it possible to devote sufficient preliminary study to the serious and far-reaching questions which were the subject of the committee's discussions. More recently the distinguished Russian economist, Emil Varga, explained Russia's absence from Geneva with the assertion that the problems discussed there have no direct interest for us in view of the state monopoly of foreign trade which is the firm element of our economic system. Mr. Varga termed the conference merely an opportunity for the