Hurdle to Disarmament

Trust-Deficit and Insecurity: Great Hurdle to Disarmament

                                                                                                                  Anuj Chaudhary

Clearly, national security cannot be defined in amounts of weaponry. Few in the United States reflected on the fact that during the nineteenth century the US felt quite secure with its policy of political isolationism and its meager armed forces while, conversely, never had felt so insecure as it did during the cold war era when it possessed a vast peace-time arsenal, substantial military forces, and allies around the world. A nation’s security then may rest as much on a sense of national well-being a psychological state as it does on the size of its military forces. It would appear, as Fisher wrote during the interwar years “In reality, security is a state of mind; so is insecurity”.

Problem of Evasion:

The historical record of compliance is somewhat mixed, but on the whole, the agreements in which a sense of mutuality was established have been honored. Often, evasions or violations that occurred were unintended and other parties took it as infringement of accord. Whereas, a few governments have negotiated and signed an arm control and disarmament agreement while deliberately planning to evade the terms of the agreement e.g. North Korean and Iranian Nuclear enrichment program after the negotiation of Non-Proliferation Treaty.

These political problems that prevent abolition are daunting; they need to be analyzed in a humanitarian way and not assumed to give up away. Hence, a proactive initiative is imperative to complete disarmament under strict and effective international convention. The complete disarmament would be possible , when the international community will come unitedly with stringent legal framework within which this huge task can be accomplished by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Nuclear Supplier Group, the UNSC and other bilateral and multilateral arrangements that focus on establishing nuclear and other chemical weapons-free zone.

Global super powers should take the responsibility to reduce the feasibility of electing war as a means of resolving disputes by reducing the available armaments. The arm control process requires a minimum level of political cooperation and even, the progress can be slow where suspicions and hatreds must be mitigated. Often the first steps to break down the wall of suspicion are measures that provide for exchanging verified information concerning each side’s military forces with confidence and security building measures.