Transcript Global Challenge of Weapons Proliferation

Military Globalization
• Military power central to globalization
– Underwrites empires and territorial expansion
– Military technologies shrink globe, permit
global annihilation, and make war preparation
constant
– Global arms trade and weapons proliferation
– Global regimes to govern security affairs
1
Globalization of Violence
• European imperial expansion drives
globalization of military affairs
• Technologies of steamship, railroad,
telegraph shrink geopolitical space
• “Firepower gap” aids imperial expansion in
Africa, Asia, Middle East, China, and Latin
America
2
Globalization of Violence
• 1914-1990 age of “global conflict”
• World War I and World War II - total wars
– geographic scope, mobilization of entire
societies, scale of warfare
• Cold War
– divides globe into rival camps, but unifies it
under threat of nuclear Armageddon
3
Globalization of Violence
• Post-Cold War military deglobalization?
– Decline in military expenditures and manpower
– Resurgence of ethnic and nationalist conflict
but number of conflicts and fatalities still less
than Cold War
– Greater interest by global civil society
• September 11 signals globalization of
informal violence
– Networks of non-state actors operating on
intercontinental basis
4
Weapons Proliferation and the
Global Arms Trade
• Proliferation as a global issue
– transboundary
– states unable to protect or monitor adequately
– arms trade thrives in global economy
• Global arms trade emerges by 1860s
– privately run big business
– not controlled by states
– commercial logic feeds global diffusion of arms
5
Types of Weapons
• Conventional
– make up vast majority of military arsenals
– little moral opposition to their use
– few international agreements
• Weapons of mass destruction
– devastating effect when used in small numbers
– nuclear, chemical, biological
6
Nuclear Weapons
• Release vast amounts of energy through fusion
or fission reactions
• Main technical barrier to nuke acquisition is
access to fissile material
– plutonium or highly enriched uranium
• Collapse of Soviet Union exposes large
stockpiles of fissile material to risk of theft and
diversion
7
Biological Weapons
• Release large quantities of infectious
organisms to cause death
• Major technical barrier is aerosol
dissemination
• International norms against use
• Suspected illegal production by states and
non-state actors
– fueled by easy access to information and
biotechnology revolution
8
Chemical Weapons
• Lethal man-made poisons disseminated via
gas, liquid, aerosol
– choking agents, blood gases, vesicants, nerve
agents
• Used frequently in warfare
• Easy and cheap to produce
• “Poor man’s nuke”
9
Conventional Proliferation
• Horizontal
– Cold War arms transfer pattern displaced by
globalization of arms industry
– New suppliers, new recipients, new motives, higher
volume of transfers, more sophisticated technology,
co-production and co-development, easy access to
dual-use technologies
– Recent spread of ballistic and cruise missiles
– Major suppliers - US, UK, France, Russia, China
10
WMD Proliferation
• Horizontal (Nth country problem)
– spread of WMD driven less by market forces
– nuclear proliferation slower than chem-bio
spread
– who is in the nuclear club?
– WMD not openly traded so spread more
difficult to monitor but more amenable to
supplier control
11
The Nuclear Club
• Declared – US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India,
Pakistan
•
•
•
•
•
•
Inheritors – Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan
De facto - Israel
Rollback – Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, S. Korea, S. Africa
Aspiring – Iraq, Iran, N. Korea, Algeria, Libya, others?
Abstaining – Japan, Germany, Hungary, etc.
Non-state actors??
12
NBC Terrorism
• For states, NBC terrorism may be preferable
to ICBM delivery
• Only one non-state actor has used WMD
• But capability growing and motivations
changing from political objectives to
inflicting mass casualties
• Issue is whether NBC will be weapon of
choice
13
Solutions
• WMD - International regimes/arms control
–
–
–
–
Non-Proliferation Treaty
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Chemical Weapons Convention
Biological Weapons Convention
• Improve safeguards in former Soviet Union
• Conventional
– arms registries, supplier cartels, economic
conversion
14
Globalization and Violence
Summary
• Character of war may change, as it has in
the past, but warfare will not disappear
• New forms of violence
• New actors that can wield force
• Globalization means many more entities
have access to tools of violence, and are
likely to use them for profit as well as
political power
15