Dan Plesch

The South and disarmament at the UN

Abstract This article analyses the Global South’s role in disarmament. It offers evidence of a customarily ignored Southern agency in UN processes and suggests that the later work of Hans Morgenthau explains both this agency and contrary state policies. The article looks at the recent agreement with Iran as an example of constructive convergence and sets out the structure of an emerging and Southern-supported disarmament initiative.

Changing the Paradigm of International Criminal Law: Considering the Work of the United Nations War Crimes Commission of 1943–1948

Abstract More than 2,000 international criminal trials were conducted at the end of World War II in addition to those held by the International Military Tribunals (IMTs) at Nuremburg and Tokyo. Fifteen national tribunals conducted these trials in conjunction with an international war crimes commission established by these same states in October 1943 under the name, The United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes, that soon became the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). The extensive work of the UNWCC and these tribunals serves as a source of customary international criminal law that relates directly to the current work of the International Criminal Court and the ad hoc tribunals in operation since the 1990s.

A state in denial: Britain’s WMD dependency on the United States

Britain is not an independent nuclear power. Its nuclear warheads and delivery systems depend upon American supplied management and technology and have done so since the dawn of the nuclear age. For years these matters were classified and today both governments only supply partial information. Nevertheless, an analysis of the historical records and such government information as is available, particularly from U.S. sources, shows clearly that the U.K. has no independence of procurement and little if any genuine independence of operation. This reality has never been made clear to the public or to many in government and the political and media elites. As a result, the debate in the U.K. and internationally on the future of nuclear weapons is conducted on the false premise that the U.K. is an independent nuclear power.

A Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East: Reflections on a Project of Academic Applied International Relations

As the contributions in this Forum have made clear, formal endorsement by the UN Security Council and General Assembly has not been suffi cient to produce political momentum towards creating a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East. The logic behind the CISD project is not to reproduce the static negotiation scenario that has seen the proposal sit on the UN table for some 30-plus years, but rather, through a process of informal diplomacy and civil society action, to make headway on the central elements required for the Zone in order to build an academic, public and governmental constituency interested in the core proposal. In saying so, of course the aim is not to replace or circumvent the UN process, but rather to supplement those efforts. Although the research programme is really only in its infancy, we believe that some steps have already been taken towards making this issue more prominent on the international arms control and disarmament agenda with the year-on-year presence of the issue on the London scene. The two conferences referred to in the introduction to this Forum, the proceedings of each, and the future series of public and private events, are designed to reignite an interest in better approaches to problems of confl ict in the Middle East, and provide food for thought in dealing with the problems such as the international community has been experiencing with Iran since 2003. By engaging in informal and public diplomacy, states have the opportunity to interact with experts from the academic and non-governmental worlds to discuss theoretical and practical propositions relating to the Zone. Central aspects of the work are the promotion of public policy development, and the involvement not just of regional scholars but experienced ‘outsiders’ in this issue is vital for defi ning and refi ning approaches to achieving the ultimate goal. While it is obvious that a vast majority of experts and practitioners share the set of values embodied by the Zone (i.e. greater regional peace and security resulting from the verifi ed destruction and non-production of all WMD), there is discord over the steps the major stakeholders envision taking towards achieving this. The politico-security problems that have beset the region for the entire period since the Zone’s inception could be ameliorated through the careful application of the as yet untried security architecture. In his contribution, Hugh Beach has demonstrated that arms control and disarmament can be achieved when states most need it. The project aims to bridge the supply–demand gap by motivating regional states to recognise the negotiability of the Zone and the benefi ts accruing from such an arrangement.