Nuclear Deterrence and International Law: Some Steps toward Observance

Richard Falk has defined ‘norms’ as “encompass(ing) legal, moral, cultural, and biological standards which help draw boundaries between what is morally permissible and appropriate and what is morally impermissible and inappropriate at different levels of societal organization.” (See “Toward a Legal Regime for Nuclear Weapons,” McGill Law Journal, vol 28, no 3, July 1983, pp 519–541, at p 520, Note 1).

For a discussion of the relationship between state policy and international law, see Boyle Francis A. , World Politics and International Law (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), pp 3–74.

McDougal M. S. Feliciano F. P. , Law and Minimum World Public Order: The Legal Regulation of International Coercion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p 53.

See text surrounding Footnotes 28–36, infra..

See, for example, United States Department of the Air Force, International Law—The Conduct of Armed Conflict and Air Operations, AFP 110–31, 1976, pp 5–17; United States Department of the Army, International Law, D.A. PAM 27–161–2, 1962; United States Department of the Army, Field Manual FM-27–10, July 1956; United Kingdom, Manual of Military Law, Part III, 1958, para. 113, ‘The Laws of War on Land.’.

The practical impact on governments of the moral authority of religious institutions has been seen increasingly. This was demonstrated graphically when President Reagan sent his then national security adviser, William Clark, to lobby the US National Conference of Catholic Bishops to tone down the Pastoral Letter condemning nuclear weapons. For the text of the Pastoral Letter, see National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response—A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace (Washington, 1983). In the fall of 1985 the United States Roman Catholic Bishops Conference decided to re-examine the “conditional acceptance” of deterrence. A committee was set up for that purpose in January 1986, but no deadline has been set for the committee's report.

The American and NATO policy of first use of nuclear weapons in the European theater has come under increasing criticism from some former US government officials and others. In this vein, see McGeorge Bundy Kennan George F. McNamara Robert S. Smith Gerard , “Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance’, Foreign Affairs, vol 60, Spring 1983, pp 753–768; this view has been recently reiterated in McGeorge Bundy, Morton H. Halperin, William W. Kaufmann, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara, Madalene O'Donnell, Leon V. Sigal, Gerard C. Smith, Richard H. Ullman, and Paul C. Warnke, “Back from the Brink”, Atlantic Monthly, vol 258, no 1, 1986, pp 35–41; both sides of the first-use question are presented in Pierre Andrew J. (editor), Nuclear Weapons in Europe, (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1984); for a critical view, see Union of Concerned Scientists, No First Use (Cambridge, 1983). It is worth noting that the issue of first use of nuclear weapons is not confined to the European theater. An interesting twist to the question appears to present itself in connection with the Treaty of Tlatelolco, establishing the Latin American Nuclear Free Zone. Upon ratifying its Protocols I and II, the UK and the US made declarations to the effect that an armed attack by a contracting party supported by a nuclear power would be viewed as a violation of its obligations under the treaty, thus apparently opening the door for first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. For the texts of these declarations, see United Nations, Status of Multilateral Arms Regulation and Disarmament Agreements, Second Edition: 1982 (New York, 1983), p 65 et seq..

As we will see elsewhere in this article, the traditional, constructive role of law and legal institutions can play an important part in the search for alternative security arrangements to nuclear deterrence. For the first part of the article, however, we will concern ourselves with the role of law as a reflection of normative consensus.

The United Methodist Council of Bishops recently completed their own Foundation Document, which unconditionally condemns the morality of nuclear deterrence. (In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1986)) One national organization of lawyers and legal scholars has been established primarily to address the question from the legal perspective. This is The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, which has published dozens of articles and one book-length collection of essays. For a complete bibliography, write to: The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, 225 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10023, USA. The conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, has also published an indictment of US deterrence strategy, as has the RAND Corporation (see Graubard and Builder, ‘The International Law of Armed Conflict: Implications for the Concept of Assured Destruction,’ (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, Publication no R-2804-FF, 1982). The focus in this article on US weaponry and war-fighting strategies is not meant to imply that the USSR does not possess or is not developing similar nuclear war-fighting weapons and plans. The history of the nuclear arms race shows that there is scarcely anything that one side does that is not mimicked by the other. The nuclear superpowers both accuse each other of developing first-strike and counterforce strategies, as can be seen in the periodic publication by the Pentagon, Soviet Military Power, and its Soviet counterpart, Whence the Threat to Peace (Moscow, 1984); concerning war-fighting strategies in Soviet nuclear doctrine, see Desmond Ball, ‘Soviet Strategic Planning and the Control of Nuclear War’, in: Roman Kolkowicz and Ellen Propper Mickiewicz (editors), The Soviet Calculus of Nuclear War (proceedings of a symposium held at the Carter Center, Emory University, May 1984) (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1986), p 49; Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979); Joseph D. Douglass, Jr. and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Conventional War and Escalation: the Soviet View (New York: Crane, Russak & Co., Inc., 1981); and John Erickson, ‘The Soviet View of Deterrence: A General Survey,’ Survival, vol XXIV, no 6, November/December 1982, pp 242–251; for a view somewhat different from the two preceding works, see Fred M. Kaplan, ‘Dubious Specter: A Skeptical Look at the Soviet Nuclear Threat,’ in: Burns Weston (editor), Toward Nuclear Disarmament and Global Security: A Search for Alternatives (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp 303–319; and Tom Gervasi, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (New York: Norton, 1986).

For a discussion of the interests of citizens in Western democracies in using freedom of expression to change nuclear policies, see Falk (Note 1), supra, pp 540–541.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg not only reaffirmed the laws of war by recognizing a class of “war crimes” based on earlier treaties and principles of customary international law, but created a class of inchoate “crimes against peace” consisting of the “planning and preparation” to wage war in violation of “international treaties, agreements, or assurances.” The judgements of the Tribunal are also noteworthy for their attribution of criminal liability to individuals who knowingly acquiesce in crimes against peace, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal was adopted in a unanimous vote of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946. (See Note 54, infra.).

The general danger faced by all nations is compounded for an increasing number of non-nuclear states, allies of the US or USSR, whose territory is used for the global network of nuclear delivery systems. Concerning this growing involvement of Third World countries in the nuclear infrastructure, see ‘Plugging into the nuclear frontline,’ South, March 1986, pp 89–95; concerning the regional ramifications of forward defensive and offensive strategies, see also, Arkin William M. Chappell David , “Raising the Stakes in the Pacific,” World Policy Journal, vol II, no 3, Summer 1985, pp 481–500. Increasingly, it is evident that there are likely theaters of nuclear war outside of central Europe; see, for example, Michael Klare, “Asia, theater of nuclear war,” South, November 1983, pp 9–14.

Concerning proliferation pressures, see “Who Wants the Bomb?,” South, September 1985, pp 14–23.

There should be no underestimating the empirical difficulty in applying international law and norms to nuclear weapons. Among the factors and potential pitfalls which complicate such an endeavor are: the demonstrated inability of states, in time of warfare, to abide by legal limitations on hostilities when such strictures are not perceived as serving state interests; the seeming impossibility of completely eliminating all nuclear weapons; the degree to which today nuclear weaponry is ingrained into offensive and defensive strategies for military operations at virtually all levels of conflict; the danger of unintentionally increasing the risk of conventional warfare, and thereby of escalation to nuclear use, by positing ineffectual prohibitions on the use of nuclear weapons; attempts to conform nuclear weapons to the laws of war by developing more accurate weapons and nuclear war-fighting doctrines, which may foster nuclear use and lead to widespread devastation; conditional or transitional sanctioning of assured destruction doctrines, clearly in violation of the laws of war, as an alternative to nuclear war-fighting weapons and doctrines. (This summary of the difficulties and ironies involved in applying international law to nuclear weapons is based in part on the discussion in Falk (Note 1), supra.).

See, Note 6, supra..

See, Note 9, supra..

For a discussion of the somewhat contrasting conditional acceptance of nuclear deterrence as the lesser of two evils in the French bishops' pastoral letter, “To Gain the Peace,” see Tucker Robert W. , The Nuclear Debate: Deterrence and the Lapse of Faith (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), p 54. For an overview of the similarities and differences in the positions taken by the American, French and German bishops, see John W. Coffey, “Deterrence and the Bishops: a trans-Atlantic Comparison,” Strategic Review, vol 14, no 1, Winter 1986, pp 59–67.

US Department of State, “United States Participation in the U.N.: Report by the President to the Congress for the Year 1981,” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1981), at 54.

“Declaration Renouncing the Use in Time of War of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight, 11 December 1868,” in: Freedman Leon , The Law of War: A documentary history (New York: Random House, 1972), pp 192–193.

The Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Law and Customs of War on Land (1907), pp 244–250.

The text of the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of poison gas in warfare and bacteriological methods of warfare, ratified by the US in 1975, is found in International Legal Materials, vol 14, 1975, p 49, as well as in League of Nations, Treaty Series, vol XCIV, 1929, p 65.

“Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field,” 75 United Nations Treaty Series 31; “Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea,” ibid., p 85; “Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” ibid., p 135; “Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War,” ibid., p 287.

Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) and Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), in International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocols additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Geneva, 1977); also 1125 U.N.T.S., Registration Nos. I-17512 & I-17513. There has been a considerable debate as to whether the additional Protocols are in fact applicable to nuclear weapons, due to declarations made by various countries purporting to exclude nuclear weapons. These declarations are found in Official Record of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmations and development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts, Geneva, 1974–1977, vol III (Berne, 1978), p 295 (US), p 193 (France), p 303 (UK). For a sample of this debate, see Bothe Michael Partsch Karl Josef Solf Waldemar A. , New Rules for Victims of Armed Conflicts (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p 11, as well as p 191, Note 12; Henri Meyrowitz, “La stratégie nucléaire et le Protocole additionel I aux Conventions de Genève de 1949,” Revue Générale de Droit International Public, Tome 83, no 3, 1979, pp 905–961; and O. E. Bring and H. B. Reimann, “Redressing a Wrong Question: the 1977 Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention and the Issue of Nuclear Weapons,” Netherlands International Law Review, vol XXXIII, no 1, 1986, pp 99–105.

Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 249 U.N.T.S. 240.

The rules of jus in bello can be summarized as follows: Rule 1: It is prohibited to use weapons or tactics that cause unnecessary or aggravated devastation or suffering. Rule 2: It is prohibited to use weapons or tactics that cause indiscriminate harm as between combatants and non-combatants, military and civilian personnel. Rule 3: It is prohibited to use weapons or tactics which violate the neutral jurisdiction of non-participating states. Rule 4: It is prohibited to use asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices, including bacteriological methods of warfare. Rule 5: It is prohibited to use weapons or tactics that cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment. Rule 6: It is prohibited to effect reprisals that are disproportionate to their antecedent provocation or to legitimate military objectives, or disrespectful of persons, institutions, or resources otherwise protected by the laws of war.

For a complete set of sources for these rules, see Weston , “Nuclear Weapons versus International Law: A Contextual Reassessment'’ McGill Law Journal Vol. 28, No. 3 (1983), pp.542–590; and Arbess, “The International Law of Armed Conflict in Light of Contemporary Deterrence Strategies: Empty Promise or Meaningful Restraint?” McGill Law Journal Vol. 30, No. 1 (1984), pp.89–142. See also, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, Statement on the Illegality of Nuclear Warfare (New York, rev. ed., 1984); and John H. E. Fried, “The Nuclear Collision Course: Can International Law be of Help?,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, vol 14, no 1, Spring/Summer 1985, pp 97–120.

For an articulate presentation of this argument, see Builder C. H. Graubard M. H. (Note 8), supra..

See, for example, Almond H. H. Jr. , “Deterrence Processes and Minimum Order,” New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol 4, no 2, 1983, p 283. Herman Kahn identified three types of deterrence: “Type I is strategic deterrence of a massive attack against one's country or a large portion of its forces. The deterrent is the threat of a major retaliation. Type II is deterrence against extremely provocative acts others than a massive direct attack against one's country or its major forces (e.g., an attack, or threat of attack, on an ally). Type III is tit-for-tat deterrence against military or nonmilitary actions. The deterrent is the fear that some kind of proportionate retaliation will make the aggression unprofitable.” (Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980's (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p 109.).

Ikle F. C. , “Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century?”, Foreign Affairs, vol 51, 1973, p 261, at 281. See also, P. Ramsay, The Limits of War (NY: Council on Religion and International Affairs, 1963) at 48; A. L. Burns, ‘Ethics and Deterrence: A Nuclear Balance Without Hostage Cities?’, Adelphi Papers, no 69 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1970), at 15. Mr. Ikle proceeds, however, to recommend that the solution is to develop more discriminating nuclear weaponry rather than the abolition of nuclear armaments or even explicit renunciation of the targetting of cities.

Quoted in Ball D. , “Déjà Vu: The Return to Counterforce in the Nixon Administration” (Santa Monica: California Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, 1974), at 14.

Friedberg A. L. , “A History of U.S. Strategic Doctrine: 1945–1980,” Journal of Strategic Studies, vol 3, No. 3 (December 1980), pp. 37–71, at 43.

US Secretary of Defense Schlesinger J. , Annual Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 1975 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1974), at 38. Many defense critics were unaware of the historical extent of counterforce targeting and remained “unperturbed until James Schlesinger publicly emphasized targeting flexibility; this was misread as a reversion toward counterforce targeting, which in fact had never been abandoned.” (Richard K. Betts, Elusive Equivalence: The Political and Military Meaning of the Nuclear Balance, Brookings General Series Reprint 391 (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1983), p 104).

US Secretary of Brown Defense H. , Annual Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 1981 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1980), at 66.

Gray Colin S. Payne Keith , “Victory is Possible,” Foreign Policy, no 39, Summer 1980, pp 14–27; for a discussion of the policy milieu in which nuclear weapons are used to deter conventional war, see Randall Forsberg, “The Freeze and Beyond: Confining the Military to Defense as a Route to Disarmament,” World Policy Journal, vol I, no 2, Winter 1984, pp 285–318.

Ibid..

See, RAND study (Note 10), supra, at ix.

Ibid., at xi.

See, World Health Organization, Effects of Nuclear War on Health and Health Services (Geneva, 1983).

Ehrlich P. R. , The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War (New York: Norton, 1984). It is now recognized that the devastation of nuclear war would not be limited to the northern hemisphere; for an overview of impact in the southern hemisphere, see “Is the South Safe?'’, South, January 1984, pp 11 et seq; concerning global environmental and health effects of nuclear warfare, see generally, “Nuclear War: the Aftermath,” Ambio, vol XI, no 2/3, 1982; among the topics addressed are the medical consequences of radiation, effects on global supplies of freshwater, impact on global food supplies, and impacts on ocean ecosystems.

According to Senator Sam Nunn, “long range conventional weapons are now being developed that begin to approach the destructive potential of small yield (two to three kiloton) battlefield nuclear weapons.” ( Nunn Senator Sam S. , “NATO: Can the Alliance Be Saved?'’, in US Senate, Report of the Committee on Armed Services (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), at 16). See also, Michael Klare, “Near-Nukes: the Conventional Weapons Fallacy,” Nation, 9 April 1983, p 438, and Klare, “NATO's Improved Conventional Weapons,” Technology Review, vol 88, no 4, May/June 1985, p 34 et seq..

On the subject of the eroding firebreak between conventional and nuclear use, see Klare Michael , “Intervention and the Nuclear Firebreak in the Middle East,” Merip Reports, no 128, November-December 1984, p 3; see also, Klare, Technology Review (Note 39), supra, and Klare, “Securing the Firebreak,” World Policy Journal, vol II, no 2, Spring 1985, pp 229–247.

Cited in “the Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and our Response,” (Note 6), p.56.

In his now classic On Escalation—Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Praeger, 1965), Herman Kahn described a 44 step escalation ladder in which nuclear use begins at step 16, eventually leading up to all-out nuclear war and the incineration of population centers.

US Secretary of Defense Harold S. Brown, Annual Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 1980 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1979).

Such an attack would involve the Soviet Union targeting 1047 US ICBM launchers or, conversely, the US destroying 1400 Soviet launchers. See Report of the President's Commission on Strategic Forces (The Scowcroft Commission) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1983). Although the US is currently developing lower yield, high accuracy burrowing warheads (1–10 kiloton range, CEP accuracy 40 meters) suitable for Pershing II missiles, an American attack would probably employ high yield (335 kiloton) relatively inaccurate Minuteman III missiles.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Annual Report To Congress: Fiscal Year 1978 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977), at 73.

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Law and Organization, “Hearings on Effects of Counterforce Nuclear Attacks” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975).

Sagan , “Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe,” Foreign Affairs, vol 62, no 2, 1984, pp 257–292, at p 270.

Deitchman S. J. , New Technology and Military Power: General Purpose Military Forces for the 1980s and Beyond (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), p 12.

United Nations, “Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons: Report of the Secretary General,” Official Records of the General Assembly, Thirty-Fifth Session, Annex Provisional Agenda Item 48(b), U.N. Doc A/35/392 (1980).

See von Hippel Frank , “Perspectives on Limited Nuclear War,” in: Smith Theresa C. Singh Indu B. (editors), Security vs. Survival: The Nuclear Arms Race (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1985), pp 23–52.

Bundy McNamara Kennan Smith (Note 7), supra, p 757.

As demonstrated by the Chernobyl accident, the nuclear fuel cycle, which culminates in the production of nuclear weapons, may simply be, like the weapons themselves, beyond the ability of human beings to control. In a very real sense, nuclear weapons are already killing people and destroying the environment for generations to come in a quiet, low intensity “nuclear war” being waged by the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Environmentalists have pointed out that as much radioactivity is released into the atmosphere at the various stages of the production of a nuclear warhead as would be emitted by its detonation. These upstream activities connected with the production of nuclear weapons, which are already polluting air, water, and food, include uranium mining and milling, conversion and enrichment, fuel manufacturing, fuel reprocessing, and manufacturing of weapons grade material. At each of these stages, radioactive waste is produced for which no long-term disposal solution has been found. From this perspective, it can be seen that the nuclear weapons production cycle runs counter to the basic normative expectation of a safe environment.

For a discussion of the peacetime environment destruction caused by the production of nuclear weapons, see An Environmental Agenda for the Future (Washington: Island Press, 1985), chapter 2.

Reisman W. M. , “Nuclear Weapons in International Law,” New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol 4, no 2, 1983, pp 339–343, at 341.

See, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, art. 6(a), in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945–1 October 1946 (Nuremberg, 1947), p 11. In the USA some anti-nuclear protestors who engage in civil disobedience have attempted to assert a defense based on the Nuremberg principles of individual responsibility; for a discussion pro and con, see Arthur W. Campbell, “The Nuremberg Defense to Charges of Domestic Crime: A Non-Traditional Approach for Nuclear-Arms Protestors,” California Western International Law Journal, vol 16, no 1, Winter 1986, pp 93–117, and Timothy Conan, “Why the International Law Defense is No Defense for Nuclear War Protestors,” Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, vol 12, no 3, Spring 1986, pp 473–492.

See Herken Gregg , The Winning Weapon: the Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945–1950 (New York: Vintage, 1982).

For a discussion of nuclear alerts and threats in the “extended deterrence” context, see Ball Desmond , “U.S. Strategic Forces—How Would They Be Used?'’, International Security, vol 7, no 3, Winter 1982/1983, pp 31–60. See also, David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” ibid., vol 7, no 4, Spring 1983, pp 3–71; for an overview of early nuclear war fighting plans in respect of the Soviet Union, see David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. nuclear stockpile, 1945 to 1950,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1982, pp 25–30; and David Alan Rosenberg, “‘A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours’ Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954–1955,” International Security, vol 6, no 3, Winter 1981/82, pp 3–38. For further overviews of the history of nuclear targeting strategies, see Desmond Ball, “Targeting for Strategic Deterrence,” Adelphi Papers, no 185 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1983; and Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).

Concerning sea-launched cruise missiles, see Wit Joel , “Soviet Cruise Missiles,” Survival, vol XXV, no 6, November/December 1983, pp 249–260; Clarence A. Robinson, Jr., “Soviets Test New Cruise Missile,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, 2 January 1984, p 14; William M. Arkin, “Tomahawk: ominous new deployment,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol 40, no 8, October 1984, p 3; Miles A. Libbey III, “Tomahawk,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, Naval Review 1984, pp 150–163; and Stephen Hostettler, “Tomahawk Sea-Launched Cruise Missile,” NATO's Sixteen Nations, vol 29, no 8, December 1984/January 1985, pp 83–88.

See generally Bracken Paul , The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). Also Daniel Ford “Reporter at Large: The Button,” The New Yorker, April, 1985, pp 43–91, and April 8, 1985, pp 49–92.

On the subject of peacetime but coercive use of the military in international relations, see Blechman Kaplan , Force without War (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1978).

Gray and Payne, Note 33, supra, p 20.

The complete Text of Article VI reads as follows: “Each of the parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and the nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), reprinted in Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements, United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982).

White Andrew , The Terror of Balance: Deterrence, Rearmament and the Illusion of Security (London, 1983), p 28, Note 6.

From Carter Ashton B. Schwartz David N. (editors), Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1984), p 405, cited in Peter A. Claussen, “SDI in Search of a Mission,” World Policy Journal, vol II, no 2, Spring 1985, p 261. For a contextual look at the Strategic Defense Initiative, see John C. Springer, “Strategic Defense in Perspective: Nuclear Weapons and American Globalism,” Fletcher Forum, vol 10, no 1, Winter 1986, pp 65–91.

“Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems” (1972), reprinted in Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements, (Note 61), supra.

Fiscal Year 1985 Arms Control Impact Statements, 98th Congress, 2nd Session (1984), p 251.

See, Arbess , “Star Wars and Outer Space Law,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October, 1985, pp 19–22.

See Mohr Charles , “Antimissile Shield Held to Raise Risk of a Nuclear War,” New York Times, 25 September 1985, p A-1.

An example of this pattern of using nuclear weapons to mold events in the developing world was recently reported in Halloran Richard , “Soviet Buildup Near Iran Tested Carter,” New York Times 27 August 1986, p A-3. An account of the major powers' growing interventionary reach is found in Michael Klare, “The Global Reach of the Superpowers,” South, August 1983, p 9. On the question of nuclear weapons use by developed and developing countries in the Third World, and the unequal result engendered thus far by the non-proliferation regime! see Krishnaswami Subrahmanyam, “Nuclear Weapons and Local Conflicts,” in Joseph Rothblat and Alessandro Pascolini (editors), The Arms Race at a Time of Decision—Annals of Pugwash 1983 (New York, 1984), pp 173 et seq. Failure by the nuclear powers to abandon their own nuclear arms race, while most Third World countries have abided by the non-proliferation principle, has left a nuclear monopoly which can be applied in the interventionary context.

We are indebted to Richard Falk for this point. See, Falk (Note 1), supra, p 579.

The Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p 6.

See, Fischer D. , Preventing War in the Nuclear Age, (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984).

Fischer D. , “Invulnerability Without Threat: The Swiss Concept of General Defense,” Journal of Peace Research, vol 19, no 3, 1982, pp 205–225.

Palme Commission (Note 70), supra..

See, for example, “The Mexico Declaration,” issued by the Five-Continents Peace Initiative on August 6, 1986, Ixtapa, Mexico. Heads of State involved with this initiative include Julius Nyerere, first President of Tanzania; Miguel de la Madrid, President of Mexico; Raul Alfonsin, President of Argentina; Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India; Ingvar Carlsson, Prime Minister of Sweden; and Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece.

See, for example, Lewis Flora , The New York Times, January 19, 1986.

Kennan George F. , “Introduction,” The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet American Relations in the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), xxviii.