DISARMAMENT.

The elimination of all weapons and armed forces, typically known as disarmament, was a widespread but elusive goal in the twentieth century. It should not be confused with arms control—the limitation of the numbers and types of weapons—though the two terms are often used synonymously. Disarmament enjoyed the support of many statesmen and a number of important mass movements, but self-preservation and the logic of great-power relations repeatedly undermined its idealistic foundations and prevented serious progress. Technological development and the proliferation of ever-more-deadly varieties of weapons—especially biological, chemical, and nuclear—also meant that far more and far deadlier weapons were available worldwide at the end of the century than at its beginning. Yet despite this record of failure, there have been a few major successes, offering advocates lessons and hope for the future.

The most common argument used in favor of disarmament is that it reduces the likelihood of war. The fewer weapons states have, the logic goes, the fewer their means to attack their neighbors and the lower their chances of winning a war. Similarly, disarmament's supporters argue that without restraints on weapons and armed forces, states can easily fall into arms races, which further increase the chance of war. The classic example here is the Anglo-German naval buildup in the first decade of the century, which, by straining relations between the two countries, helped set the stage for the First World War. Particularly since the development of nuclear weapons, some advocates have taken a moral position in favor of disarmament, arguing that it is unethical for states even to possess weapons capable of killing millions and destroying entire countries.

Disarmament's opponents take issue with these positions. In their view the causes of wars run deeper than the numbers of weapons on both sides. In fact arms races are the result, not the cause, of the international tensions that can lead to war. Moreover, given that the state's primary goal is to protect its citizens, it would be foolish to disarm in the face of real threats. This logic was especially powerful in the Cold War, when nuclear deterrence provided the foundation for the period's "long peace."

Even after the Soviet Union's collapse, the debate about disarmament continued apace. Advocates expanded their focus to include small arms and other weapons less lethal but more widespread than nuclear weapons, winning a major victory with the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel land mines. Controversially, the U.S. government used disarmament as one of its major arguments to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the debate about the wisdom of disarmament—in Iraq and beyond—rages on, and so long as states have armed forces, it will continue to do so.

WORLD WAR I AND THE TREATY
OF VERSAILLES

The disarmament of Germany was a major feature of the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), which the victors convened to end the First World War. In the aftermath of the bloodiest war in history, politicians, journalists, and academics argued that the prewar Anglo-German naval arms race had been one of the chief causes of the conflict. It was therefore essential to limit or reduce the size and scope of states' armed forces in order to prevent future wars. But rather than proceeding with disarmament multilaterally, the victors decided to impose it on the defeated powers, particularly Germany.

Germany had invaded France twice in the fifty years prior to the peace conference, which meant its ability to act aggressively in future had to be reined in. The Allied politicians who led the conference—David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States, collectively known as the "Big Three"—agreed that measures to constrain German military power were necessary but disagreed about their severity. Clemenceau took the most extreme position. Like many of his compatriots, the French premier believed that the very existence of Germany posed a serious threat to French and even European security. In his view Germany had to be dismembered. Failing that, he wanted Germany's industrial heartland, the Rhine valley, to be amputated from the rest of the country and transformed into an independent republic. Lloyd George and Wilson took a far less aggressive line. The British prime minister firmly believed that a stable, unified Germany was essential to the Continental balance of power. Imposing a Carthaginian peace on the defeated country would destabilize the Continent and potentially open the door to French domination. Wilson, uninterested in the "old diplomacy" of the balance of power, likewise sided against Clemenceau, offering the League of Nations instead as the guarantor of post-war peace.

They eventually reached a compromise. The Treaty of Versailles imposed an elaborate system of shackles on German military power in order to destroy the country's capacity to wage aggressive war. During the war the Imperial Navy had numbered more than seventy ships, but the vast majority of these had been scuttled in 1919 during their internment in Scotland. According to the treaty, Germany's postwar navy could have no more than twenty-four ships, including, at most, six battleships. Submarines, which had proven such an effective weapon against the Allies, were forbidden outright. The army, four million strong during the war, would be capped at one hundred thousand, down even from its prewar strength of seven hundred thousand. Germany could have no tanks, heavy artillery, or general staff. The Rhineland would be demilitarized and occupied by Allied troops for fifteen years. The Allies would control the Saar and its rich coalfields for the same period. Finally, in order to prevent a large segment of the population from acquiring military training, conscription was banned. These were tough measures indeed, and despite early acquiescence, Germany resisted them with increasing ferocity as time went on.

WASHINGTON NAVAL CONFERENCE

Two years later the United States convened an international conference on the military and political situation in East Asia and the Pacific. The conference opened in Washington, D.C., in late 1921, the first conference in history whose primary goals were disarmament and arms control. It was also the first international conference held in the United States, testament to the country's ascent to world-power status. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes used the rhetoric of disarmament and peace in his invitations, but his goals were more pragmatic than idealistic. Above all, he wanted to check British and Japanese power in the Pacific, and this is exactly what he achieved.

Besides the United States, eight countries took part: Britain, Japan, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and China. Between November 1921 and February 1922 they produced three major agreements. The most important of these was the Five-Power Treaty, also known as the Naval Limitation Treaty. According to its terms, the United States, Britain, and Japan would maintain a 5:5:3 ratio in capital ship tonnage, and the French and Italian navies were each allowed an absolute maximum of 175,000 tons for their capital fleets. As a consequence, twenty-six U.S., twenty-four British, and sixteen Japanese ships (either already built or under construction) were scrapped. This was a major change for British policy, given London's long-standing faith that naval superiority was the only way to ensure the security of Britain and its empire. The formal acceptance of naval parity with the United States amounted to an acknowledgment that the British simply could not afford to compete with the Americans in any kind of naval arms race.

The same group of countries, minus Italy, also negotiated the Four-Power Treaty, further confirmation of U.S. strategic ascendancy in the Pacific. They agreed not to expand their Pacific possessions and to consult each other in the event of any disagreement about them. This rhetoric was soothing, but it imposed no binding obligations. The agree-ment's real significance lay in the fact that it ended the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a mutual defense pact dating from 1902. Concerned about their rivalry with the Japanese in the Pacific, the Americans had insisted on the cancellation of the pact in order to avoid a confrontation with the British should war break out with Japan. London preferred to maintain the alliance, which eased the burden of its Pacific commitments, but it feared being dragged into a U.S.-Japanese war on Tokyo's side. The British therefore bowed to U.S. demands and accepted the Four-Power Treaty, even though it offered nothing like the firm security guarantees of the old alliance.

The final agreement, which involved all of the countries present at the conference, addressed the problem of foreign possessions in China. The Nine-Power Treaty obliged its signatories to respect Chinese integrity, independence, and sovereignty and to consider the future of extraterritoriality. But like the Four-Power Treaty it required no serious action. Echoing the United States' longstanding open door policy, it also gave the countries the right to do business in China on equal terms.

With the unsurprising exception of the Chinese, everyone involved deemed the conference a success. To varying degrees, it was. More importantly, it reflected not an idealized vision of disarmament or pacifism but rather the realities of great-power politics.

LONDON CONFERENCE

The London Conference of 1930 continued the work begun in Washington. The Washington Conference had limited the construction of capital ships, but the great powers continued to compete in building midsize warships, known as cruisers. By 1930 the pressure on governments to disarm had increased substantially, not least because of the necessity of cutting spending. In these conditions cruiser competition was scarcely sustainable. British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald therefore invited the Americans, Japanese, French, and Italians to London to discuss limits on mid- and small-size warships and to review the agreements they had signed in Washington some eight years before.

The conference opened in late January 1930 and ran for three months. Negotiations were hotly contested and quickly reached an impasse. Benito Mussolini's Fascist government insisted that it would reject any proposal that did not grant it at least parity with France. France, concerned as ever about foreign attack, refused to accept parity with Italy unless a naval version of the 1925 Locarno Pact—in which Britain guaranteed France's eastern border—were signed to protect its Mediterranean coast. The British in turn dismissed any thought of undertaking new security commitments when it could not afford to maintain its preexisting ones. Besides, Britain's major interests in the Mediterranean—the Levant and Suez Canal—lay in the east, not the west. If this was not enough to sink any hope of agreement, the British and French both insisted that any new security pact would require U.S. support, something that was hardly forthcoming.

Despite the failure to include the French and Italians, the British, Americans, and Japanese managed to conclude a three-way settlement. They extended 1922's 5:5:3 ratio to cruiser, destroyer, and submarine tonnage and declared a five-year moratorium on battleship construction. In addition, the British yielded to a U.S. demand that neither country be allowed more than fifty cruisers. In practice this meant that the British fleet would be pared down to match the size of the U.S. fleet rather than requiring the Americans to build up to the British level. Washington achieved full naval parity on the cheap, and the British made progress toward financial solvency, even if at the cost of security.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

Disarmament was one of the chief objectives of the League of Nations, which the Treaty of Versailles had established in 1919. Article 8 of the League's Covenant committed members to reducing armaments "to the lowest point consistent with national safety," but by the early 1930s none of the members had acted on this pledge. A general disarmament conference had first been proposed for 1925, but it did not actually meet until 1932 due to a lack of enthusiasm. Even after its opening in Geneva in February of that year its prospects for success were slim.

Its rationale was the same as that of the Washington and London Conferences, but its scope extended beyond strictly naval questions. Due to continued economic woes, most governments were under serious fiscal strain. In these circumstances, the prospect of curbing spending on ground, sea, and air forces was most welcome. Strategic concerns played a role too. Germany, under the increasingly unstable Weimar Republic, was determined to throw off the remaining shackles of Versailles and reestablish itself as a full and equal European state. Many in the British government sympathized with these demands, feeling that German rehabilitation was long overdue. From London's point of view a strong and stable Germany was essential as a counterweight to France. Naturally the French could not tolerate the security threat that German equality would pose and so were reluctant to agree to any limitations at all. On top of this basic conflict, disagreements about the definitions of the various kinds of armaments made progress extremely difficult. Having reached a standstill, the conference adjourned in June 1933. When it reconvened in October, Germany—led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party—withdrew, refusing to consider any limitations on German power. The conference effectively collapsed, though officially it limped on until 1937, by which point all hope of disarmament was lost thanks to the increasing likelihood of another major war.

THE ATOMIC BOMB

The arrival of atomic weapons at the end of the Second World War raised the stakes of disarmament to levels that had previously been unthinkable. Even before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the prospect of weapons able to destroy cities caused serious apprehension, including among those working to build them. The first atomic weapons were developed in the strictest secrecy through a joint U.S.-British-Canadian wartime effort known as the Manhattan Project. In 1939 Albert Einstein, a pioneer in the field of nuclear physics, urged U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the project. Einstein feared that without a concentrated, government-directed Allied effort, the Germans might develop the bomb first. But once the bomb had been built and the war won, he worried that nuclear weapons could cause untold future damage if not properly controlled. He insisted that scientists had to make "governments aware of the unspeakable disaster they are certain to provoke unless they change their attitude towards each other and towards the task of shaping the future" (Einstein, p. 200). Atomic war was too terrible to contemplate, and governments therefore had to make every effort—especially by disarming—to avoid war. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Manhattan Project, shared Einstein's feelings. He said that the physicists who built the bomb "have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose" (Bird and Sherwin, p. 388).

Official U.S. support for nuclear weapons remained strong despite this high-profile concern. President Harry S. Truman regarded the development of nuclear weapons and energy as the pinnacle of modern science, and the U.S. press was generally sanguine about the peacetime benefits of nuclear power. Geopolitically the bomb seemed to offer the United States an important advantage over the Soviet Union in a relationship that was growing increasingly tense. The U.S. government cast atomic weapons as one of the pillars of national security, though the U.S. public was divided over their use. The key ethical questions surrounding the construction and use of nuclear weapons first arose in the mid-to-late 1940s, and have persisted ever since. How could such a destructive weapon of war provide a basis for a durable peace? Was it moral to threaten the use of such weapons, or even to possess them? The logic of nuclear deterrence, then only slowly coming into shape, was unpalatable indeed.

CAMPAIGN FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AND EARLY ANTINUCLEAR MOVEMENTS

The development of the Soviet atomic bomb in 1949—several years ahead of U.S. predictions—and the detonation of the first hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bombs in 1953 and 1954, by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively, only intensified the debate. These new types of weapons were hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan. It was obvious that a U.S.-Soviet war had the potential not only to destroy both countries but to make entire continents uninhabitable. In this context, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced his "New Look" defense strategy, the cornerstone of which was "massive retaliation." Given the costs of the Korean War and defense spending in general, he was eager to cut the military's budget and therefore proclaimed massive retaliation the basis of U.S. defense policy. Any Soviet attack on NATO, conventional or otherwise, would be met with a full-scale nuclear response. Any European war would automatically be a nuclear war.

These developments spawned considerable public outcry in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in North America. In a 1955 press conference the British philosopher Bertrand Russell issued a document known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, named for two of its most prominent signatories. It warned that unless statesmen took decisive action to resolve their disputes peacefully, a war waged with thermonuclear weapons was a serious possibility. Such a war would destroy whole cities and make the entire planet uninhabitable. Every person on earth, warned the manifesto, was "in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly." Its signatories urged leaders: "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

Three years later, a number of prominent Britons, including Russell, founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which institutionalized the manifesto's ideas. Its platform was simple: governments should give up their entire nuclear arsenals unilaterally. Besides Russell himself, the historians A. J. P. Taylor and E. P. Thompson, the publisher Victor Gollancz, and the politician and polemicist Michael Foot were among its original members. To promote its cause it staged massive public rallies—often in London's Trafalgar Square—that attracted crowds numbering in the thousands. At one of its first protest marches, from London to Aldermaston, the site of Britain's main nuclear weapons research and manufacturing facility, it unveiled its logo, which was popularized in the 1960s and has since become internationally known as the "peace symbol."

CND's membership grew dramatically and quickly. By the early 1960s it claimed the support of as much as a third of Britain's population. Yet after the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), and with the rise of public opposition to the Vietnam War in the mid-to-late 1960s, CND's prominence and membership waned. Protests continued, but on a much smaller scale than before. It is difficult to say whether the group had any significant impact on British policy in these early years. When the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson became prime minister in 1964, he simply ignored pressure to give up Britain's modest nuclear stockpile, even though many prominent party members were themselves supporters of CND and staunch advocates of unilateral disarmament.

DISARMAMENT IN THE 1980S

The disarmament cause fell by the wayside during the late 1960s and through the 1970s, largely because protesting the Vietnam War absorbed the energy of most disarmament advocates, who typically were to the left of the political spectrum. Yet disarmament gained a new urgency in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the end of détente and worsening superpower relations raised the specter of nuclear war once again. As important as the conflict between the superpowers, however, was the clash between Western governments and large segments of their own populations over the wisdom of nuclear deterrence, the foundation of Western defense policy.

In December 1979, NATO announced the deployment of Cruise and Pershing 2 nuclear missiles to Western Europe, including Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. The effort was both a response to the Soviet deployment of new SS-20 nuclear missiles across Eastern Europe in 1977 and an American attempt to demonstrate a continued commitment to the defense of Western Europe. Huge protests erupted in Western Europe, reinvigorating the dormant antinuclear movement. In Britain, CND membership increased twentyfold in the early 1980s, and the Labour Party, which had accepted nuclear weapons in the 1960s, featured unilateral disarmament as a key plank in its 1983 election campaign. In West Germany more than two million people signed an antinuclear petition organized by opposition political and clerical leaders. In 1981 and 1982 hundreds of thousands gathered for protest rallies in Bonn, the federal capital. Yet neither the British nor German disarmament campaigns, as large as they were, succeeded in reversing official policy. Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives and Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats won their respective elections in 1983, cementing the British and West German commitments to NATO and the new deployments. The missiles began to arrive later that year.

Despite this defeat, unexpected support for the disarmament cause came shortly thereafter from President Ronald Reagan, a resolute hawk who had vigorously defended the NATO missile deployments. It is debatable whether Reagan advocated disarmament out of genuine personal conviction or as an attempt to assuage hostile European public opinion. In any event, after the war scare following NATO's 1983 Able Archer exercises, he formulated what became known as the "zero option."

At his 1986 Reykjavik, Iceland, summit meeting with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan, much to the consternation of many top members of his administration, offered to withdraw all Pershing missiles from Europe if the Soviets would do the same with their SS-20s. In addition, both sides would destroy almost their entire stockpiles of nuclear weapons, keeping only one hundred each. Rather than gradual reductions, both sides would move effectively to zero right away. Gorbachev, sobered by the recent Chernobyl disaster and eager to reduce Soviet military spending, responded enthusiastically. It seemed that the most significant disarmament agreement of the twentieth century was within reach. However, Reagan refused to accept one of Gorbachev's key conditions—that the United States cancel the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), its program of ballistic missile defense research—and the deal fell through. Gorbachev nevertheless persisted, and after agreeing to negotiate on the European missiles in isolation from SDI, the two sides came to agreement. In December 1987 they signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which pledged the elimination of the Cruise, Pershing 2, and SS-20 missiles. Though it applied to only a fraction of their overall nuclear stockpiles, this was the first time that the superpowers had agreed to cut their arsenals instead of just limiting their expansion.

COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
AND AFTER

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, even greater progress was made in reducing the superpowers' nuclear stockpiles. These cuts were achieved through the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties—known as START 1 and START 2—of 1991 and 1993. START 1 reflected the waning tensions of the Cold War. It stringently limited the kinds of missiles and warheads that the two sides could possess and led them to destroy large portions of their arsenals. After the USSR's dissolution, the treaty's obligations devolved to the successor states of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. With the help of U.S. disarmament specialists, all but Russia have since destroyed the Soviet weapons they inherited.

START 2 banned Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), a technology that allowed many nuclear warheads to be placed on a single missile, each aimed at a different target. However, because the United States did not ratify it until 1996 and Russia until 2000, the treaty stagnated and failed to live up to its promise. In 2002 it was superseded by the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Rather than eliminating MIRVs entirely, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their total warhead stockpiles to between seventeen hundred and twenty-two hundred. Despite the significant progress that has been made since the end of the Cold War, and despite the diminished importance of nuclear deterrence, complete nuclear disarmament—as envisioned variously by CND, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev—remains elusive.

Disarmament has been much debated since the attacks of 11 September 2001, particularly with reference to Iraq. After the Gulf War of 1991, the United Nations imposed strict disarmament rules on Saddam Hussein's regime. The country was forbidden from manufacturing or possessing any kind of weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological, or nuclear. Teams of UN inspectors were charged with verifying Iraqi compliance. But over the course of the 1990s Hussein refused to disarm and interfered with the inspections, leading to more than a dozen Security Council resolutions restating the original requirements and calling for immediate cooperation. Nevertheless, no serious action against Iraq was taken.

The situation reached a crisis point only in 2003, following renewed U.S. demands for complete disarmament and unfettered access for UN inspectors. President George W. Bush threatened to overthrow the Iraqi government if it failed to meet them. The Bush administration cited Hussein's recalcitrance in the face of these demands as one of the main reasons for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In the ensuing months, however, no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were found, calling into question one of the war's chief justifications.

Disarmament efforts continue to focus on weapons of mass destruction rather than on conventional weapons. Though Iraq no longer has such weapons, the problem of disarmament remains acute. At the top of the agenda is the spread of nuclear weapons to both states (e.g., Iran and North Korea) and nonstate actors (e.g., Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups). Disarmament was and remains among the most elusive ideals of modern international relations, and despite past progress, there is no sign that success will come any time soon.

See alsoAl Qaeda; Arms Control; Atomic Bomb; Islamic Terrorism; League of Nations; Nuclear Weapons; Terrorism; United Nations; Versailles, Treaty of.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Michael Cotey Morgan