Since the end of the Cold War, the Middle East has been the focus of various projects for the establishment of arms control (including CBMs) regimes. Whereas some of these projects were initiated at the global level, others were discussed and debated at the regional level. This book analyses the global and regional dynamics of arms control in the Middle East in the post-Cold War era. It examines American and European arms control projects, the contexts in which they were presented, the reactions of major regional actors, and their impacts on arms control efforts in the region. It assesses Arab perceptions of the motivations for and constraints on establishing arms control regimes. It also explores the prospects of regional arms control in the context of the ongoing Arab Spring with its ramifications for Arab regional politics, and provides a new perspective on arms control in the Middle East. This volume enriches the ongoing discourse, which to date has been dominated by mainly Western perspectives.

The topic of biological weapons and the issues of arms control and disarmament are addressed in Middle East regional perspective. This requires that the subject be dealt with not as a separate category but within the overall context of the Middle East military balance. This taken into consideration, the different approaches to unconventional and mixed arms control are addressed in terms of how they affect the national interests of regional states, and in what form they are most likely to appear as increasing rather than diminishing their security. The US-USSR nuclear arms control effort during the Cold War is advocated as a process model for the Middle East. It provides a way to disarm the most heavily-armed regional powers of their most dangerous weapons without damaging their respective national interests. The voluntarism inherent in this approach respects the sovereignty of the region's several states, thereby overcoming both the Israeli distrust of international organizations and treaties and the Arab distrust of the partiality of the American superpower. The further recommendation to marry the US-USSR arms control negotiation model to the Middle East theater and its long history of negotiated military agreements, beginning with the Arab-Israeli armistice agreements in 1948-49, contains the additional benefit of separating the military requirements of arms control from the political shackles of a declining Middle East peace process. Israel's objection is that the Arms Control and Regional Security Committee, part of the multilateral track of the peace process, does not include states like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya - the states by which Israel says it is most threatened. The remodeling of Middle East arms control according to Cold War standards enables the inclusion of those proliferating states which are not prepared to enter into political and economic normalization or security cooperation with Israel, but whose arms races with Israel and with one another are creating an ever more dangerous regional environment.

This edited volume provides a systematic analysis of the missile threat and proliferation issue in the Middle East region. The question of how to increase the level of security in the Middle East is not a new one, given the conflict-ridden nature of the region. The solution attempted for this predicament has typically revolved around intense arms build-ups, a strategy which can prove self-defeating due to the subsequent countermeasures employed by neighbouring states. Arms Control and Missile Proliferation in the Middle East focuses on the strategic proliferation of arms, with a specific emphasis on missiles. This unique emphasis enables the contributors to provide a dynamic new perspective on conceptual and political disarmament efforts, thereby distinguishing this volume from many other related works on the region, which deal mainly with weapons of mass destruction. The book also explores the possibility of a reduction in weapon arsenals, examining a more promising cooperative security concept which includes confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs). This book will be of much interest to students of arms control, Middle Eastern politics, Gulf Security, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

The initial years of the new millennium have seen little substantive progress in nucleararms control. Recent challenges for nuclear non-proliferationinclude: the non-entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); the 1998India and Pakistan nuclear weapon tests; the withdrawal of North Korea from the NonproliferationTreaty (NPT); the ambiguous status of Iran's nuclear energy developmentprogramme and past Iraqi NPT violations under Saddam Hussein.The strategy of establishing regional NWFZs is generally seen as both a non-proliferation and security-enhancing measure for the regions themselves, and as a partial step towards the eventual global elimination of nuclear weapons. Currently some 107 countries and the larger part of the globe are part of regional NWFZs while NWFZs for such conflict-prone areas such as the Middle East, South Asia, Northeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe are in various stages of consideration.

Organized by SIPRI, the Nobel Symposium on A Future Arms Control Agenda considered how arms control contributes to a cooperative security system based on the peaceful resolution of disputes and the gradual demilitarization of international relations. This book documents the proceedings, including comprehensive discussions of new elements of the post-Cold War global security system and objectives and limitations of arms control within that evolving system. Special attention is given to the changing roles and responsibilities of the major powers in arms control efforts.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of Japan's arms control policy, unilateral and multilateral, analyzing its origins and later development. Japan has played an important part in shaping non-nuclear policies and the author pays particular attention to this global aspect of Japanese policy. First published in 1990, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.