Down & Out: A Nuclear Path
by Gar Alperovitz, Alex Campbell, Thad Williamson
The Nation (December 30, 1996) Vol. 263, No. 22: 16-20.
Copyright 1996 The Nation Company Inc.

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A complementary regional strategy is that of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of Costa Rica Oscar Arias. In his "Year 2000 Campaign to Redirect World Military Spending to Human Development," Arias proposes the appointment of U.N. representatives to begin regional tension-reduction and disarmament talks that, he hopes, might ultimately lead to combined build-downs along the lines of those achieved in Europe.

Arias suggests that a system of regional confidence-building measures be complemented by agreement to a Code of Conduct relating to arms transfers.

The code would bar exports of arms to nondemocratic governments, governments permitting gross violations of human rights and countries that do not fully participate in the Register of Conventional Arms Transfers, which the U.N. established in 1991.

Outgoing Senator Mark Hatfield and Representative Cynthia McKinney have introduced legislation to prevent sale or transfer of weapons produced in the United States to non-democratically elected governments, governments listed by the State Department as human rights abusers, nations involved in aggressive war with their neighbors or those that do not participate in the U.N. Register: (U.S. arms export licenses of roughly $ 29 billion in 1995 amounted to more than half of global exports-and included sales to Pakistan, Turkey, Greece and Southeast Asia.)

Code of Conduct legislation was in fact adopted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1993, and European legislators hope to incorporate a revised and expanded code in the Maastricht Treaty in 1997. A similar approach has also been proposed in South Africa, Africa's leading arms exporter.

In a related move, the World Bank has begun considering military spending levels when reviewing loan requests so as to require at least initial steps in the direction of conventional arms spending reductions. And a new law written by Representative Joseph Kennedy and Senator Patrick Leahy now requires U.S. executive directors of international lending institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) to vote against any loan to a nation that has not allowed an independent civilian audit of its military budget and military activities in the civilian sector.

Other conventional arms-control measures include the Wassenaar Arrangement for Multilateral Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, which was approved on July 12 by thirty-one weapons-producing nations. It requires signatories to give one another prior notice of any conventional weapons transfers or the sale of technologies that can be used for either civilian or military use. Beyond this, measures to control land mines and light weapons are now high on the agenda of many public officials and private citizen groups.

None of the specific arms-control approaches as yet contemplate explicit movement toward a Kennedy-style step-by-step global disarmament plan. Each, however, could become a serious starting point-if we begin to rethink longer-term strategy. The global logic of general disarmament cannot be avoided forever. And there are dangers in concentrating only on near-term tactics and putting off the demanding task of clarifying basic goals.

Bill Clinton will be operating under significant political constraints in his second term. However, the armament issue is one area ripe for real presidential leadership. Early in 1997 the President should call for a major, worldwide build-down dialogue-and pledge to put forward a Kennedy-style treaty within eighteen months of his inauguration. The goal should be a "disarmament decade" to launch the new century and the new millennium.

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