Disarmament: the balance sheet: Angela Kane asks whether the world is listening to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's calls for progress.

• Author: Kane, Angela

The balance sheet for disarmament consists of a lot more than numbers. A fair assessment of such a balance sheet must take into account not just where things stand now, but how we got to where we are, and where we are likely to go next. Optimists look at the global record with respect to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and marvel at how much extraordinary progress has been made. To pessimists, however, the track record is actually quite uneven. Tilting the great balance sheet on disarmament in the direction of reason and common sense will require sustained and combined effort.

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My subject today concerns a balance sheet--a balance sheet for disarmament to be precise. I am told that the British scientist Dame Mary Archer once said, 'It sounds extraordinary but it's a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.'

Well, the balance sheet for disarmament is no exception to this rule. Readers find themselves riding a roller coaster, soaring to lofty heights only to plunge to the deepest depths. There is motion--always motion--but the direction is often unclear; unfortunately, at the end one finds oneself right back where one started. But what a ride!

Before I became the United Nations' high representative for disarmament affairs, I served as the under-secretary-general for management, where I acquired plenty of experience in dealing with balance sheets. The balance sheet for disarmament, however, consists of a lot more than numbers--as important as numbers can be, especially when it comes to weapon stockpiles. A fair assessment of such a balance sheet would have to take into account not just where things stand now, but how we got to where we are, and where we are likely to go next.

Allow me first of all to clarify some terms before I get into trouble. The UN Charter refers to 'disarmament' and to the 'regulation of armaments' and these are among the oldest and most durable goals of the United Nations Organisation. In practice, 'disarmament' refers to the abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, namely biological and chemical weapons. Though these weapons have radically different effects, they do share a common characteristic; they are inherently indiscriminate--they cannot differentiate between military and civilian targets, so their use becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to justify under international laws of war. This is essentially what the International Court of Justice ruled in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The United Nations has not sought to regulate --but to eliminate--nuclear weapons precisely because of their uniquely indiscriminate effects, in both space and time.

The goal for conventional arms is different. The charter clearly recognises the right of member states to self-defence, which includes the policing of borders, the maintenance of internal order, and the supply of armed forces for international peacekeeping purposes. There is, of course, a danger that such weapons can also be used indiscriminately, as was amply demonstrated during the Second World War and in countless armed conflicts that followed. Yet the United Nations does not seek to eliminate conventional weapons, but to limit, to reduce, and to regulate them. There are exceptions to this rule in which certain categories of conventional weapons deemed excessively injurious or inhumane have been prohibited through the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. This mandated to regulate or ban the use of specific categories of conventional weapons that have uniquely horrific effects--effects that trouble the conscience of humanity. These include, for example, laser blinding weapons and explosives that release shrapnel that is invisible to medical x-rays.

These definitions are important in constructing any balance sheet for disarmament. They help us to recognise what it is we are measuring.

Measurement difficulty

The problem with disarmament is that it is very much like beauty --it appears differently in the eyes of its beholders, and this makes measurement of progress difficult. Let us take two of these beholders: the optimist and the pessimist.

The optimist looks at the global record with respect to weapons of mass destruction and marvels at how much extraordinary progress has been made. Just consider the whole system of national and international norms that has evolved to designate such weapons as taboos, both to use and to possess. How many states today boast that they are 'biological weapon states' or 'chemical weapon states'? Who is arguing now that bubonic plague or polio are legitimate to use as weapons under any circumstance, whether in an attack or in retaliation? Who speaks of a bio-weapon umbrella? It is, of course, true that neither the Biological Weapon Convention nor the Chemical Weapons Convention has universal...