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Make Missile Defenses Obsolete: The Case for Ballistic Missile Disarmament
Many countries have agreed to eliminate biological and chemical weapons in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), pledged in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to forgo or eliminate nuclear weapons and have agreed in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to establish a legal framework to ban nuclear weapons. There is yet no multinational treaty restricting the development and use of delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Although the NPT preamble emphasizes “the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,” the NPT does not further specify how this ultimate goal could be achieved for delivery systems. Compared to deterrence and defense, missile disarmament received only little attention. \\
The proliferation of delivery systems is one of the critically important issues related to the overall nuclear non-proliferation and arms control agenda. Delivery systems are an important part of WMD, in particular, nuclear weapons. Appropriate means of delivery are required to transport a nuclear weapon from its storage or deployment area to its target in a “militarily useful” way. Sophisticated delivery systems are costly and difficult to produce, and in many cases are the most visible parts of a nuclear weapon. Therefore, the control of nuclear-capable delivery systems would be an important step toward making nuclear weapons useless and reducing the threat of their use. This is especially true for ballistic missiles, which represent effective and powerful means to deploy nuclear weapons.
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