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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 08/05
The G8 Global Partnership on Weapons of Mass Destruction: What Next?
Daniil Kobyakov and Vladimir Orlov
June 2005
Abstract
Since the inception of the G8 Global Partnership (GP) program in Kananaskis on June 27 2002, the program has passed through different stages. Initially, it was just a loud political declaration, adopted by the leaders of the G8 following the attacks of 9/11. A Russian participant of the Kananaskis Summit later recalled with some surprise how smoothly and, to some extent, unexpectedly for the Russians involved the "$20 billion" pledge was shaped in that Canadian village. Interviewed on a major European GP-related conference a year after the Kananaskis summit, he was frank to exclaim: "Arriving in Kananaskis, we [Russians] could hardly even expect that this whole giant wave now called Global Partnership would be born from our discussions of non-proliferation and counter-terrorism".
Three years after the start of the program it gave its first fruits. Quite obviously, impressive achievements have been outweighed by considerable challenges and obstacles to its implementation, and not all of those have been removed so far. The evolution of the international security environment during the same period of time demonstrates the importance of the goals of the program for the countries involved and for the world as a whole, and thus achieving its long-term success is of paramount importance. In this chapter we will try to assess the future prospects of the GP, identifying the progress made and main problems encountered, as well as some future potential directions where cooperation in the GP framework may lead.
