CIAO DATE: 04/05

Strengthening International Arms Control/Disarmament Regimes and the Democratic Oversight and Reform of the Security Sector

Abstract

The effort to universally promote and apply multilateral disarmament and arms control treaties requires public understanding of the contribution of such treaties to international security. All too often specialized knowledge of disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation treaties remains concentrated with the executive and a few specialized departments of the Ministries of Defense or Foreign Affairs: whilst parliamentarians and the public remain largely ignorant about them. However, without either comprehensively informed and committed parliamentary oversight and guidance, or scrutiny by an empowered civil society, arms control and disarmament treaties will neither be sufficiently understood nor successfully implemented.

There is a widespread belief (and in fact: practice) according to which security matters are the 'natural domain' of the executive, as the executive and its specialized agencies are seen to have the requisite knowledge and the ability to deal quickly and adequately with challenges to national and international security. The decision to go to war, to contribute troops to multinational peace support operations, to conclude international treaties on arms control and disarmament, and to raise defense-spending are seen as executive decisions which are better left to the specialists. The stubborn perception persists that parliamentarians should stay out of security-relevant decision-making, and many parliamentarians seem content to comply. In a majority of states, the security organs have come to play the role of a 'state within the state'. Challenging the status quo, conventional wisdom would seem to suggest, may only result in trouble for whoever may want change.

Full Text (PDF, 9 pages, 49 KB)