The Beginning of Arms Control

In 1962, French thinker Raymond Aron proposed a broad definition of arms control that remains useful. It included all mechanisms, initiatives or actions, concerted or uncoordinated, unilateral, bilateral or multilateral, legally binding or non-binding, designed to limit the volume of violence in international affairs rather than the actual use of violence.

Arms control under international law lies between the disarmament process, which is intended to be part of legally binding and universal processes, and the various reactive initiatives to combat the proliferation of weapons. These three approaches correspond to three successive periods. The first is schematically that of the League of Nations and the meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1932. The second one accompanies the doctrinalization of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. The third is the Post-Cold War era and the emergence of what were alleged “new threats” to security almost twenty years ago.

For those who say that arms control is a Cold War discipline, it must be based on a tripod: bipolar world order, structuring conflict between the two poles, bilateral acceptance of the notion of strategic parity.

Arms control then reminds us that generically, the subject seeks to frame and stabilize nuclear deterrence in a pragmatic way. Arms control is therefore an integral part of nuclear deterrence. Then arms control relates to any form of cooperation between adversaries aimed at reducing the risks of war and nuclear escalation and/or limiting competition in the field of armaments.

Arms control led the United States and the USSR to co-manage deterrence. It was a bilateral technique. Another generic characteristic: arms control must be consensual because it translates into reciprocal commitments that strengthen mutual trust. It is therefore a paradoxal form of partnership.

If we go even further into the implications of the theoretical core, arms control is not so much about eliminating a weapon system as it is about shaping a predictable relationship through transparency mechanisms with a dual virtue: avoiding strategic planning based on the worst-case scenario, avoiding miscalculations and perceptual errors more generally.

For the USSR and the United States, legally binding constraints on their arsenals gradually shifted towards two main objectives: approximate parity and force survivability.

Naturally, with the end of the Cold War, the very detailed numerical parity objective lost its prominence in the American debate, as illustrated by the American withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and the conclusion of the SORT Treaty in spring 2002.

The Post-Cold War era tried to adapt arms control to a more flexible strategic environment based on non-binding cooperation and the ambition for flexibility. This shift has not worked, as illustrated by the almost complete deconstruction of the security architecture in Europe.

In any case, while arms control may have been considered by some to be a discipline strictly confined to nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

Organised violence was a significant issue during the Middle Ages. Violence was both extra-legal, with bandits wreaking damage on both towns and in the country-side, as well as legal,with the acceptance of the feud and the joust

While major wars were often short, mercenaries and some knights continued to wreak destruction outside the standard army-warfighting times. Additionally, numerous invasions from outside Christian Europe also occurred (whether by Muslims, Vikings or Mongols).

Arms control initiatives during the Middle Ages were focused on limiting the scope of public and private violence, both within and between polities. Across the era, the Church set restrictions on the conduct of warfare and specified what constituted legitimate targets and time periods for committing such violence.

For example, extending beyond the 989 Peace of God which sought to protect certain classes of people and property from violence, the 1027 Truce of God sought to limit warfare more broadly. It was an initiative to stop all violence at certain times, specifying certain days and holy seasons that the nobility was prohibited from violence, including on Sundays. Several extensions of the Truce of God were made over time, including in 1041 and 1063, and the punishment for violation of both the peaces and truces was anathema or excommunication.

Similarly, the State enacted several measures designed to control violence, with temporal rulers decreeing so-called ‘Peaces of the Land’, outlawing feuds and other forms of violence for a limited time. These included the peace of the Land for Elsass (1085–1103) and Henry IV’s Peace of the Land in 1103, for which the penalty of breaching was capital punishment or the removal of the offender’s eyes or hand.

In addition to these limits on the conduct of violence and warfare, decretal law included specific prohibitions on the sale or transfer of certain weapons, especially to Non-Christians or Saracens (those who professed the religion of Islam during the Middle Ages), or restrictions in their use. For example, the Canon 29 agreement of the Second Lateran Council of 1139 prohibited the use of crossbows against Christians (but did not prevent their use against Non-Christians). Additionally, the Canon 24 agreement of the Third Lateran Council of 1179 threatened excommunication of anyone who provided the Saracens with weapons, iron and wood to build ships. Similarly, Canon 71 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 banned the transfer of weapons to the Saracens.

A key thematic aspect of arms control during the modern era, particularly from the beginning of the 1700s, was that of neutralizing territory and razing fortifications. These two concepts relate to each other as a neutralized territory was not allowed to have fortifications.

Several major agreements on neutralization included the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht – whereby the French agreed to the British demands “that all the Fortifications of the City of Dunkirk be Razed and that the Harbour be filled up” (according to the text of the Peace of Utrecht) – and the 1715 British-Spanish-Dutch Treaty, under which forts and other fortifications were to be demolished so as to never be rebuilt or restored.

Additionally, the 1856 Treaty of Paris neutralized the Black Sea, closing the region to all warships and prohibiting fortifications and armaments, while numerous treaties were signed to neutralize countries, such as the 1831 Treaty of independence and neutralization of Belgium, and the 1867 agreement to neutralize Luxembourg.

Other arms control initiatives of the modern era focused on demilitarization or the numerical limitation of a standing army. For example, the Anglo-French Naval Limitation Pact of 1787 reduced and equalized the size of the French and British navies, aiming to strengthen strategic stability between the two great powers following years of inter-state conflict. Shortly after, this agreement was followed by a joint declaration, whereby both agreed to the discontinuation of armaments, and in general all warlike preparations.

The 1817 US-UK Rush-Bagot Agreement, considered the first arms control treaty of the modern industrial era, also incorporated mutual agreements to demilitarize. Following the war of 1812 between the UK and the US, which had witnessed a huge accumulation of naval forces, the Agreement imposed restrictions on both sides’ naval deployments, leading to the naval demilitarization of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain between the US and the UK (in the current States of Vermont and New York, and the current Canadian province of Quebec). The 1871 Treaty of Washington signed between the US and UK resulted in total demilitarization of the Great Lakes region.

Additionally, ‘unequal treaties’ were established during the modern era – not dissimilar from the “foedus inaequum” arms control practices of the ancient world and usually imposed by a superior power. For example, the Franco-Prussian treaty of 1808 limited the Prussian army’s troop numbers for a period of 10 years, and in 1841, the Ottoman Turks imposed restrictions on the Egyptian army, limiting its troop numbers and prohibiting it from building ironclad warships.

The Industrial Revolution was a major feature of the modern era that influenced warfare, increasing the mechanization of war and resulting in significant advances in modern weaponry, including the development of firearms.

While warfare had become increasingly destructive in the 17th and 18th century, the emergence of even deadlier weapons in the 19th century saw a corresponding effort to prohibit categories of weapons that seemed to cause unnecessary suffering or seemed to be indiscriminate in their effects. For example, the Hague Convention of 1899 formalized rules for the use of modern weaponry, including that states abstain from using expanding bullets and poisonous gases. It also laid out the rules of war, with humane treatment for prisoners of war or wounded and the protection of non-combatants and their property and led to the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.