Among the measures employed to stabilize the strategic relationship between the East and West in the nuclear age, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is of profound importance. This cooperative agreement to limit offensive and defensive strategic forces has recently been challenged by the allure of new technology, including the proposed Space-based Defense System. Coinciding with the third ABM Treaty Review Conference, this study by an international roster of renowned scholars and policymakers--including two negotiators of the 1972 Treaty--provides insight into the complexities of the issues involved and identifies possible solutions. Concise, timely, and well-balanced, this collection is an important contribution to the debates surrounding the future of international peace and security.

The current debate on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a matter of considerable significance for East-West relations and international security, is examined by thirteen authors selected from the international community for their expertise. In the introduction, the three editors from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute highlight the complexities of the problems involved and identify possible solutions. Ambassadors Gerard Smith and Vladimir Semenov, the two negotiators of the 1972 Treaty, give their views, and subsequent papers address the significance of the current US and Soviet interpretations of such issues as space-based defences. The 'grey areas' in the Treaty are highlighted, and the much neglected implications for the international community in general and the small nuclear powers and alliances in particular are presented.

Originally published in 1987. European concerns about strategic defense and its impact on the stability of the East-West strategic balance have been the subject of frequent and lively discussion at the Institute for East-West Security Studies in the more than four years since President Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in Marc

Originally published in 1987. European concerns about strategic defense and its impact on the stability of the East-West strategic balance have been the subject of frequent and lively discussion at the Institute for East-West Security Studies in the more than four years since President Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in Marc

The collapse of communist rule in the late 1980s set in motion a process of radical political, social and economic change in the former USSR and Central and Eastern Europe. Throughout the eastern half of Europe and beyond, among the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) the early 1990s have been characterized by attempts to move away from the legacy of the communist era towards new democratic political structures, market economies and societies based on the rule of law. The challenges and dilemmas posed by these developments to the stability of the region are the central focus of Central and Eastern Europe: The Challenge of Transition. Recognizing the need to adopt an approach doing justice to what is unquestionably a momentous process of change, the book focuses on the security implications of continuing developments in the political, social, economic and military spheres. The heart of the book is a set of case studies examining in detail the situation in a number of Central and East European countries: Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic states, the Balkan region and in the former Yugoslavia. By way of introduction to the case studies, a further section of essays assesses developments in Central and Eastern Europe from a broader thematic perspective, focusing on such important issues as the role of European organizations in the ethnic conflicts currently much in evidence throughout the region.

This book examines the question: is the elimination of nuclear weapons politically feasible and technically practical? With the end of the cold war, a re-thinking of the nuclear foundations of international security is imperative. There are no compelling reasons to perpetuate a cold war-era nuclear security approach. Neither is the world ready to abolish nuclear weapons by agreement. What it is ready for, however, is a radical reappraisal of conventional strategic and disarmament wisdom. The book's explicit focus on non-nuclear security takes issues with prevailing pro- and anti-nuclear views. The study challenges the assumptions of the strategic community that there is no alternative to nuclear security in an anarchic international system and of the advocates of radical nuclear disarmament who propose solutions at the expense of security. Instead, the contributors argue that nuclear weapons abolition should be seen as a long-term process, pursued on a broad political front, aimed at a steady transformation of international politics that encourages security co-operation between states. Individual chapters of the book address the major conceptual, technical, and economic issues in t

SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) is an independent institute for scientific research, which aims to further an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions to international conflicts and for a stable peace. Over the past 20 years, SIPRI has concentrated on problems of armaments, disarmaments, and arms regulation. This study analyzes the evolution of the current security order and the role of nuclear weapons in it. It investigates how and why countries have responded to the existence of nuclear weapons as they have. It traces the development of security thinking in the nuclear age through case studies of countries that have nuclear weapons, those that do not, those on the nuclear threshold and those whose security is believed to benefit from the nuclear arsenals of other countries. The framework of analysis is comparative, and the study provides insight into shared and different appreciations of the impact nuclear weapons have had upon states' understanding of national and international security. This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of the concept of security with nuclear weapons that goes beyond traditional East-West analyses of the nuclea