Disarmament

General and Complete Disarmament was defined by the United Nations General Assembly as the elimination of all WMD, coupled with the “balanced reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments, based on the principle of undiminished security of the parties with a view to promoting or enhancing stability at a lower military level, taking into account the need of all States to protect their security.”[1] At the Hague Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907 government delegations debated about disarmament and the creation of an international court with binding powers.

A commonly held belief was that the cause of the war had been the escalating buildup of armaments in the previous half century among the great powers (see Anglo-German naval arms race).

Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.

Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was opposed by the First MacDonald ministry of the British government, whose opposition to the treaty, made official on 5 July 1924, "effectively buried the proposal for good.

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand and US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg drafted a treaty known as the Kellogg–Briand Pact, which denounced war of aggression.

[5][6] A final attempt was made at the Geneva Disarmament Conference from 1932 to 1937, chaired by former British Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson.

In the United Kingdom, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held an inaugural public meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958, attended by five thousand people.

[8][9] CND's declared policies were the unconditional renunciation of the use, production of or dependence upon nuclear weapons by Britain and the bringing about of a general disarmament convention.

He went on to call for a global general and complete disarmament, offering a rough outline for how this could be accomplished: The program to be presented to this assembly – for general and complete disarmament under effective international control – moves to bridge the gap between those who insist on a gradual approach and those who talk only of the final and total achievement.

It would place the final responsibility for verification and control where it belongs, not with the big powers alone, not with one's adversary or one's self, but in an international organization within the framework of the United Nations.

On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the Cold War arms race.

In his definition of "disarmament", David Carlton writes in the Oxford University Press political dictionary, "But confidence in such measures of arms control, especially when unaccompanied by extensive means of verification, has not been strengthened by the revelation that the Soviet Union in its last years successfully concealed consistent and systematic cheating on its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention."