September 16, 2019
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Verification of Disarmament

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Disarmament & International Security Committee

Topic: Verification of Disarmament

Disarmament is the ultimate goal of the Disarmament and Security Committee. An essential part of the disarmament process is verification, checking that a state has really disarmed. This process is important for any kind of threat, from  missiles to chemical weapons to nuclear arms. Verification provides confidence to other parties in the disarmament process. Many bilateral agreements, such as the START series of treaties between the United States and Russia offer examples of verification through inspection, where each party was allowed to conduct surveillance flights over certain facilities to verify compliance with the treaty. However, when tensions rise, such bilateral agreements are the first things to be revoked.

On an international level, the United Nations works with independent organizations like the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, VERTIC to train groups to verify nuclear and chemical disarmament. While these organizations are independent, some nations are concerned about bringing in outside parties to inspect facilities. The trust required between parties to conduct in person inspections is easily broken. In 2010 it was discovered that a USB drive slipped into an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility during an IAEA inspection infected the computers controlling the centrifuges in such a manner as to disable and damage the machines. This led to Iran to put a stop on IAEA inspections of their facilities, halting verification of Iran  not using nuclear enrichment to create weapons. When trust in the verification process is broken, the entire disarmament process is undermined and can even backslide as states move to conceal their armaments and may even increase production.

Currently, there are a wide array of bilateral treaties and multilateral agreements on nuclear, biological, and chemical arms which call for verification, not all of them are binding. Each of these types of arms requires specialized training for inspection and verification of removal or non-production. Methods of detection are highly specialized and sensitive, preventing the creation of any one catchall organization for inspection. The verification of conventional arms, missiles, guns, and aircraft offer additional challenges as they only require industrial capacity and storage space, which can be more easily hidden without telltale signs of their presence. The DISEC committee must consider these arms and existing processes and determine how to best verify that countries have disarmed themselves of these weapons.

 

Focus Questions:

  • What current processes exist for verification of disarmament?
  • Who typically verifies disarmament?
  • Are there bilateral agreements that could serve as a basis for a broader multilateral agreement?

 

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