Topic:
Country: Italy
Delegate Name: Krishna Mano
United Nations Disarmament & International Security Committee
Proliferation of Ballistic Missiles
Italy
Krishna Mano
City High Middle School
Ever since their creation, ballistic missiles (ICBM) have continuously threatened and caused harm to the people of our world. They cause great, irreparable damage and destruction, exacerbating the hostile environment that we see in the modern world. Italy strongly affirms that the proliferation of ballistic missiles further plagues and destructs foreign relations and, therefore, we support the strict regulation of such actions. We also urge our fellow members of this committee to join this standpoint whether it be through signing treaties, writing them, or forming multilateral alliances, as it is indispensable to assemble against weapons with colossal, enduring destructive capabilities.
As a leading member of many multilateral alliances like the UN, NATO, and EU, Italy finds it essential to help protect our neighboring countries from foreign aggression with the goals of both safety and peace in mind. We have taken it into our own hands to further our policy on this subject of great importance in many ways. Before taking action, we reviewed the advice from our fellow nations as found in the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs’ report on ballistic missiles, in which the Panel of Governmental Experts wrote that “it is important to have continued international efforts to deal with the increasingly complex issue of missiles in the interest of international peace and security, and to further deliberate on the issue, specifically focusing attention on existing and emerging areas of consensus.” We continue to strongly agree with these experts and have shown this stance in our actions. We have been a subscribing member of the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC) since November of 2002. Even the HCOC website, however, clearly points out that the alliance is most effective when paired with the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) when it says that, combined, they are the “only multilateral transparency and confidence building instruments concerning the spread of ballistic missiles.” When looking at the MTCR, not only has Italy been a member and promoter of the regime, we were among the 7 founding members of it back in April of 1987. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides yet another example of our involvement in ensuring that proliferation does not continue, referring to our consistent participation “the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) aimed at banning trade in weapons of mass destruction.”
Despite all of these efforts, however, Italy is aware of the minimal cases of proliferation occurring even today. While they have stabilized in recent years, specifically ever since 2008, we believe that there is more work to be done to ensure that we are able to protect our allies who rely on us for security, while emphasizing the necessity for peace in the modern aggressive world. As we have made clear, we hold firm to the point that these ballistic weapons should only be used in the limited form of deterrence, not as a method of harming other nations. While we do not produce or possess any ballistic missiles owned by the Italian Military, through the NATO nuclear and ballistic weapon sharing program, we are entrusted by the United States to possess a number of weapons that we have been transparent about in previous reports. We greatly value peace, but it is also necessary to remain safe and uphold the security of our allied countries during these times of increasing hostility with foreign adversaries. We aim for a series of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic treaties which would lead to a world that only requires ballistic missiles in certain cases of deterrence. Most importantly, we seek a solution that puts the safety of our citizens and our allies above all else.
