Nuclear disarmament and the end of the chemical weapons ‘system of restraint’

This article is part of a special issue of International Affairs (July 2019) on ‘Re-visioning war and the state in the twenty-first century’, guest-edited by Tracey German.The article of record as published may be found at https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz108With the Cold War as a starting point, it was possible for decades to offer an optimistic assessment of a general trend towards disarmament when it came to describing the future of chemical and nuclear weapons. Recent developments, however, make it difficult to continue to advance this assessment. Equally disturbing is the fact that the greatest disarmament setbacks occurred in the realm of chemical weapons, the realm that enjoyed the greatest success. The article thus begins by making the case that developments in nuclear policies were actually on the side of the angels. Indeed, one could even have made the case that the international community was coming closer to treating nuclear weapons in the same manner as they treated chemical weapons, which had largely vanished from world politics by the turn of the century. The article then explores why the chemical weapons success story ended, and what its end might portend for the role of nuclear weapons in world politics